The Real Agenda of Critics of "Government Schools"

Another area where Donald Trump is delivering on promises to Christofascists is in the area of public education.  His appointee as Secretary of Education, Betsy De Vos, has a long, long history of working to gut funding for public schools - as well as well documented support for anti-LGBT hate groups - is now striving to divert public education funding to "charter schools" notwithstanding the spotty record of such schools when it comes to actually improving education. If one looks at the history of such schools and especially their largest cheerleaders, one finds that beneath the supposed libertarian is a Christian extremist and/or white supremacist.  In Virginia, the "Massive Resistance" movement was powered by Christian fundamentalists who set up private "Christian academies" rather than have their children attend integrated schools.  Sadly, that mindset is alive and well decades later. In addition, the secular nature of public schools is viewed as a threat by the "godly folk" who view true science and knowledge as a threat to the made up world view.  A piece looks at the agenda of De Vos and those like here who are being abetted by Der Trumpenführer, who wants to divert $9 billion from public schools to charter schools.  Here are excerpts:

When President Trump recently proposed his budget for “school choice,” which would cut more than $9 billion in overall education spending but put more resources into charter schools and voucher programs, he promised to take a sledgehammer to what he has called “failing government schools.”

[I]n certain conservative circles, the phrase “government schools” has become as ubiquitous as it is contemptuous.

What most people probably hear in this is the unmistakable refrain of American libertarianism, for which all government is big and bad. The point of calling public schools “government schools” is to conjure the specter of pathologically inefficient, power-mad bureaucrats.

Accordingly, right-wing think tanks like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Heartland Institute and the Acton Institute have in recent years published screeds denouncing “the command and control mentality” of “government schools” that are “prisons for poor children.” All of these have received major funding from the family of the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, either directly or via a donor group. But the attacks on “government schools” have a much older, darker heritage. They have their roots in American slavery, Jim Crow-era segregation, anti-Catholic sentiment and a particular form of Christian fundamentalism — and those roots are still visible today. Before the Civil War, the South was largely free of public schools. That changed during Reconstruction, and when it did, a former Confederate Army chaplain and a leader of the Southern Presbyterian Church, Robert Lewis Dabney, was not happy about it. An avid defender of the biblical “righteousness” of slavery, Dabney railed against the new public schools. In the 1870s, he inveighed against the unrighteousness of taxing his “oppressed” white brethren to provide “pretended education to the brats of black paupers.” For Dabney, the root of the evil in “the Yankee theory of popular state education” was democratic government itself, which interfered with the liberty of the slaver South. One of the first usages of the phrase “government schools” occurs in the work of an avid admirer of Dabney’s, the Presbyterian theologian A. A. Hodge. Less concerned with black paupers than with immigrant papist hordes, Hodge decided that the problem lay with public schools’ secular culture. In 1887, he published an influential essay painting “government schools” as “the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of antisocial nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.” Calvinist theologian Rousas J. Rushdoony. An admirer, too, of both Hodge and Dabney, Rushdoony began to advocate a return to “biblical” law in America, or “theonomy,” in which power would rest only on a spiritual aristocracy with a direct line to God — and a clear understanding of God’s libertarian economic vision.

Rushdoony took the attack on modern democratic government right to the schoolhouse door. His 1963 book, “The Messianic Character of American Education,” argued that the “government school” represented “primitivism” and “chaos.” Public education, he said, “basically trains women to be men” and “has leveled its guns at God and family.”

The critique of “government schools” passed through a defining moment in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, when orders to desegregate schools in the South encountered heavy resistance from white Americans. Some districts shut down public schools altogether; others promoted private “segregation academies” for whites, often with religious programming, to be subsidized with tuition grants and voucher schemes. Among the supporters of the Trump administration, the rhetoric of “government schools” has less to do with economic libertarianism than with religious fundamentalism. It is about the empowerment of a rearmed Christian right by the election of a man whom the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. calls evangelicals’ “dream president.” We owe the new currency of the phrase to the likes of Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council — also bankrolled in its early years by the DeVos family — who, in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing same-sex marriage, accused “government schools” of indoctrinating students “in immoral sexuality.” When these people talk about “government schools,” they want you to think of an alien force, and not an expression of democratic purpose. And when they say “freedom,” they mean freedom from democracy itself.

