Dear church going people of Marshfield MO,

The news that started this rant

Why oh why do you have to make a fuss about stupid things? What is the point of petitioning a store to remove alcohol from it's shelves? Do you believe that by walking into the store you will be drawn to the isle with beer, somehow forced beyond your will to pick up a 6-pack, put it in your cart, purchase it, and then go home and consume it when you don't truly want to? No? That's not what you expect? Then why ask a store to take it off it's shelves when there are those that willingly choose to purchase and consume it?

God gave us all free will, the ability to chose for ourselves. What makes you so high and mighty that you need to take from us our GOD GIVEN RIGHT to make a choice? When did you surpass the knowledge of the Almighty? Please tell me when you were given power by the Alpha and Omega to take from His children the ability to make choices in our lives.

Now some may think that perhaps I am going a bit overboard. After all this is just one store in one town in one state....right now.

My fear is these are the same people who want to ban books from the library because they don't agree with the contents. After all if they can't stop themselves from buying the alcohol they don't want to drink how will they stop themselves from reading books they don't agree with? There are classics that have been banned from the libraries. Books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Blubber by Judy Blume, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. These have all been banned at some point or another. Simply because someone out there has a problem with some of the content and they want to take away the right others have to chose for themselves what they want to read and how they want to think.
“[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” — Judy Blume

These are the people who think that gay marriage will somehow destroy families. I'm sorry but how is providing gays (you know those people who don't sleep with the opposite sex anyway) the right to have a civil union in any way going to destroy families? They aren't going to have kids anyway, or they will adopt or have surrogate parents. Which they are able to do now but they don't have the support of the law. If a couple has been together for 25 years and one of them ends up, God forbid, in a coma and they aren't married the parents of the partner in the coma can refuse to let the other half even SEE them in the hospital. The person they have been in love with and living with for 25 years is shoved out of the hospital unceremoniously with no legal recourse simply because the law (and church goers) think that somehow this couple is going to ruin families. The parents of the half that's in a coma can make the decision to pull the plug without ever giving their partner the chance to say goodbye. Would ANY married person allow someone to pull the plug on their spouse without the option to say goodbye?

My main issue is these are baby steps. Our President has taken steps to push abstinence only instead of teaching the kids in school about safe sex. Yes abstinence is good IMO for those who aren't mature enough to make a real decision but just teaching abstinence isn't going to do any long term good. Child and teen pregnancies are going up. Girls are 6 times more likely to give blow jobs now and 4 times more likely to do anal. Let me tell you, there aren't many guys out there that will complain with those options.

When is it going to stop. When only books must be approved by a government/church appointed committee. When they confirm our fragile minds are capable of reading them without forming our own thoughts? When they ban abortion again? They are already taking baby steps there because after all if they can ban partial birth abortion it's just baby steps backwards for all of it. When they decide that this separation of church and state is just silly, after all if England can have a Church why can't America. And what about this whole immigrant issue. I mean I'll be damned if the country founded on immigrants is gonna let anymore in. Why that's just silly. This is America only Americans should live here. You know those white people who look "normal". After all differences just aren't to be tolerated. That's not what our country was founded on. We need to be good strong church going people with no choice in the matter...right?