For some time I, and many others have been subject to the rantings of the very lonny extreme of the christian right.
I find that most of these are people who have very little care for the message of Jesus Christ, the man we christians take our name from.
Instead they try to justify their rather absurd ideas with quotes from the bible.
Personally I find this hard to reconcile, as I have always found that the bible is a book which to me should read a guide for life, whether you want to believe in a great celisel being as GOD, is up to the individule, but I believe we can and do pretty much live by the basic teaching of christ.
As a child I was always taught by the Nuns at my school that there were ten commandments, and yes if understood are pretty fundamental rules by which we can live by, but they also told me that the most important messages came from JC, and were far simpler. Basically being that "Love thy neighbor as you would have them love you". To me this means treating all people with the same respect that you would expect tem to treat you with. I have found that most of the messages from Christ were pretty much along these lines, having respect fr human dignity, not getting too carried away with materialism, and so on.
Much of what is written in the bible is written as stories to allow people of different cultures how to reconcile themselves with the basic teaching of Christ.
However these days all to often these teaching are taken out of context and twisted to justify some twisted logic which justifies the treatment of those we do not understand.
I find that in most csess of religon people are hung up on ceromeny and The literal word, and very little attention to the simple messages of christ, after all Christ came among us to try and change the status quo of the time and try and lead us back to a path of treating people with dignity.
I also do not feel that people should be told that unless they spend their life in fear of a vengeful god, they will be damned to hell, having said this there are many people who do not believe in God who are in my opinon are far closer to Christ and being christian than many of those that fill the pews of many modern churchs.