As I have noted a number of times, about the only area in which Trump is keeping his promises in the area of forwarding the Christian fundamentalist/white supremacist agenda.  Be very afraid.  

Trump's Transgender Military Ban is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" All Over Again.

Among the countless disgusting things that Donald Trump has done is to make a pact with Christofascists and evangelical Christians whereby in exchange for their support, he would reignite the culture wars against LGBT Americans. Sadly, keeping his promises to these hate merchants has been one of the few campaign promises Trump has kept.  The sudden diktat this week that transgender troops are unwelcome in the U.S. military is but one example of this poisonous alliance. Another is Jeff Sessions' filing of an amicus brief in a civil lawsuit where the government is not a party to argue that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 affords no protections to LGBT citizens. Yet another cloud over LGBT Americans exists in the form of the pending bill in Congress which would grant Christian extremists the right to discriminate at will against LGBT individuals in accommodations, services and even medical treatment if they cited religious belief as the motivation for their bigoted actions.  A column in U.S. News and World Reports looks at this slide back towards hate and bigotry. Here are excerpts:

It was with a familiar sickness of heart that I watched as President Donald Trump launched an all-out assault on the LGBTQ community and active duty service members by tweeting that he is reinstating a transgender military service ban. You see, I've been there. . . . . I was discharged because I am gay. I still mourn the loss of the career I had aimed for, serving the country I love.

Sadly, Trump's heinous and disgusting action – which could lead to the discharge of as many as 15,000 transgender Americans serving our country at this critical time – is "don't ask, don't tell" all over again. Trump's nakedly political aim to isolate, target and discriminate against transgender troops courageously serving our country has, in a few hundred Twitter characters, threatened to return us to a deeply shameful policy that weakens our military. Discharging thousands of highly trained and talented troops just because of their gender identity would be unconscionable.

I was just out of college when I decided to enlist, after the tragic events of Sept. 11. Though I was proud to honorably serve my country in the U.S. Marine Corps, after re-enlisting for another four years, I knew I could no longer go on pretending I wasn't gay.

I wanted to continue to serve, but the law said I was suddenly unfit for duty, simply because of who I am. A huge burden was lifted off of my family's shoulders when "don't ask, don't tell" was finally repealed under President Barack Obama, allowing my Marine husband to keep his distinguished career. He's now serving a year-long deployment in one of the world's most dangerous areas.

All of our brave troops – including my husband, who is currently serving in harm's way – are counting on us to have their backs, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Instead, since the day he set foot in the White House, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have appointed anti-LGBTQ extremists across the government and sought to roll back our rights at every turn. It's bad enough that Trump and Pence oppose marriage equality, that they endorse license to discriminate laws, that they defend anti-LGBTQ measures like North Carolina's HB2, that they appoint anti-equality justices and that they campaign with anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

It is a new low to target thousands upon thousands of actively serving transgender members of the U.S. military, and impugn the honor of tens of thousands more who have served with valor and distinction — including more than 134,000 transgender veterans who are alive today. This attack undermines military readiness and harms the military's ability to recruit and retain the best and the brightest, regardless of their gender identity.

We enlist and commission to protect our most fundamental values: freedom, justice, equality under the law. It is an outrageous tragedy that our commander in chief has decreed transgender troops – who are fighting for those ideals we all share – should be treated so shamefully.

Trump and Pence are hardly the only anti-LGBT Republicans in Washington.  In the northern portions of  Hampton Roads Congressman Rob Wittman - a man who the best I can tell never served in the military himself - is supporting the ban on the pretext that the military needs to save money (this is a portion of a statement I secured from Wittman's extremely nasty press person): 

Rep. Wittman voted in support of an amendment offered by Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri that would have prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy for members of the U.S. military. Mr. Wittman's belief is that the job of the U.S military is to fight and win our nation’s wars but that the current, ill-conceived, transgender policy will most likely lead to increased costs, decreased readiness, and decreased lethality.

