Here’s the one thing that has been bothering me the most lately — and this has been bothering me even more than Bush’s blatent circumvention of Congress and the Constitution, so this is BIG: listening to otherwise sensitive, intelligent people broadly insult Christians and Christianity. This isn’t some knee-jerk, O’Reilly “war on Christianity” thing — my complaint is firmly reality based.

More and more often these days, I hear many of my better-informed friends say things about how “the Christians” elected Bush or how “the Christians” are pushing anti-woman social policies down our throats or how “the Christians” are pursuing the war on terror. I take this personally. I am a Christian — although I don’t really have the specifics of what I believe worked out and I increasingly suspect I never will — and I didn’t vote for Bush, I don’t support anti-woman social policies, and I’ve been against the war on terror since day 1. I’m pro-science, pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, pro-birth control, pro-child, pro-family and firmly, vehemently, passionately anti-Bush.

What makes this more hurtful is that the people who blame Christians for our current misguided government are very respectful of other religious traditions. They would never say that all Muslims are terrorists or that Jews are money-grubbing. But for some reason, they feel ok making broad, bigoted statements about “Christians” as if we were all of a type.

We aren’t, so stop it.