The Hypocrisy of "Family Values"

I have written about Frank Schaeffer before. He left the Christian Right in the mid 1980s after he "realized just how very anti-American they are." His father, Francis Sshaeffer was one of the founders, if you will, of the modern day Christian Right. As a result, Frank Schaeffer has seen the Christian Right up close and personally. He has a new book out entitled "Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway." Not surprisingly, the book is let us say less than kind to both the Protestant Christianists in America and the Roman Catholic Church. In a post on Huffington Post, Schaeffer looks at the Christianist dominated GOP and the Catholic Church hierarchy and concludes that they are the last people to be lecturing others on sexual morality - or morality in general. Here are some highlights:

Lurking in the heart of the religious communities who have taken over the Republican Party is a strange take on sex that keeps exploding into public view. The title of my new book Sex, Mom and God could have been Sex With Mom and God" because the sexual dysfunction that now IS the world of conservative religion is stunning. And these are the people who want to tell everyone else how to live.

Boccaccio's wonderfully ribald satire at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church's gross sexual hypocrisy is as apt today as ever.

And the Rick-Perry-Bring-America-Back-To-God-Evangelicals find themselves in the same mess, from the sexual-scandal-mired Evangelical leadership to the nefarious enablers like the so-called Family and its C Street enclave of congressional adulterers.

As I prove in my new book Sex, Mom and God, if there is one thing all Christians should have learned by now, it's that they -- of all people -- should never, ever cast aspersions on anyone else's sex life. For instance the gay community should be honored that the Evangelicals lie about and bash them. With enemies like the Religious Right you need no friends.

When it comes to pointing the finger, sexual "sin," the worldwide Christian community -- from the halls of the Vatican to some Evangelical "mega church" established in somebody's basement two minutes ago and now in a 50 thousand sq ft building -- is in the morally compromised position of a violent habitual rapist criticizing a shoplifter for stealing a candy bar.


We're talking not about "a few bad apples" but about them whole edifice of religion top to bottom.

An impartial inquiry into child abuse at Roman Catholic institutions in Ireland found that the top Church leaders knew that sexual abuse was endemic in boys and girls institutions. . . . . Physical and emotional abuse was a built-in deliberate feature of these "homes" for young men and women. The inquiry proved that child rape defines Irish Catholicism as surely as the sign of the cross once did.

And this is the church that "conservative" bishops and priests in the Anglican and Episcopal communions in the United States and the United Kingdom have since been joining in droves because the Roman Catholic Church has preserved "pure" doctrine that condemns homosexuality as a sin!

And the Evangelicals who have now taken over the Republican Party are cut from the same cloth. "Family Values" is a code for hate of gays and women and blacks, at least for the black in the White House. And the list of scandals I document in my new book is so long it is utterly damning.

Nevertheless the moralizing will ramp up as the people prodding their flocks to vote family values will still be standing there next to family values candidates telling us why God wants us to vote for Wall Street.

The book looks like it should make for great reading. It's always the self-congratulatory "Godly Christians" who seem to have the market cornered on hypocrisy.