It’s your right to come together
It’s your right to join and pray
It’s your right to go to Houston
To the Astrodome today

It’s your first amendment freedom;
Just remember, when you do,
That the same applies to others
When they’re criticizing you.

It’s my right to call you foolish
It’s my right to say you’re wrong
It’s my right to disagree with you
In poetry or song

You have every right to worship
You have every right to speak
But you do not have immunity
From secular critique

It’s your right to call me sinful
And to say I’m bound for hell
Just as long as every other voice
Can have their say as well

In the NYTimes, Op-Ed contributor Paul Horwitz writes “How to respond to Rick Perry and ‘The Response’“. It’s a nice piece, arguing that attempts to keep religion out of the public sphere are misguided. Not because religion has any sort of special privilege in guiding public officials, but because attempts to keep religion “private” come at too great a cost:

by trying to banish religion from the public sphere, Mr. Perry’s critics end up cutting themselves out of the debate. When religion is viewed as a fundamentally private matter, the natural corollary is to think that it is inappropriate to criticize someone’s faith.

We have also seen that those who do criticize faith matters are seen as militant, boorish, dicks.

This double standard needs to end. If religion can’t be forbidden in our public debates, even for elected officials, neither should it be immune from public criticism. And in the case of Mr. Perry and “The Response,” there are good reasons to be critical.

Horwitz focuses on The Response, but the message applies much more broadly.

I personally like it when public officials flaunt their religion in public. But then, satirical writing requires a diet rich in public stupidity.

On August 6, the nation will come together at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas for a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting and faith.

Now, I know everything’s bigger in Texas, but that has got to be one hell of a stadium if the entire nation is going to come together there. Is this gonna be another one of those Noah miracles? How is “the nation” going to fit into the Astrodome? (Source: The Response. Seriously, take a look. People who know how to use the internet are planning on fasting and praying to save the country.)

We must gather Real Americans—
We’re putting out the call—
It’s time to come to Texas,
Come to Houston, one and all!
It’s the chance to save our nation;
It’s the righteous thing to do

Just a minute, buster—who invited you?

In this time of moral crisis
We must pray in Jesus’ name
And it wouldn’t do to gather
With the ones we’re going to blame
We will gather in humility
In just a couple days

But I don’t intend on welcoming the gays.

We will offer our repentance,
Asking God to intervene
In the greatest moral crisis
That our country’s ever seen
We will humbly bow before Him,
Those who answer when we call

But let’s not include the atheists at all.

We need answers to our problems,
And who would better know
Than an ancient Jewish prophet
From two thousand years ago?
There is wisdom in the Bible
And it’s wisdom we can use

But I don’t expect to see a lot of Jews.

It’s a prayer to save the nation
It’s a prayer for all of us
Only fifteen bucks for parking
There’s a place to put your bus
Come and join in prayer with us
At the Reliant Astrodome

But you Muslims maybe better stay at home.

Though we’re “non-denominational”
We’re Christian and we’re proud
You might even see a Catholic
Or a Mormon in the crowd
Evangelicals a-plenty
Other groups in small amounts

In other words, it’s everyone who counts

Once we winnow out the heathens,
The apostates, and the wrong
And we keep it to the people
Who we know will get along
We’ll have elbow-room aplenty
At the new Reliant Park

Maybe this is how they did it with the Ark.