The ultimate killer is religious hypocrisy--what can we do about it? Convince the hypocrites that they're violating their own human rights as well as ours.

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And who among you say that the Tea Party are hypocrites for attending church every Sunday and discriminating against the  

The real title of this sermon by dougbutchy
poor by voting against every measure, at every level of government, that benefits them?

     All four Gospels quote Jesus' words that "the poor we will  always have among us," in answer to his apostles' condemnation  of his acceptance of anointment with expensive perfumes. The  anointing is preparation for his burial, answers Jesus, and the  poor they will always have among them while he will not always  be there.

     For all of his predictions of blessings for the poor in the afterlife,  and misery for the rich, who have less chance of reaching heaven  than a camel to be threaded through a needle's eye, Jesus' prophecy  is borne out by the Tea Party and vultures capitalists' discrimination against the poor, bleeding them to the level of the poor women in the New Testament who gives her last pennies to the poor.

     Well, they'll happily help themselves to those pennies. I don't know whether such magnanimity toward the rich will be rewarded,  though Jesus says that their suffering in poverty will be.

     The poor we will always have with us and will always be discriminated against, despite Jesus' predictions. Granted, some of  the vultures are Jewish, but so are most of those warned by the Son  of God to be more compassionate.

      One specific arena in which conservatives make sure that we'll always have poor people among us is voting rights, a huge issue since the late June, 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court striking down section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which badly cripples section 5. Together they assure that regions most likely to discriminate against the poor will be answerable to the Justice Department (DoJ) each time they attempt to implement discriminatory  measures.

     Discrimination against the poor of every description has thus been  assured: indigent senior citizens, Native Americans, African Americans, and college students likely to vote liberal, at least some of them indigent, especially with the college loan debts that cripple their futures so heavily. Unless section 3 can be put to good use--the difficult "opting in" provision that will be far more troublesome to enforce because it requires proof of intentional discrimination, which culprits can rationalize to their hearts' content.

     And proposed legislation is attempting to double the interest rates of these college loans.

     Something is very rotten when the proportion of SCOTUS ideologies do not reflect those of the country they purport to represent  at the judicial level. I'm not talking violations of the Constitution, which  is being treated like toilet paper these days. I'm talking hypocrisy at a  higher level. Since the conservatives are also violating the precepts of Jesus, a mortal sin, shouldn't they be (a) barred from attending church or (b) forced to obey the precepts of the Son of God they profess to worship and follow?

     If they are mingling church and state so freely, we can certainly justify such measures.

      The next question is whether vulture capitalists attend church. I know that at least some of them do. Tea Party members presumably do, as do a large proportion of others who are antichoice.

       What good is religion otherwise? As a vehicle for vulture capitalists to thank God for the bounty they enjoy while others line the  streets shaking paper cups filled with nickels and dimes?

      There is condoned segregation in religious houses of worship also.

        But adherence to biblical precepts invites other unsolvable issues, even when we attempt to update principles to the twenty-first century, this polluted era ushered in by a shotgun presidential election.

     It can be argued that this stolen election, which straddles both years claimed to herald the twenty-first century, was the agent of the most heinous policies in history, resulting in the most global-level death and ruin ever within the brief span of ten years? And then some?

     This postulate requires an assumption that an accurate election might have saved countless lives and livelihoods, which is reasonable. Certainly the environment would have been better off, but that's another issue.

     I'm rambling, taking up far too much space to claim that discrimination against underprivileged populations is wrong according to every standard we know except rationalizations--Mrs. Paul Singer offered to explain to her neighbors in her high-end section in Brooklyn exactly what it is that her husband does, apropos of demonstrators lining the posh concrete outside her house, incited by Greg Palast's reports, Palast a Tom Paine treated like the insightful soothsayer Cassandra, whom no one heeded.

     And I narrowed the principle of ubiquitous, wrongheadededness down to the level of electoral discrimination. And then I cited election 2000 as a catalyst of the most bloodshed and tragedy ever accomplished within the space of a decade, and if I'm wrong, I'll say instead that it served as an ominous kickstart to a century that will involve huge struggles to right the many wrongs ushered in by the stolen election.

      Then I bring in the raped values of Western religions, realizing that the most apt invocation of Jesus' name is in such settings as "Jesus Christ, I don't believe what's happening to this country and the world it purports to lead!"

     Jesus knew why we'd have the poor among us always and treat them like used toilet paper. He might as well have given up on the spot and told his Dad to try again some other way to reward sinners with a kingdom of heaven.

     Has religion accomplished more evil than good? I've convinced myself today that it has. I used to consider it a 50-50 agent of some good, some evil.

      But as Arctic glaciers melt, the foundations of civilization are also sinking to the level of no return. We've carried hypocrisy too far and soon it will be the sole survivor, the victor.

      I fight for human rights for all, not just the underprivileged populations. The rich will lose their rights, too, when their children's underground bunkers cave in to huge flooding.

      They know not what they do. They deserve no forgiveness, Socrates and Jesus. We must go beyond religion for solutions to overthrow that statue, hypocrisy.

       I ask too much, and I'll never stop.

Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.