Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 2005 | Page 118

114 Popular Culture Review Specifically, w e want all people in the United States to enjoy the same legal rights as everyone else, unless they have forfeited them by violating the rights o f others. We believe this should include some things that are, apparently, very controversial. They include the right to serve, fight, and even die on behalf o f our country in the military; the right to earn a living by working hard and being judged wholly on the quality o f our work; the rigjit for teenagers to attend high school without being shoved, punched, or otherwise attacked; and, yes, the right to express not o ^ y love for another person but a willingness to be leg d ly as well as morally responsible for his or her well-being. ^ The entire article is available at http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id= 16959& repository=000larticle. ^ On January 27, 2005, Focus o f the Family’s web site offered its own “pledge” . . . to slavery. The “Teens” section o f the web site featured an article by Susie Shellenberger that had been resurrected from FOF’s Breakaway magazine (which is aimed at male teens) and other FOF venues. On the family.org web site, the piece was titled “Bought, Branded, Bonded.” The promo read: “Slavery is a bad thing, unless you’re enslaved to Jesus. But what does it mean to be a slave to Jesus?” What it means is that since Yeshua o f Nazareth long ago departed this mortal plane, what Susie advocates is becoming a slave to the dogma o f the perverted form o f “Christianity” espoused by politically motivated “religious leaders” like Dobson and Sheldon. Think about it. “Jesus” is definitely not a name that comes to mind with “slavery,” even metaphorically. A “slave to Jesus” seems the quintessential oxymoron and a distortion o f what his philosophy taught before “religious leaders” distorted it to create stereotypes and myths that could be used as weapons o f mass destruction against anyone vriio chdlenged them. The Crusades. The Holy Inquisition. The genocide perpetrated by “Christians” against the peoples o f the N ew World. The Salem witch hunts. The horrors o f slavery. How many millions o f human beings have suffered and died as a result o f vriiat politically-motivated so-called “Christian” leaders claimed was “God’s Will”? ^ “About FRC” fi’om their web site, www.frc.org: “Believin