Recently an event that I would like to call “Much Ado About Nothing”, or as Bill O’Reiley preferred to call it “The War on Christmas”, took place in Talk Radio Land and the Blogosphere. It was a story about how a majority group felt persecuted because a few governmental and private corporations decided to call the tree used to celebrate the Christmas holidays a ‘Holiday Tree’ instead of a ‘Christmas Tree’. Of course, the Christmas Tree has been deemed a secular symbol for as long as I can remember so I wonder where the persecution came in. However, now it’s Christianity’ turn to do the persecuting by determining that an airing of a South Park episode is an abomination and must be silenced.

Yes, you read me right, South Park. As far as I can tell there has only been one time that Comedy Central has decided to not air a South Park episode, that was after Christopher Reeve passed away and the episode that used him in a humorous satire was deemed inappropriate for further airing. It was not done because of pressure from external groups. However, there is a first time for everything it appears. Because of pressure from the Catholic League, who most likely doesn’t watch much South Park I imagine, the airing of ‘Bloody Mary’, the season 9 finale that originally aired a few weeks ago and was scheduled to be aired again on the evening of the 28th was pulled from the lineup unexpectedly.

I’ll leave the details of the Catholic League’s complaint out of this, it has very little to do with the subject in any regards. Here we have a group of people that spent a few weeks being hysterical that someone might not want to say the phrases Happy Christmas or Christmas Tree and instead use the words Happy Holidays and Holiday Tree, who now go out of their way to force a television show that uses over the top satirical portrayals of current culture to make us laugh and possibly shine a light onto some of our societal ills off of the air. Not only do they want the episode to never be shown on television any more, they are calling for the episode to be left off of any future DVD sales.

And this is not the only action by religious groups recently that causes me fear that for some reason they are in the majority in this country. Personally I would have thought that in this day and age we would be a bit more intelligent about believing in invisible omnipotent beings that know and see everything. But according to recent polling it appears that still a majority of the country is Christian in some way. Fine, everyone has a right to their beliefs. But no one has a right to push those beliefs on those who do not agree with them. And some of the following recent events are making it very clear that many religious groups just do not understand this basic principle.

Here’s an idea. If you want to believe in something, fine. I don’t care if you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Just don’t attempt to force me to believe in it as well. Don’t expect me to follow any rituals or rules of your faith and if something is aired on television or at the movies that is against your religion, DON’T WATCH IT. The minute you attempt to prevent anyone else from watching it, you’re crossing the line. And one day, I hope sooner than later, when Christianity is in the minority, we non-Christians might be able to live free from YOUR persecution of us.

Now I have to go out and purchase up my weekend supply of alcohol since it is ILLEGAL in the state of Indiana to purchase alcohol on Sunday.