Naturally, Wittman has no problem with the fact that the military spends ten times as much money on Viagra prescriptions than it does for transgender health service.  And, of course, he has no problem with the millions wasted every weekend when Trump travels to Florida or one of his golf resorts at taxpayer expense.  Hmm . . .  why do I think of the word hypocrite? 

Don't get me started on "friends" who voted for this toxic regime.

GOP Bills in Arkansas Would Make It "Illegal to be Transgender"

With all the serious and pressing issues facing states and the nation, one would think that Republicans would have more important things to do than continue their anti-transgender jihad.  But that assumption would be wrong in many states - including Virginia, home of Side Show Bob Marshall - but especially so in Arkansas where pending GOP bills would make being transgender more or less illegal and set individuals up for fines and jail time.  Can't you just feel the "Christian love" behind these bills introduced to pander to Christofascists?  A piece in Salon looks at the anti-transgender animus at work.  Here are excerpts:

The clock is ticking on a trio of bills that LGBT advocates in Arkansas claim would make it effectively “illegal to be transgender” in the state.

Republicans have until March 31, which marks the end of the 2017 legislative session, to pass House Bill 1986, Senate Bill 774 and House Bill 1894 before these proposals are tabled for the year. SB 774, known as the Arkansas Physical Privacy and Safety Act, is similar to North Carolina’s controversial HB 2. It forces trans people in the state to use public restrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificate when entering government buildings and other entities owned by the state. That legislation is currently awaiting a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That bill has been opposed by the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has warned that legalizing discrimination could trigger massive economic backlash in the state. After passing HB 2 exactly a year ago, North Carolina has lost an estimated $600 million in revenue . . .

The bathroom bill, though, is just the tip of the iceberg. Further legislation being pushed by conservative lawmakers threatens to target trans individuals by making it extraordinarily difficult to be in public at all.

Often referred to as the “bathroom bill lite,” HB 1986 actually goes further than the Physical Privacy and Safety Act by allowing individuals to bring charges against trans people for “indecent exposure.” Such actions are already a crime under Arkansas law, but HB 1986 would expand existing law on the subject. The bill defines indecent exposure as an instance in which an individual “knowingly exposes his or her sex organs to a person of the opposite biological sex: (A) In a public place or in public view; or (B) Under circumstances in which the person could reasonably believe the conduct is likely to cause affront or alarm.”

“If a transgender man has top surgery, his chest could be viewed as a sexual organ, according to the the language used on the bill. Anywhere his chest is in public view — like at a public pool or going to a spa — he could be in violation of the law and be arrested.”

Under HB 1986, trans people could face a hefty fine, as well as jail time, if another individual feels that the alleged assailant has exposed themselves in a way that would cause “affront or alarm.” If convicted of indecent exposure, transgender folks in the state would be subjected to a $2,500 penalty, in addition to a maximum sentence of a year in prison.

A third anti-trans bill has been reintroduced after being voted down by the House Committee on Public Health, Welfare, and Labor earlier this month. HB 1894 would bar transgender people from amending their birth certificates to match their gender identity. “If I decided I don’t want to be white, well, do I get to pick my race?” asked Representative Mickey Gates, who authored the legislation, . . .

Should this bill become the law of the land, it would be next to impossible for any trans person in Arkansas to escape the aforementioned cycle of legal harassment and criminalization. Gwen Fry, president of the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition, argued that these bills are an attempt to “legislate the trans community out of existence.”

Anti-Gay Laws Lead to Financial Woes for LGBT People

A new report confirms what many of us in the LGBT community have know for some time: anti-LGBT laws result in harm to LGBT individuals.  The Christofascists may claim that the don't "hate" gays but the consequences of their anti-gay animus motivated laws tell a far different story.  Anti-gay laws have ALWAYS been about harming gays and punishing us for not embracing the sick, neurotic religious beliefs of the Christofascists.  A new report by the Center for American Progress and the pro-LGBT Movement Advancement Project reveal the harm done by laws backed by the "godly Christian" crowd.  Here are some highlights from NBC News:

Shortly after her wife died in March, Arlene Goldberg had to give up the beloved South Florida home that the couple shared. Because Goldberg’s 2011 marriage to her partner of 47 years wasn’t recognized as legal in Florida, she was denied her wife’s social security benefits. 

