{"id":545,"date":"2015-04-01T11:41:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T15:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=545"},"modified":"2015-04-01T11:41:18","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T15:41:18","slug":"a-place-at-the-lunch-counter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=545","title":{"rendered":"A place at the lunch-counter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve said repeatedly over the years that most Americans have far too much sense and decency to be good Christians, and the nationwide uproar over Indiana&#8217;s odious attempt to protect discrimination against gays is a good example of what I&#8217;ve been talking about.  Seventy-five <i>per cent<\/i> of us might call ourselves Christians but, push come to shove, a decisive majority of us have no intention of living like it.<\/p>\n<p>Yay! for us.  Or, as Mark Twain so famously wrote in <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacred-texts.com\/aor\/twain\/letearth.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Letters From the Earth<\/a><\/i>, &#8220;These people would not allow it. They are better than their Bible.&#8221;  What we need, now, is not to &#8220;return to God,&#8221; as the Holy Men constantly urge, but to stand-up like two-legged men and shake a fist under their noses and tell them frankly that we&#8217;ll have nothing more to do with their malicious and degrading nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>There are doubtless years and years of legal wrangling to go but, practically speaking, the American people have spoken and the fight for gay rights is over.<\/p>\n<p>The jockeying has begun for the 2016 Republican nomination for President, and the candidates are predictably cautious; some have quietly signaled their support for Indiana&#8217;s breach of common decency, and the rest are evasive.  All are wrong; the one thing that can save the Republicans in 2016 is for a man or woman to step forward and declare the Evangelical Right <i>persona non grata<\/i>, offenses against the very essence of American ideals &#8212; and unwelcome.  Weeny-ish equivocations will not work; the entire American public knows now what they are, and the only Republican who will win in 2016 is the one who will say plainly that they are a sickness that must &#8230; <i>GO!<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve said repeatedly over the years that most Americans have far too much sense and decency to be good Christians, and the nationwide uproar over Indiana&#8217;s odious attempt to protect discrimination against gays is a good example of what I&#8217;ve &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=545\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}