@ImportViking Ah yes, "Supply Side Jesus", as some on the left side of the political spectrum would call it...
First off, fuck the prosperity gospel and hucksters like Joel Osteen. That man is going straight to hell for what he did during Hurricane Harvey.
That being said, I don't tend to think Americans "force" the Christian God on people. I currently live in and have lived in many rural towns in the "Bible Belt" (the part of the country stretching roughly between North Carolina and Texas). People here will very happily display their Christianity and may automatically assume you are a Christian but that is not forcing it on you per se -- it's more that when one gets out of the big cities in the US, meeting people of different faiths, sexualities, or genders becomes a rather rare thing. In small towns like these, "so which church are you going to?" is often an ice-breaker sort of question, a bit like "which football team do you support?". The implication -- that you're both religious and a fan of football in the first place -- is more an overwhelmingly likely statistical bet than anything else.
As for a war between sexes, meh -- there are problems for both men and women in the US. Women aren't at risk for a draft (which I believe we should both change and then bring the draft back because it'll stop us from being so trigger happy on bullshit wars like Iraq), and they get far too much bias in the court system, particularly in divorce settlements and child custody. The Metoo movement has also made getting away with destroying a man's reputation through false claims easier. Then again, women are disadvantaged when it comes to the pink tax. Women all too often hit the glass ceiling in major businesses because "good ol' boys clubs" still often permeate C-suites. I don't think God ties into this fight so much as older, more traditional social mores do. Those traditional social mores tend to be associated with religion more but are not expressly tied to religion as such.
I think people often forget just how much progress has been made here. In 1969, queer people got raided, arrested, and then beaten in riots in relatively progressive New York City of all places. In 2015, same sex marriage was enshrined as the law of the land by the courts, and had been legalized in some states for decades prior. That's a monumental shift in a relatively short time -- relative to the time it took women to fight for suffrage and equal rights, it's quite a bit faster. Social mores take time to change. I think things will work out alright.
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@ImportViking Ah yes, "Supply Side Jesus", as some on the left side of the political spectrum would call it...
First off, fuck the prosperity gospel and hucksters like Joel Osteen. That man is going straight to hell for what he did during Hurricane Harvey.
That being said, I don't tend to think Americans "force" the Christian God on people. I currently live in and have lived in many rural towns in the "Bible Belt" (the part of the country stretching roughly between North Carolina and Texas). People here will very happily display their Christianity and may automatically assume you are a Christian but that is not forcing it on you per se -- it's more that when one gets out of the big cities in the US, meeting people of different faiths, sexualities, or genders becomes a rather rare thing. In small towns like these, "so which church are you going to?" is often an ice-breaker sort of question, a bit like "which football team do you support?". The implication -- that you're both religious and a fan of football in the first place -- is more an overwhelmingly likely statistical bet than anything else.
As for a war between sexes, meh -- there are problems for both men and women in the US. Women aren't at risk for a draft (which I believe we should both change and then bring the draft back because it'll stop us from being so trigger happy on bullshit wars like Iraq), and they get far too much bias in the court system, particularly in divorce settlements and child custody. The Metoo movement has also made getting away with destroying a man's reputation through false claims easier. Then again, women are disadvantaged when it comes to the pink tax. Women all too often hit the glass ceiling in major businesses because "good ol' boys clubs" still often permeate C-suites. I don't think God ties into this fight so much as older, more traditional social mores do. Those traditional social mores tend to be associated with religion more but are not expressly tied to religion as such.
I think people often forget just how much progress has been made here. In 1969, queer people got raided, arrested, and then beaten in riots in relatively progressive New York City of all places. In 2015, same sex marriage was enshrined as the law of the land by the courts, and had been legalized in some states for decades prior. That's a monumental shift in a relatively short time -- relative to the time it took women to fight for suffrage and equal rights, it's quite a bit faster. Social mores take time to change. I think things will work out alright.