Without that income, Goldberg, 67, couldn’t pay her mortgage. “I’m trying to figure out how I am going to get through this time,” she said from Fort Myers, Florida. “I really can’t even pay my bills.”

Goldberg is among an untold number of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people nationwide who suffer economic distress and in some cases, poverty, as a result of anti-gay laws such as same-sex marriage bans, or from a lack of legal protections, like non-discrimination ordinances, according to a new report by two think tanks, the progressive Center for American Progress and the pro-LGBT Movement Advancement Project. 

 

Census data and other research over the last decade have shown higher rates of financial hardship and poverty among gays. But the report’s authors make the connection between those difficulties and specific laws and policies by analyzing current incomes and poverty rates for LGBT people and their heterosexual counterparts in states that have protections and those that don’t. 

“You’ve got all of these laws that have indisputable economic impact,” said Ineke Mushovic, executive director of MAP. “In all these states that have the bad laws we actually are seeing lower incomes and higher rates of poverty (for gays) that is disproportionate to what’s happening with their heterosexual peer comparison.”

Key findings from the report, “Paying an Unfair Price,” include: 

- Same-sex couples raising children made about $10,000 less a year than their heterosexual peers in states banning same-sex marriage, whereas incomes for the two groups were almost at parity in states allowing gay nuptials, according to analysis of 2012 U.S. Census data. 

- Lesbian couples suffer a double financial hit due to their sexual orientation and the gender wage gap: In 2010, 7.6 percent of lesbian couples were poor compared to 5.7 percent of heterosexual couples and 4.3 percent of gay couples. 

- A study of transgender Americans revealed they were nearly four times more likely to have a household income under $10,000 per year than the overall population (15 percent versus 4 percent). 

-- And 29 percent of gay adults earlier this year said they were thriving financially, compared to 39 percent of heterosexual adults.

“When you’re thinking about anti-LGBT laws, people don’t really understand the real consequences that has on people’s survival, their ability to put food on the table, the ability to pay the rent.” 

Mushovic said the marriage bans and lack of legal protections needed to be viewed as a package, because of how they interacted to trigger a series of financial difficulties. For example, no marriage recognition generally means no shared health insurance for gay couples.

Some of the financial assistance that can be denied gays in states without same-sex marriage includes spousal, veteran and disability benefits, survivor’s pension and the ability to file joint taxes or claim a family tax credit. The denial of such resources hurts the most vulnerable, such as families, older adults and those already struggling financially, Mushovic said.

There's more.  Read the entire piece.  The take away is that Christofascists (and their political whores in the GOP) hate gays regardless of their lip service about "loving the sinner."  Worse yet, they hate the children of gays and continue to back laws that harm our children. 

Christofascists and GOP Suffer Double Loss in 10th Circuit and Indiana Rulings.

First gay marriage in Indiana

In the wake of its pathetic "March for Marriage" the National organization for Marriage ("NOM") and similar gay haters suffered double losses as the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld the District Court rulings that struck down the gay marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma (the opinion is here).  Meanwhile, a U.S. District Court struck down the gay marriage ban in Indiana.  The momentum truly seems to be building for either the U.S. Supreme Court to (i)  refuse to hear the almost guaranteed appeal from the 10th Circuit decision and thereby make same sex marriage across the 10th Circuit, or (ii) the take the appeal and strike down gay marriage bans nationwide.  In the wake of the DOMA ruling last year, the rapidly growing support for gay marriage and the plethora of lower court rulings striking down gay marriage bans, it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that the Supreme Court would uphold such bands.   First here are highlights from Think Progress:

In the first federal appellate level consideration of same-sex marriage since the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act last year, the 10th Circuit has agreed with the lower court that Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 decision, the panel ruled that the Constitution guarantees that “those who wish to marry a person of the same sex are entitled to exercise the same fundamental right as it is recognized by persons who wish to marry a person of the opposite sex.”

