faith has brought comfort to very many lives. i have christian friends who are happy, intelligent, well-balanced and very loving. their faith seems to imbue them with understanding and a resilience to face the problems in their lives. but when faith inspires some people to want to rule the world in (their) God's name it makes the world a very unsafe place.

i was ignoring the US presidential election as usual - because its 'over there' and nothing to do with me. ok, george dubya is a moron - and a very dangerous one - but i kind of expected the american nation would finally return a democrat to the white house as they became war weary and concentrated on domestic issues. either clinton or obama would do. both seem fairly rational individuals. and senator mccain looked doomed. now though addition of sarah palin (unfortunately not, it seems, a relation of our own lovable globe-trotting python..) has caught my attention.

palin is a fundamentalist christian who believes in the teaching of creationism in schools;is pro-life (or anti-abortion if you prefer); loves shooting the creatures God put there to be shot at, and even tried to censor the books deposited in her local library because they offended here sensibilities. more seriously she believes the war against terrorism is a holy war - a crusade/jihad.

now we know how it works in the states; if mccain gets elected SP becomes VP. if the president gets killed or drops dead then the VP takes over - without an election. if america chooses another republican then this previously unknown governor of alaska is a heart beat from the oval office. she will then become the most powerful human being in the world. she is a major politician and she sent her son to fight in iraq where marines are being killed in their hundreds. would she give a flying fuck about the rest of us?

this may be controversial but i believe there is no place for faith in politics; blair's faith affected his judgement, bush is in hoc to the bible belt red necks who helped manipulate the last presidential race, and palin is almost worse than both of these. i respect an individual's right to believe in whatever God/s they wish: but i refuse to be governed by people who seek to impose religious belief on me. it is time to make religion a personal and not a public thing - we still have a law that excludes roman catholics from the monarchy, surely this should now be extended to exclude anyone expressing fundamentalist views (of any shade - including atheism) from ruling the country (or indeed the world)?