US attack on TV gay icon (Telegraph)

Last time I chceked, tolerance was a key plank of the Christian religion. So why is it a problem if SpongeBob Squarepants is spreading a message of tolerance of homosexuals? Kids are not going to magically ‘turn’ gay because their heroic Sponge is a bit camp.

And how did a cartoon Sponge that wears clothes and lives in a pineapple under the sea ever make such a big splash (pun intended) over the pond (I can’t help it) as to make our broadsheets? Do conservative American Christians really not have anything else they could be rallying against? Are there no bigger fish to fry (sorry)? Like ‘One nation, under God’ launching illegal and unjust wars? Or that their country is leading the world towards the destruction of God’s planet?

One of the biggest problems with America today is that they have confused Christianity and patriotism: Quite an acheivement for a country that fiercely defends the separation of Church and State. If you’re not Christian, then you’re anti-American, which is how much of America can justify attacks on Iraq. Surely the leader of a truly Christian nation would end all speeches with ‘Praise God in the highest’, or some other offering of praise, not a request that ‘God Bless America’, which inevitably and inextricably links politics and religion, and offers no pacification to a God that supposedly has the power to cause eternal pain. Frankly, if I believed in that God, I wouldn’t be able to conduct my daily life without fear, as everything I did would have to be out of obessive compulsion to please, or not offend, God. It would be impossible to conduct a normal life with such a belief. The only people who truly demonstrate such a belief are monks and nuns, who I respect highly.