The ruling was immediately stayed, recognizing that the Supreme Court had stayed the district court’s original ruling earlier this year.

The majority of the panel rejected the state’s arguments that marriage must be linked to procreation: “Appellants’ assertion that the right to marry is fundamental because it is linked to procreation is further undermined by the fact that individuals have a fundamental right to choose against reproduction.” They were also not persuaded by claims that the inherent definition of marriage demanded unions between a man and a woman, because “nothing logically or physically precludes same-sex couples from marrying, as is amply demonstrated by the fact that many states now permit such marriages.”

“Plaintiffs in this case have convinced us that Amendment 3 violates their fundamental right to marry and to have their marriages recognized,” they wrote. “We may not deny them relief based on a mere preference that their arguments be settled elsewhere. Nor may we defer to majority will in dealing with matters so central to personal autonomy. The protection and exercise of fundamental rights are not matters for opinion polls or the ballot box.”

 Meanwhile, the Indianapolis Star reports on the demise of the Indiana gay marriage ban:

A federal judge struck down Indiana's ban on same-sex marriages Wednesday, leaving state officials, lawmakers, social conservatives, gay rights supporters and legal experts scrambling to sort out exactly what the decision means — and what will happen next.

But for the hundreds of gay and lesbian couples who rushed to courthouses across the state for impromptu weddings, the judge's words meant something simple, yet significant: They could finally be married in Indiana.

The monumental ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Young said Indiana's law that limits marriage to one man and one woman, and that denies recognition of same-sex marriages legally performed in other states, is unconstitutional. It mirrored more than a dozen recent federal court opinions that have struck down same-sex marriage bans in other states.

"In less than a year," Young wrote in his opinion, "every federal district court to consider the issue has reached the same conclusion in thoughtful and thorough opinions — laws prohibiting the celebration and recognition of same-sex marriages are unconstitutional."

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller's staff quickly filed a notice of appeal and an emergency request for a stay of Young's order, which could halt same-sex marriages pending outcome of an appeal. The motion for a stay, according to spokesman Bryan Corbin, which has been granted in other jurisdictions, "is intended to prevent confusion and inconsistency between county clerk's offices regarding license issuance, while the appeal is pending."

But opponents of same-sex marriage viewed the ruling as yet another attack on traditional marriage.

"It's a disappointing but not unexpected ruling," said Curt Smith, president of the Indiana Family Institute. "We are deeply disappointed at the lack of respect for Indiana statute and our legislature. ... It is very distressing to see that marriage licenses are being issued and that presumably marriages will be performed in the near future on couples that are not authorized under state law."

Just minutes after Young's ruling was released, Marion County Clerk Beth White began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples and conducted what was likely the state's first such wedding — the spur-of-the-moment union of Craig Bowen and Jake Miller of Indianapolis.

 The Christofascists are on the wrong side of history just as they were on desegregation and interracial marriage.  One would think that they would learn from history, but when the open embrace of ignorance, hate and bigotry are applauded, I guess that is too much to expect or hope for.

Christofascists and Noah - A case Study in Batshitery

The "godly folk" never cease to give examples of their lunacy and extreme need to cling to mythical writings found within the Old Testament.  Never mind that the authors of the myths are unknown and had a level of knowledge of science and the universe lower than that of most middle school students nowadays.  Indoctrination - and I believe psychological problems - make it absolutely essential to these folks that nothing be allowed to challenge the fantasy world in which they live.   One of the latest targets of their wrath is the movie Noah which is being condemned for not being sufficiently "biblical."  It goes without saying that most of the hyperventilating "godly folk" do not know that the story of Noah is either (i) a complete myth or (ii) a regurgitation of older flood myths.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the possible real basis for the Noah myth.  Here are excerpts:

Noah did its job. It brought an ancient biblical story about a cataclysmic flood to life for audiences today. Was it biblical? Was it the least biblical Bible movie ever made? These questions flare up in what is frankly a flat and over-rehearsed debate about the Bible in American life. Honestly, does it matter whether a movie is biblical? Do the spiritual-but-not-religious care? Do those evangelicals who grow tired of the stereotype made of them in the media care? Do secular liberals who have no use for the Bible really care about these questions?

