So the religious lunatics are at it again. The rise of fundamentalism in the United States is a real problem and needs to be stamped out.
This time Reverend Ken Hutcherson and his (to quote the Telegraph) "evangelical megachurch has vowed to take over Microsoft by packing it with new shareholders who will vote against the company's policy of championing gay rights."
Microsoft is fairly well known in the United States for supporting a solid policy of employee diversity. There's a group within Microsoft called the Gay and Lesbian Employees At Microsoft (GLEAM). A lot of technology companies are typically quite liberal (well apart from Apple and Adobe, who unlike most others give more money to the Republican Party) when it comes to matters such as this, and I'm surprised haven't yet been the target of more religious nonsense.
This guy is asking millions of evangelical Christians, Jews and the like to buy up Microsoft stock so they can vote against these policies within the company.
Here's a few of the things this guy has had to say:
"I consider myself a warrior for Christ. Microsoft don't scare me. I got God with me."
"I told them that you need to work with me or we will put a firestorm on you like you have never seen in you life because I am your worst nightmare. I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me."
"Microsoft stepped out of their four walls into my world so that gives me the right to step out of my world into their world."
"They tried to turn their policy into state policy, making their policy something I had to submit to. And my playbook tells me you don't submit to sin."
Now I know most people in the UK would dismiss the guy as a nutcase, and rightfully so, but increasingly in the United States these people are becoming ever more powerful and they influence millions of people.
Never in the UK have I met somebody who told me that being gay is a life choice, yet on my forums, the majority of members of which are American it is a frequent area of argument. Of course there is zero evidence to support these claims, but when you're dealing with people who place faith above hard scientific facts nine times out of ten you're wasting your time discussing it. If their pastor or priest has told them it is a life choice and a sin, it is probably too late. That method of thought - or lack of thought must be stopped.
This is why faith must be attacked by reason, the scientific method is the most powerful invention we have ever made and we should use it to investigate everything. Religion has been getting a free ride for far too long, and people in the United States must openly challenge it and reverse the damage that has already been done. A secular country where God is mentioned in the pledge of allegiance and mentioned in the country's motto has something seriously wrong with it.
In the UK too fundamentalism is on the rise, creationism is being actively taught in some schools, children can be divided up into faith based schools, some Jewish communities and of course Northern Ireland spring to mind which creates segregation which can well follow them throughout their lives.
It is time people make a stand against religion, although the majority of religious people are perfectly decent, by their support of putting faith above reason they allow generations of people to be indoctrinated into something that simply has no basis in the real world.
All too often we see fundamentalists causing the spread of HIV by telling people that condoms are evil, we see deadly diseases break out because parents refuse to vaccinate their children, this has cropped up many times throughout Africa killing thousands of people, all because some church said the vaccines gave people aids. Then we have people blowing themselves up because they have been indoctrinated into believing there is an afterlife.
It needs to be stamped out, I believe religion should be a strictly private matter, the intervention of religious ideology in society should be stopped, it is dangerous and regressive. Things look far too similar to the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, where science was suppressed the Great Library burned and civilisation in Europe collapsed into a thousand years of religious darkness. Never again.