We must not lose our freedoms
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Margaret Murphy
Published: October 18, 2008
I have been privileged to be born in America and to be able to worship without fear of molestation.
Why are we letting our freedoms be taken from us? I have freedom of speech to speak as I will and to worship, although I do not advocate anyone verbally attacking anyone with that freedom of speech
nor raising their hand to them or cursing them… that’s not the way of God.
Many times I have forced myself to be quiet and pray for someone when they thought they knew and didn’t and punished another or repeated gossip they had heard and hurt another by it, especially in
public service positions where gossip without fact can do much harm.
I still say Merry Christmas even though one lady was shocked, and I don’t even know who the lady was.
In the not too distant past, when our preacher, Barry Bryson, was asked to give the invocation before the meeting of the county supervisors about the immigration issue, he was given a long list of all the
things he was not allowed to say and one of them was the name of Jesus. Now Barry always obeys the law and bids others to do so as well, and he did obey the law. At the end of the prayer when he
prayed in God’s son’s name I was so proud.
This weekend at Nascar, when the preacher prayed and ended it with “in Jesus name,” I was so proud.
Never to be ugly, never to raise one’s hand against another only to pray for them even when they do you harm… sometimes it’s hard, but never will I cease to mention Jesus and to pray.
MARGARET MURPHY
Dumfries
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Posted by ( urf8 ) on October 20, 2008 at 4:11 pm
MARGARET:
If you want to keep your freedom, then vote for Obama! Republcans want nothing more than fur more years to take them away as they have done with the Patriot Act. Also, with palin as a VP (which is scary thought), the GOP and the radical religious (and hate-filled, bigoted) right would try to erode religious our freedoms. We are a secualr country, founded on the principals of religious freedom, we cannot move backwards by rewarding the GOP for destrying America and our freedom!
I’m a 20 year military vet (officer); still serving, so please, make the right choice on election day: OBAMA all the way!
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Posted by ( kgotthardt ) on October 19, 2008 at 3:46 pm
—In the not too distant past, when our preacher, Barry Bryson, was asked to give the invocation before the meeting of the county supervisors about the immigration issue, he was given a long list of all the
things he was not allowed to say and one of them was the name of Jesus.—
Ma’am the reason for this is simple: the BOCS invites the religious community for show. Then they call them “fringe groups” and tell them to “mind their own business.“ Then they support people who persecute, threaten and intimidate.
Every religious leader who has opened those BOCS meetings has prayed that our BOCS will use wisdom. Inherent to wisdom are compassion and love. Wisdom, compassion and love are the furthest things from the BOCS’s agenda. Their inviting anyone to pray at all is a hypocritical sham.
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Posted by ( Sammy B ) on October 19, 2008 at 9:00 am
Ms. Murphy is welcome to pray as she like. No one is going to challenge her right to do so. Rev. Bryson, however, was not only praying for his own purposes at the BOCS meeting. His prayer was on the behalf of all present and some of them may not have been Christians. He had a duty to include these people and by making his prayer specific to a single faith he violated this duty. It frustrates me to no end when people forget that not everyone in the country, or the county for that matter, worships the same way that they do.
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Posted by ( raywilliams ) on October 19, 2008 at 8:43 am
“I have been privileged to be born in America and to be able to worship without fear of molestation.“
Many in America share your views, and wish to have the full opportunity to worship without fear of retaliation.
This is being taken away from many of our Jewish and Muslim friends as the Bush Administration has made religion a center point of his foreign policy.
We can only witness the crusade, which began against terrorists if one can remember that far back, and evolved to a crusade against those of the Muslim faith.
As the Republican Party continues to steer this country towards an Iran-Saudi-Afghanistan model of religious intolerance towards all those not of their faith we have mush to fear in losing our ability to worship without fear of molestation.
I trust you will support the conservative Democratic Party on November 4th to preserve our religious freedoms for all faiths.
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