Long before the Bible was written, The Flood was a blockbuster of the ancient Mesopotamian and Mediterranean worlds. It originated in Sumer over 4000 years ago. New versions were  deposited in the greatest imperial libraries of the Mesopotamian empires (Babylonia and Assyria). The Biblical authors fashioned their own versions of the tale, and post-biblical authors continued to ruminate on its potential for meaning-making. The Flood found its proper place in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and flood stories crop up in Hindu, American Indian, and African story-telling as well.

The first known flood story comes from Sumer in the tale of Atra-hasis (19^th century, BCE). This story sets the basic elements of the ancient genre: gods try to eradicate humanity, while a flood hero builds a boat to save the animals. A tragicomedy about polytheism starring petty gods who complain like tired parents annoyed by their noisy children. With plans to destroy a boisterous humanity, they are thwarted not once but three times by the flood hero’s personal god and eminent trickster, Enki. With each divine attempt at total genocide, Enki gives the flood hero secret knowledge about which god to appease with a sacrifice. This worked against the first two rounds of disease and drought. However, Enki had to get creative for the third and final attempt. For the deluge, Enki instructs the flood hero to build a boat for family and fauna.

[T]he Epic of Gilgamesh shines a light on the flood hero’s excruciating experience. Dated somewhere between 1200-900 BCE, the Mesopotamian epic says little about the divine drama. We only hear that “the hearts of the gods were moved to inflict the flood.” The rest of the tale focuses on the flood hero, who builds an ark in a brave abandonment of his wealth: “tear down the house and build a boat; abandon wealth and seek living beings; spurn possessions and keep alive living beings.” He not only rescues his family and the animals from the deluge, he saves his workers, the craftsmen, who helped him build his boat. The moral suppleness of the flood hero crescendos with his first reaction to the post-flood world. Stepping into a sun beam, looking out the window of his ark, he sees that all humanity returned to clay, and with tears streaming down the lines of his face, he slumps down weeping.  

The biblical account owes much to the Gilgamesh version . . . While Islamic tradition focuses on the character of Noah, the Genesis Flood is entirely about God, about a new monotheistic construal of both divine judgment and the pro-human reversal of that judgment. 

The biblical Flood emphasizes the unique role humans played in corrupting the earth. In contrast, the post-biblical tradition of Enochic Judaism lays blame on a human civilization that was corrupted by supernatural forces. Society is shot through with war, industry, and vainglory, all of which were taught by fallen angels.

If the story of Enoch’s Watchers cleanses society, the Hindu flood myth cleanses the mind. The ancient Hindu scriptures emphasize a novel feature of The Flood: enlightenment. In the Mahabharata (and later in the Puranas), the flood hero rides out the deluge in a boat with animals just like Noah.

One has to wonder how many of the cretins and spittle flecked preachers understand that the story of The Flood in the Bible is really just a recycled pagan story.  As noted above, I truly cannot grasp the mindset of these folks who are so terrified of having to think and understand that there is uncertainty in life and in the world that cling to an invisible friend in the sky that, if a creator of the universe exists, bears no resemblance to reality.  Once upon a time such ignorance could be excused given the lack of education and scientific knowledge.  But in today's world this mindset represents nothing less than the deliberate embrace of ignorance.

Washington Post: More Hard Work and Advances in Gay Marriage Needed

With numerous lawsuits pending in multiple states seeking to strike down gay marriage bans - two such suits are pending in Virginia - the Washington Post editorial board weighs in arguing that more advances are needed.  The editorial notes that further progress cannot be taken for granted - a very true statement given the hate and animus that motivates the Christofascist base of the Republican Party that continues to demand GOP support for every law and constitutional amendment that demeans gays and reduces us to a lesser level of citizenship.  Here are editorial highlights:

ONLY A DECADE ago, the events of recent days would have been unimaginable. President Obama announced that, instead of attending the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, he would send an official delegation that will conspicuously include openly gay U.S. athletes — a clear protest of Russian discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. New Mexico’s Supreme Court declared the state’s prohibition of same-sex unions unconstitutional. Then a federal judge threw out Utah’s same-sex marriage ban.

