For centuries people claiming to have special insight into the mind of God have done irreparable harm to their fellow men.

In my lifetime Presbyterian ministers, elders, and devout members of my own congregation, worshipping in a Greek Revival temple of a church, next door to the "Last Capitol of the Confederacy," unashamedly cited scripture to justify racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws designed to enforce it.

When those laws were declared unconstitutional, many whined that their religious freedom was being taken from them, along with their rights to refuse service to anyone and keep black kids out of "their" schools.

We have nothing against black people, they complained, but the Bible is clear. It's all about God and Ham.

My father spent the first two years of his eldest son's life fighting a war and occupying a country whose government, army, bureaucracy, and millions of willing citizens, had systematically murdered 6 million people, the vast majority of them Jews.

We have nothing against Jews, per se, the Churches in Germany with rare exception claimed. But the Bible is clear. They murdered Christ. Their guilt is passed to the latest generation.

My father's mother spent a good part of her life unable to vote. She was a woman. A good woman, and a civic leader, but capable of voting, or becoming President. Nonsense.

We have nothing against women per se, opponents whined, but the Bible is clear. Jesus didn't have any female disciples. Paul made it clear that God believed women should go to church and serve, but keep their mouths shut while doing so.

The recent anti-gay legislation in Indiana and Arkansas follows in the same ugly mean-spirited narrow minded tradition.

Happily, most Americans . . . and, fortunately, most of the large corporations who depend on those Americans as customers . . . are having none of it.

Americans are free to believe and preach whatever they want, so long as in doing so does no harm to their fellow citizens. . . . and doesn't drive conventions out of state or make things embarrassing for retailers.

Just as the special insights into the mind of God that supported sexism, Jim Crow and the Holocaust and are now almost universally held in contempt, attempts to justify gay bashing under the guise of religious freedom have been overwhelmed by a combination of reason, personal experience, and economic pressure.

Religious freedom as a cover for prejudice: an old, weak argument, intellectually vacant, morally reprehensible, and happily more a part of our regretted pasts than our hopes for a just future.