Please, oh please, someone tell me if it is the politicians themselves that decide to make such awful statements to the public, or if it is the advisers working for them feeding bad advice.

Either way, the newest blunder by Rick Perry as he tilts at windmills on his quest to the office of the U.S. presidency have caused quite the stir.

Who in their right mind thought that a campaign video putting down our servicemen stuck on foreign soil over the holidays was good idea?

I can understand an attempt to solidify the Christian right as the Republican nomination draws near, but when the advertisement you put together knocks out many of the potential, and vital, votes from independents, well come on.

Looking past the vote-grabbing attempt, the actual message of the video is ridiculous.

The video begins with making gays in the military out to be something of an aberration. This is nothing new when it comes to the close-minded ideas of some though. What brings it out, is the implication that knowing someone is gay should be compared to Christmas and prayer.

Perry says that kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas. Where is that going on? The open celebration of Christmas isn’t being stopped by anyone.

Sure, some places are choosing not to allow Christmas decorations and gifts to appear during school hours, such as the Fort Worth Independent School District. But the kids aren’t being stopped from giving gifts and whatnot before and after school, they aren’t being stopped from talking about Christmas or even told Christmas is wrong.

The worry is about alienating the students that do not follow Christian beliefs. This might not have been a worry in the past, but times have changed, people are more diverse and you do not get to disrupt a learning environment for instances of free speech.

Besides that, school is supposed to be for education. And I don’t see how stopping class to have Santa Claus appear or exchanging gifts is getting students the knowledge necessary to succeed later in life.

But back to Perry and his moronic ad.

Next up Perry brings up an actual issue: prayer in school. Funny thing is, prayer is allowed in school. A student can pray if they want to. What a school cannot do is force others to pray or have what is termed “state-sponsored prayer.”

Schools can even have religious activities, provided they follow the Lemon test:

The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose; must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

But we will forgive Perry for not knowing some U.S. Supreme Court decisions, because it isn’t as if being the president involves understanding the law; oh, wait.

Perry then talks about Obama’s “war on religion.” What war Perry is referring to is something of a question, being as Obama is a religious man himself; a Christian the same as Perry, I might add.

Is Perry trying to imply that if he is elected president he will use Christian beliefs as the basis for America’s future?

Gosh golly, gee whiz, that sure would be swell to have us all follow the same, hey wait, wait a second, an established religion isn’t supposed to be a part of government.

The “faith” to which Perry says made America strong is alive and well and if there is any wavering of said faith, it isn’t because there are gays in the military serving openly. Oh, and faith isn’t necessarily a word for religious description, but understanding definitions of terms is not generally a strong suit when it comes to some of the current batch of Republican presidential hopefuls.

Now, I’m bashing Perry quite a bit here, and so are many other pundits and entertainers — Stephen Colbert’s “Pro Christmas Ad,” and “The Partisans: Rick Perry — Weak, man” — but sometimes you just have to fire away when people leave themselves so wide open.

He can be against homosexuality as much as he wants, but the majority of American people don’t care or are in support — with a dramatic increase from the youth that will control this country in the coming years having much more open minds — when it comes to being openly gay. Religious rigmarole isn’t going to be the deciding factor in the world to come; like it or not.

Perry is probably a good guy when it all comes down to it. He is probably the kind of guy you would sit down to shoot the breeze with at a cookout and have a few beers on a lazy summer afternoon with the ball game on.

But right now he is making a play at the biggest seat in the house, and either he has given in to some numbskull political advisers who will soon be out of work, or he isn’t yet on a level of understanding how to play the biggest political game there is.

Either way, you can count that man out for the coming rounds of the title match with Obama.