We are coming to the end of a second banner year for gay and lesbian equality. Indeed, after the heady victories of 2012 and 2013, continuing progress might seem as inevitable as it did impossible a few years ago. But further progress can’t be taken for granted. LGBT people, and their friends and loved ones, are reaping the rewards of decades of hard work in the face of persistent discrimination. The need for such hard work isn’t over.

In June, the Supreme Court struck down the most odious parts of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which barred federal benefits to same-sex couples, and the justices ruled against Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex unions in California. The court did not proclaim same-sex marriage to be a constitutional right. But its decisions have informed many other legal proceedings that will likely bring the question before the court again in a couple of years. The Utah case is one of those. Encouraged by the Supreme Court rulings, meanwhile, more and more state and local officials are arguing that same-sex marriage restrictions in their jurisdictions violate the federal Constitution.

Yet, save the late addition of Utah, where the fate of the judicial decree remains uncertain, every state in which same-sex marriage or civil unions are legal voted for President Obama in the past two elections. That’s also true of most of the states on gay rights campaigners’ target lists for the next few years.

In other words, it’s still unclear whether the wave of equality that has swept from state to state over the past two years is national or regional, bound to crash ineffectually on more conservative parts of the country. The Supreme Court stopped short of declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right — which is the logical and moral outcome — in large part because a more ambitious ruling might provoke a nasty and counterproductive backlash.

Meanwhile, Congress has yet to guarantee workplace equality. And countries from Russia to Uganda to India to Australia went backward in their stances on gay rights this year. 

We should celebrate that millions of Americans, including President Obama, are “evolving” on this issue. But further progress can’t be assumed. In 2014, as in every prior year, the fight for equality will take hard organizing and patient persuasion.

The Battle for the Future of the GOP

A column in the Washington Post speculates on the future of the Republican Party and contemplates two different scenarios over the next 2+ years.  In the process, the author - a conservative who I generally disagree with - provides a surprisingly apt description of the agenda of the Christofacists and their Tea Party first cousins.  The description isn't pretty, but then again, sometimes the truth isn't pretty.  How the future plays out will depend on whether there are enough sane Republicans to defeat the saboteurs and extremist of the Christofascists/Tea Party.  The cynical part of me hopes that the Christofascists/Tea Party element win because it will expedite the death of the GOP - the only thing in my view that will serve to marginalize these less than nice people most effectively.  Here are column highlights:

One can see how the interests of mainstream and tea party conservatives collide and why, for example, the recent budget deal was a threat to the latter. The enemy (not of conservatism) but of the right wingers who depend on controversy, resentment and defeat is center-right governance. Functional government of the center-right saps the interest in throwing the “traitors” out. It discourages primaries from the right. It dulls the interest of donors.

It is important to distinguish here between conservatives who largely embrace the modern Reagan and post-Reagan agenda (best exemplified these days by GOP governors) and right wingers, those whose volume is always turned to high, see politics as all-or-nothing, want to take the country back to the pre-New Deal or even pre-Progressive era, and aim to freeze the United States demographically by keeping immigrants out and socially by refusing to accept changed beliefs on topics like gay marriage. The entities and politicians (the Heritage Action, angry talk radio, Sen. Ted Cruz crowd) that populate the second group flourish when the GOP is in the minority, so defeat is their ally.

[T]here is another scenario, maybe less likely but certainly possible over the next few years:

•  The budget deal passes the Senate with no Republicans;
•  Immigration reform never passes the House and nothing is agreed upon with the Senate;
•  In 2014 the House GOP lead stays the same or shrinks;
•  Some Senate incumbents defeat their right-wing challengers, but others do not and the GOP doesn’t take the Senate;
•  No bargains are struck for the remainder of the Obama term; and
•  One or more tea party favorites runs in 2016, one wins the nomination and loses decisively to Hillary Clinton while the GOP House majority is lost as well.

