It has been a code and tenant of the religious right that vaccinations are a taboo sort of thing. We had a horrible case of the old red measles when we were a child and we wouldn't wish that on anybody and vaccinated our children when we had the chance to do so against that and many other maladies. Our case of the measles came during summer vacation and we continued to watch television and, in effect, ruined our eyesight for a generation until surgery restored it to us a few years ago. Advances in science and medicine have corrected many maladies but the conservative crowd is very evidently anti science although they do like the advances in medicine that have made their lives both longer and with a better quality to it.
The religious right and many isolated conservatives who home school their children in the wake of the school prayer decision by the supreme court are missing the benefits that the majority in this country have and the entire nation is both laughing at them and suffering from their travails as they attempt to restore something that this nation will never see again. The vast majority of these people are lily white and are trying to hold onto values that are not particularly bad but that need to be melded with what the rest of the nation is espousing at this time. Blacks and Hispanics are some of the most religious and faithful people on this earth and for the right to withdraw from this fact into a bizarre world does neither them nor anyone else any good. It has been said that the most segregated time in America is 10:30 to 11:30 on a Sunday morning when Christians gather in their various corners to worship a God who loves them all equally.
The bottom line, in our view, is that this is a racist movement that seeks to isolate themselves from people and movements and groups that they have never associated with in their lives and that they never intend to associate with even though these groups and movements are now on the verge of becoming the majority in this nation. The people of the streets that we associate with at places like the soup kitchen where we hang out at and volunteer are so far ahead of the lily white crowd in mixing and in toleration that it is not even funny anymore. It is in these groups that you find more interracial marriage and childbirth than anywhere else in our society and this phenomenon, over a period of time, will create the new America that may, in the end, overcome this sort of intolerance and isolation.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
| 