Keep your Religion off my Laws.

This is old news, and it was going to be a post specific to the latest legislative travesty pushed upon the American public by religious operatives working through conservative legislators, but as I think about it, it's more general than that.

I am so sick of one group's morals influencing public policy to the point where 66.3 million people (22% of the population) (Roman Catholics, according to the BBC) gets to say what 149.1 million American women (50.7%) get to do with their reproductive choices. This time, they are reaching out through health insurance, further sucking the marrow out of an already hollow bill.

It sucks. And it makes no logical sense. As if the Hyde Amendment wasn't bad enough, now we have the Stupak Amendment. It's not a matter of keeping your laws off my body, it's keep your religion off of my body. These morals come from a belief that life starts at conception. This is by no means a fact. Americans do not seem to be able to distinguish between the two. There is powerful evidence, in fact, that our brains process facts and belief in the same way, which is most likely one of the reasons that so many people are confused as to which is which.

Well, that plus a critical thinking failure on an epic scale.

Here's an example:

Evolution is a fact.
Creationism/Intelligent Design is a belief.

You do not get to have your own set of facts. If you need to believe that the earth is 6 thousand years old and God made every living species and Noah really had an ark because your religion tells you so, you get to believe that, and you get to be wrong. You do not get to use that belief to say what is taught in the public schools or what the government does. That's a principle of our godless Constitution.

And now, I need to finish my coffee.