--- In [email protected], "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> --- In [email protected], off_world_beings <no_reply@>
> wrote:
<snip>
> > Carter was a fundie nut , just like bush and bin laden.
> > Get a real perspective instead of the usual brainwashed american
> > perspective.
> > No-one outside US buys this american BS..Why do you suppose that
> > is....coincidence?
>
> Guess that's why he was awarded the Nobel Peace
> Prize, huh?
>
> In fact, Carter is widely respected outside the
> U.S., probably more so than *in* the U.S.
Not that he doesn't have his faults and blind spots.
But just for example, he was the first U.S.
president to speak out in support of gay rights; he
is an ardent conservationist and supporter of the
rights of women and minorities. He has been
recognized internationally, via many awards and
honors, as a peacemaker and human rights advocate.
He's also a very strong supporter of the separation
of church and state.
Plus which, he has written an entire book ("Our
Endangered Values") condemning the socially
conservative agenda of today's fundamentalist
Christians.
In an interview with Mother Jones magazine (hardly
a fundie rag) about the book, he said of this agenda:
The danger comes when those kinds of principles are applied on the
international scene. That brought about a whole gamut of things. One,
obviously, is the unprecedented preemptive war that President Bush
has declared to be a policy of our country. Another is the total
abandonment, and often the derogation, of every nuclear-arms
agreement that has been negotiated by previous presidents, beginning
in the time of Dwight Eisenhower.
At home, it brought about the deterioration of our commitment to
environmental quality. Another [effect] is the enormous preference
that has been given in tax laws recently to the extremely rich at the
expense of working-class and poorer people. Then there's the implied
melding of science and religion, where even the president himself has
expressed the opinion that religious beliefs should be taught in
scientific classrooms. That's unprecedented. And there is a unique
and special emphasiswhich is a recent development toowithin the
religious community, an obsession with the condemnation of
homosexuality. Now, in the bible homosexuality is condemned, but
along with divorce and greed and callousness toward poor people. So
its elevation to a highest priority among some religious groups has
been very disturbing to me.
http://tinyurl.com/gu2k7
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