New York Times: What the G.O.P. Platform Represents

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I left the Republican Party years ago when conservative Christian religious views became so enmeshed in the party's positions that the concept of separation of church and state disappeared from GOP parlance.  And things have only gotten worse with time and the GOP platform in part now looks like a Christianist version of Sharia law that is to be forced on all Americans.  The irony, of course, is that the "godly Christians" in the GOP detest Muslims, yet act little better that Islamic extremists in terms of seeking to force religious beliefs on all citizens.  The GOP Party Platform being unveiled in the lead up to the GOP convention next week is a testament to how extreme a once respectable political party has become.  And not surprisingly, women and gays are two of the favored whipping boys.  The New York Times trashes the platform in a main editorial.  Here are excerpts:

Over the years, the major parties’ election-year platforms have been regarded as Kabuki theater scripts for convention week. The presidential candidates blithely ignored them or openly dismissed the most extreme planks with a knowing wink as merely a gesture to pacify the noisiest activists in the party.

That cannot be said of the draft of the Republican platform circulating ahead of the convention in Tampa, Fla. The Republican Party has moved so far to the right that the extreme is now the mainstream. The mean-spirited and intolerant platform represents the face of Republican politics in 2012. And unless he makes changes, it is the current face of the shape-shifting Mitt Romney. 

The draft document is more aggressive in its opposition to women’s reproductive rights and to gay rights than any in memory. It accuses President Obama and the federal judiciary of “an assault on the foundations of our society,” and calls for constitutional amendments banning both same-sex marriage and abortion. 

In defending one of the last vestiges of officially sanctioned discrimination — restrictions on the rights of gay men and lesbians to marry — the platform relies on the idea that marriage between one man and one woman has for thousands of years “been entrusted with the rearing of children and the transmission of cultural values.”  .  .  .  .  Studies purporting to show that children of lesbians are disadvantaged have been shown to be junk science. Marriages between people of the same gender pose no threat to marriages between men and women. 

In passages on abortion, the draft platform puts the party on the most extreme fringes of American opinion. It calls for a “human life amendment” and for legislation “to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” That would erase any right women have to make decisions about their health and their bodies. There are no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, and such laws could threaten even birth control. 

The draft platform also espouses the most extreme Republican views on taxation, national security, military spending and other issues. 

Over all, it is farther out on the party’s fringe than Mr. Romney ventured in the primaries, when he repudiated a career’s worth of centrist views on issues like abortion and gay marriage. But the planks hew closely to the views of his running mate, Paul Ryan, and the powerful right-wing.

As a one time GOP activist, I keep asking myself WTF happened.  Two words provide the answer: Christian Right.  The GOP has become an arm of the most toxic religious extremists in the nation.  As proof, one need look no further than Tony Perkins, the leader of a registered hate group, writing the portion of the platform addressing marriage.   It simply doesn't get more extreme than that.