February 23, 2012

It’s Time for You to go back in the Closet!

You – the collective you – have been pushing your radical agenda on average citizens for years now. You want your holidays, special rights and have relentlessly schemed to brainwash children. You want to have your way of thinking promoted in the classrooms of children as young as six years old. You whine constantly about being persecuted for your way of life, all the while trying to restrict the rights of those who are outside your circle.

I’m talking of course about the Christian right. For close to thirty years now, your tribe has been on the rise. It started with the Moral Majority (who everyone knows was neither), the election of Ronald Reagan and your very unfortunate first victory in removing Soap! from the airwaves. One of the best comedies ever on television, by the way. Because of the mainstreaming of your particular brand of crazy, we now have a male Church Lady, who publicly excoriates Satan for attacking America, doesn’t like people to have ready access to birth control - and is still taken seriously by his base. What century is this again? There were people like Santorum and his base before the latest rise of the Christian right, to be sure, but they were known and accepted as crazies by the mainstream. They didn’t have their own television station that had News in its moniker, and they weren’t given a place at the table during every serious debate. As bad as the Vietnam War was, Nixon never told anyone that Gog and Magog were at work and Biblical prophecies were unfolding.

This should go without saying, but just in case one gets the wrong impression. This in no way impugns the people who call themselves Christian and act Christ-like. Anyone would be highly taxed to find better group of people than those. This is only aimed at those who eschew logic and decency while exhibiting enough self-righteousness to bury the Gingrich Moon-State.

Your ideological brethren have been with us for well over a millennium. The actions were much more barbaric in earlier times, and your methods of punishment have certainly mellowed, but your thought processes have remained basically unchanged. You believe your freedom is not complete if you are not in control of others. For example, denying all the rights you have to open homosexuals, pushing your religion, and no one else’s, as a science, etc. Hypatia was killed and the Library of Alexandria was burned in 415 by Christian fanatics who were sure they were right and on the side of God. The Crusades were not started by secular humanists, and no open-minded, logical person ever instigated a witch burning. My point is it’s a matter of degrees, no matter how striking the difference in form. Your type of thinking has been an anchor on human progress throughout history, and we move forward as a race when you are seen and not heard.

Here I want to group you with others who are not technically part of the Christian right, although there is some overlap, with those who act cult-like in their beliefs. Whether it is a denial of climate change, belief in racial superiority, or nonsensical economic faith. Just recently Lou Dobbs, with no sense of shame, attacked a Doctor Seuss movie for not being sufficiently corporatist in its leanings. Also, a lawmaker too dumb to know better, Bob Morris of Indiana, went after the Girl Scouts for being pro-abortion, pro-homosexual and communist. With predictable results. Already a nutter has told a ten year old Girl Scout, “We don’t support Girl Scouts because they support abortion, which kills babies.” And with consistent regularity, scientists and science are attacked as power-hungry liars, manipulating mountains of evidence so they force their liberal ideas on freedom loving Americans. This type of thing would not happen, or would happen with less frequency if the Christian right were not so visible and vocal. ?

For brevity’s sake, hypocrisy will only be touched on. An entire ‘C’ drive could be filled if all the examples were mentioned. What happened to Jessica Ahlquist of Rhode Island is all too common. A teenaged girl noticed a publicly displayed prayer in her school and rightly challenged it. But as with most secularists, atheists or religious people smart enough to appreciate the division between church and state, she was attacked verbally by adults and community leaders and even had her life threatened by ‘good Christians.’ Enough already.

The Christian right has embarrassed the Republican Party, the country and thinking people everywhere. We like to think of ourselves as evolved creatures, and you’re making that very hard. With no sense of embarrassment, you bury the bar deeper with each mean spirited action. Please, go back in the closet and leave the rest of us alone. Maybe you should really ask yourself the next time you’re excusing torture or pushing for war. WWJD?