Tyranny of the Christian Right

[kaygore]

This article is not only worth reading but should be shared with all our friends and neighbors who are complacent about the political climate created by the Christian right and the type nation that they would impose on us:

Tyranny of the Christian Right
By Michelle Goldberg, AlterNet
Posted on May 30, 2006, Printed on May 30, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/36640/

Whenever I talk about the growing power of the evangelical right with friends, they always ask the same question: What can we do? Usually I reply with a joke: Keep a bag packed and your passport current.

I don't really mean it, but my anxiety is genuine. It's one thing to have a government that shows contempt for civil liberties; America has survived such men before. It's quite another to have a mass movement -- the largest and most powerful mass movement in the nation -- rise up in opposition to the rights of its fellow citizens. The Constitution protects minorities, but that protection is not absolute; with a sufficiently sympathetic or apathetic majority, a tightly organized faction can get around it.

The mass movement I've described aims to supplant Enlightenment rationalism with what it calls the "Christian worldview." The phrase is based on the conviction that true Christianity must govern every aspect of public and private life, and that all -- government, science, history and culture -- must be understood according to the dictates of scripture. There are biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates, and only those with the right worldview can discern them. This is Christianity as a total ideology -- I call it Christian nationalism. It's an ideology adhered to by millions of Americans, some of whom are very powerful. It's what drives a great many of the fights over religion, science, sex and pluralism now dividing communities all over the country.

<snip>

In the coming years, we will probably see the curtailment of the civil rights that gay people, women and religious minorities have won in the last few decades. With two Bush appointees on the Supreme Court, abortion rights will be narrowed; if the president gets a third, it could mean the end of Roe v. Wade. Expect increasing drives to ban gay people from being adoptive or foster parents, as well as attempts to fire gay schoolteachers. Evangelical leaders are encouraging their flocks to be alert to signs of homosexuality in their kids, which will lead to a growing number of gay teenagers forced into "reparative therapy" designed to turn them straight. (Focus on the Family urges parents to consider seeking help for boys as young as five if they show a "tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.")

<snip>

http://www.alternet.org/story/36640/

[RoBear]

1. Didn't Dobson also suggest

that men shower with their boys so that they'd know what a mature penis looks like. I've lost location of this, but I know I read it somewhere. So get naked with your son, guys.

[kaygore]

2. Makes you wonder about Dobson's sexual orientation

There is no reason to be homophobic unless, of course, a person is afraid that he is a homosexual.

Rather than demonize being homosexual, these people should simply embrace it. There is nothing more natural!

[PublicWrath]

7. It's part of his nip it in the bud cure for homosexuality.....!!

http://www.family.org/docstudy/newsletters/a0021043.cfm

Meanwhile, the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

[madmusic]

3. Makes more sense when coupled with eugenics

1. abortion: white women should have more babies but they have the most abortions
2. immigration: the white gene pool is being diluted/overwhelmed.
3. crime: lock 'em all up and throw away the key to get them out of the gene pool
4. family values: the #1 responsibility is to raise white kids
5. God: America is the chosen country (as the Pilgrims thought)
6. secular society: doubt any of the above.

There are probably other big issues that would fit in here. View Bill O'Reilly with these in mind, and he makes sense.

[unpossibles]

4. on #3, perhaps the Death Penalty would be appropriate?

the pro-war thing fits too.

[madmusic]

6. And gay rights

Since they cannot produce children.

[madmusic]

8. And bleeding heart liberal programs

That help the weak survive.

All of this is history repeating itself.

[AX10]

5. kick

[Warpy]

9. Males will undoubtedly bear much of this buden, but

consider what they do to the girls: any sign of thought, any girl who raises her hand in a classroom, any girl who is athletic, any girl who dares to get good grades in math will likely bear the brunt of heavy handed pseudo Christian repression. They always go after the girls and women first, then turn their attention to any boy who might be expressing "girlish" traits.

Misogyny is the root of all of this, a deep and abiding hatred of women and by extension any male who may share the arbitrarily assigned traits of compassion, empathy, nurturance, and artistry.

[SidDithers]

10. Kicked and Recommended...

religion needs to stay out of government. I don't care if it's the Christian right or the religous left, government and politics must be secular.

Sid

[TheFriedPiper]

11. It's a money thing

Once people prove they can be sold a story about a virgin birth and a magic man in the sky, they are marked for easy sale of trickle down economics.

[B3Nut]

12. Hmm...this line could have described me:

"(Focus on the Family urges parents to consider seeking help for boys as young as five if they show a "tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.")"

I'm pretty emotional, am a musician and photographer (thus artistic), don't care for sports much, and never liked roughhousing, a characteristic that sometimes drove my dad almost to distraction. I guess that means I'm gay, according to the Ayatollah Dobsoni. I better tell my wife. :rofl: She finds their shenanigans about as hilarious as I do....

Hmm...tendency to cry easily...sounds like the Lord Jesus these freaks farcically pretend to worship. God forbid we be sensitive enough to mourn! I guess if you're empathic you can't be talked into killing people the ruling class wants dead.

Todd in Beerbratistan