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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (262804)	12/1/2005 4:05:56 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574683

Bush Administration is Anti-Christmas... Cue up Bill O'Reilly... mypetjawa.mu.nu; I never thought I would be defending Bush against O'Reilly but I think O'Reilly needs to get a life. This latest move by the religious fundamentalists wants us to ignore the other holidays celebrated during the season as well as the faiths of the non majority in this country. Apparently, even the wonderful holiday of XMAS can't stop the sniveling religious fundamentalists from complaining. Their latest victim........TARGET: No Christmas truce in culture war The Virginian-Pilot © November 30, 2005 Like holiday fruit cake, Jerry Falwell is one of those fixtures Americans either love or hate. No need to debate the ingredients. The product either suits your palate or leaves a bitter taste. Even so, as the Yuletide approaches, Americans shouldn’t ignore efforts such as “Friend or Foe Christmas,” a movement led by the Florida-based Liberty Council, solely because it has been embraced by the Lynchburg evangelist. Certain age-old questions merit revisiting year after year: When it comes to Christmas, how does one reconcile the secular and the sacred? Does the evolution from “Merry Christmas” to “Merry Xmas” to “Happy Holidays” signal a spiritual collapse or rising tolerance? And how should those who deplore the change respond? The Liberty Council offers an unambiguous answer. The conservative legal organization promises a lawsuit against anyone misrepresenting how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces. Falwell’s endorsement in a weekly e-mail, distributed to a reported half-million Americans, thrust the campaign into the national limelight last week. Meanwhile, the Liberty Council finds kindred spirit with the Alliance Defense Fund (slogan: “Merry Christmas: It’s OK to say it”) and the American Family Association, which urged a boycott of Target stores last weekend for allegedly banning the phrase in its holiday promotions. Target denies the claim. How to respond? First, commercial establishments serve Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists and wiccans. They have no obligation to promote any holiday as a religious event. Expecting them to do so creates its own distortion by implying a connection between the birth of Jesus and an Xbox 360. Second, some Americans and especially some educators have become oversensitive to the presence of religious symbols on school grounds. The pendulum once swung too far toward promoting Christianity; now, in some places, it swings too far toward ignoring it. The Supreme Court distinguishes between songs, art and symbols presented as a reflection of cultural heritage and the same songs, art and symbols used to advance a particular religion. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” belongs in a seasonal school program as surely as “O Christmas Tree,” so long as the program isn’t a church cantata. The Liberty Council, and Falwell by extension, serve a useful purpose in making that clear. But lawsuits? Friends or foes? Surely there’s a response more in keeping with the Christmas spirit. Militant Christianity strikes many as an oxymoron. To most Christians, Christ’s birth was a gift, one nobody need be forced to open. home.hamptonroads.com