Sixth District blogger Bridget is known for her Bollywood Friday posts. Apparently, Don Wildmon of the hard-line far-right Dominionist American Family Ass. has grown jealous.

He recently sent out a breathless AFA Action Alert demanding (Demanding! I tell you) that the Senate ban a Hindu chaplain from offering the Senate invocation because… well, because Hindus ain’t Christian (and not just any brand o’ Christian — only the Wildmon version of ultra-conservative, hate-filled, ersatz “faith” which actually ignores much of Christ’s teachings will do). These AFA-types are the same people who call themselves “Christian” but actually hate Catholics so much that they believe they’re essentially a Satanic cult.

The AFA is the same organization which (among many) called for boycotts of Ford Motors, Disney and other blue-blooded American companies because they dared to actually market their products to … gay people. (Why does it often seem like some conservative partisans keep trying to make gay people just disappear if only they could recite bippity-boppity-BOO often enough? Maybe ‘cuz they actually do want exactly that.)

But enough of conservatives hating on gays. Let’s talk about conservatives hating on Hindus. Mr. Wildmon demands we Americans:

Send an email to your senator now, expressing your disappointment in the Senate decision to invite a Hindu to open the session with prayer.

On Thursday, a Hindu chaplain from Reno, Nevada, by the name of Rajan Zed is scheduled to deliver the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate. Zed tells the Las Vegas Sun that in his prayer he will likely include references to ancient Hindu scriptures, including Rig Veda, Upanishards, and Bhagavard-Gita. Historians believe it will be the first Hindu prayer ever read at the Senate since it was formed in 1789.

[...]

[Dominionist "historian" David] Barton says given the fact that Hindus are a tiny constituency of the American public, he questions the motivation of Senate leaders. “This is not a religion that has produced great things in the world,” he observes. “You look at India, you look at Nepal — there’s persecution going in both of those countries that is gendered by the religious belief that is present there, and Hindu dominates in both of those countries.”

I think the hundreds of millions of Hindus on the planet — let alone the many, many Hindus worshipping in America — would take great issue with the notion from this so-called “historian” that Hindus have not produced great things on this earth — whether culturally, scientifically, or socially.

And whether there are only 1.5 million Hindus in America or 150 million matters not. They are just as American as Mr. Barton and Mr. Wildmon. Hindus serve in our armed forces, our local police departments and are even elected to various offices throughout the country. Their kids go to school and play in the same playgrounds as everybody else.

Where’d Barton get his history degree? A Cracker Jack box? Probably, given this guy’s warped sense of American history also. He flat-out lies with this whopper:

“In Hindu, you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods,” the Christian historian explains. “And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about Creator — that’s not one that fits here because we don’t know which creator we’re talking about within the Hindu religion.” (emphasis added)

Bullshit. Mr. Barton might want to read up on our Founding Fathers, including one Mr. Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson actually had just such a thing “in mind” while helping to craft our nation’s bedrock documents, which define our ethos and our rights (from Hunter at Daily Kos):

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

– Thomas Jefferson, 1782

That is why we have Freedom of Religion in our great nation (or even Freedom from Religion for those atheist-Americans out there). Welcome to America, Misters Wildmon and Barton. All we ask is that you respect your neighbors, even if they worship twenty gods or no god. The alternative is something like what we saw in the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan.

And one more suggestion. Better watch out for Vishnu, Mr. Wildmon. Your pettiness and hatred may come back to bite you in the arse as more and more Americans come see you and your ilk for what you are.

As for reasonable Americans, we laugh at these people’s intolerance at our peril. Despite its radical reinterpretation of Christ’s teachings, the AFA claims a healthy number of members and their action alerts are referenced by a great many conservative partisan who, for some reason, fear gay Americans or the others that from time to time become the object of Mr. Wildmon’s unChristian venom. But this blatant prejudice should have no shelter in our land of the free.

Mr. Wildmon is free to practice his version of religion in whatever manner he prefers — just as Hindu Americans are also free to do. And Mr. Wildmon is also free to promote whatever sort of prejudice he enjoys — just as the rest of us are free to call him out for doing so.

The best defense against such vitriol is not to ignore it, but to instead point it out and call it what it is: hatred of their fellow Americans.