New York Mosque Fight Demonstrates How Far Right Wants to Subvert the Constitution

I don't typically consider USA Today among the major editorial pages that I check out daily. However, today we received a copy of the newspaper at our hotel and the main editorial was 100% on target in its condemnation of the demagogues who want to strip Muslims of constitutional freedom of religion and bar the construction of the Muslim community center a few blocks from the former New York World Trade Center site. The Christianists and now sadly the leaders of the GOP (to the extent leaders can be discerned from the hate mongers and demagogues that predominate in the once respectable political party) increasingly don't even pretend to hide their desire to strip constitutional protections from all but themselves and put in place a quasi-fascist state where Christianists and white supremacists make the rules for all citizens. Their conduct both makes me sick and frightens me - the latter because too few in the public and political class are willing to call them out. Here are highlights from the USA Today main editorial:
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The argument over building a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero is mostly a sorry exercise in political exploitation. For all the attention the issue gets, there is no national decision to be made. New York, like other localities, regulates how land in the city is used, and even if it wanted to block the mosque, which it doesn't, finding a legal way to do so would be tough. The Constitution doesn't let governments treat one religion differently from another.
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Yet the controversy fired up again this weekend after President Obama first issued a ringing endorsement of religious freedom for Muslims — akin to those President Bush made after9/11 — but then retreated by saying he wasn't taking a side in the New York dispute.
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Republicans, seizing on the gaffe and antipathy about the mosque in polls, then sought to whip up a frenzy, giving lip service to religious freedom but offering no solution that wouldn't offend it. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been setting new lows for dialogue on this issue, even accused Obama of "pandering to radical Islam," as if any president would do such a thing.
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The proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero created a convenient rallying point for those who instead want to foment hatred, according to national Islamic leaders and academics who study Islam. Small groups, using books, blogs and all the powers of today's technology, have leapt at the chance to exploit the opposition to that mosque.
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The country needs leaders with a single, unambiguous message. Bush got it right six days after 9/11: "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam," he said, reminding those who threatened violence against Muslims: "That's not the America I know."
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Perhaps those seeking to build the New York mosque will defuse the situation by seeking a less controversial site. But if they do not, the mosque, like the calm that has prevailed since Sept. 11, 2001, will stand as a marker of the USA's enduring commitment to religious freedom.

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Personally, I don't really feel comfortable as a Democrat - especially in light of that party's broken campaign promises to LGBT Americans. On the other hand, with the GOP sinking to such disgusting demagoguery, I most certainly cannot let mightself be associated with racists, bigots, religious extremists and white supremacists who now make up the GOP base.