In that case we return to an era of Democratic rule and the GOP becomes a marginal player on the national scene. It is impossible, I would suggest, for the country to be governed mostly, let alone entirely, by the GOP if the tea party contingent triumphs within the GOP. The people who brought us the shutdown do not reflect the desires, outlook and views of a majority of the country. When presented with that alternative, the lion share of the country will choose the Democrats time and time again.

The GOP's War on the Poor

Few things disgust me more than the Republican Party's disingenuous claims to allegiance to Christian values while in reality at the same time throwing Christ's Gospel message on the trash heap.   The principal beneficiaries of the GOP agenda?  The rich and large corporations.  The losers? The poor in particular, and to a lesser extent, everyone else.   And who makes up the core of the fanatical GOP base?  You guessed it, the Christofascists and their Tea Party first cousins.  An op-ed piece in the New York Times looks at the rank hypocrisy of the GOP and the menace that it poses to the most vulnerable members of society.   Here are highlights:

John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, has done some surprising things lately. First, he did an end run around his state’s Legislature — controlled by his own party — to proceed with the federally funded expansion of Medicaid that is an important piece of Obamacare. Then, defending his action, he let loose on his political allies, declaring, “I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That, if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

Obviously Mr. Kasich isn’t the first to make this observation. But the fact that it’s coming from a Republican in good standing (although maybe not anymore), indeed someone who used to be known as a conservative firebrand, is telling. Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else — and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality. 

The big question is why. But, first, let’s talk a bit more about what’s eating the right. 

I still sometimes see pundits claiming that the Tea Party movement is basically driven by concerns about budget deficits. That’s delusional. Read the founding rant by Rick Santelli of CNBC: There’s nary a mention of deficits. Instead, it’s a tirade against the possibility that the government might help “losers” avoid foreclosure. Or read transcripts from Rush Limbaugh or other right-wing talk radio hosts. There’s not much about fiscal responsibility, but there’s a lot about how the government is rewarding the lazy and undeserving.

Republicans in leadership positions try to modulate their language a bit, but it’s a matter more of tone than substance. They’re still clearly passionate about making sure that the poor and unlucky get as little help as possible, that — as Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, put it — the safety net is becoming “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” And Mr. Ryan’s budget proposals involve savage cuts in safety-net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. 

All of this hostility to the poor has culminated in the truly astonishing refusal of many states to participate in the Medicaid expansion. Bear in mind that the federal government would pay for this expansion, and that the money thus spent would benefit hospitals and the local economy as well as the direct recipients. But a majority of Republican-controlled state governments are, it turns out, willing to pay a large economic and fiscal price in order to ensure that aid doesn’t reach the poor. 

[I]t wasn’t always this way. Go back for a moment to 1936, when Alf Landon received the Republican nomination for president. . . . . : “Out of this Depression has come, not only the problem of recovery but also the equally grave problem of caring for the unemployed until recovery is attained. Their relief at all times is a matter of plain duty. We of our Party pledge that this obligation will never be neglected.” 

Can you imagine a modern Republican nominee saying such a thing? Not in a party committed to the view that unemployed workers have it too easy, that they’re so coddled by unemployment insurance and food stamps that they have no incentive to go out there and get a job. 

So what’s this all about? . . . .  some leading Republicans are, in their minds, acting out adolescent libertarian fantasies. “It’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now,” declared Paul Ryan in 2009. 

But there’s also, as Mr. Little says, the stain that won’t go away: race. . . . .  the Republican base “very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority” — and seeing the social safety net both as something that helps Those People, not people like themselves, and binds the rising nonwhite population to the Democratic Party. And, yes, the Medicaid expansion many states are rejecting would disproportionately have helped poor blacks. 

So there is indeed a war on the poor, coinciding with and deepening the pain from a troubled economy. And that war is now the central, defining issue of American politics. 

There's a related cause not cited by the author that I believe is directly involved: the rise of the Christofascists who are almost all white and semi-closeted white supremacists.  These folks not only are killing the GOP brand.  They are also killing Christianity in America.  Their conduct is the antithesis of Christ's gospel message.  They are horrid people and anything but truly Christian.

Is The Tea Party A Religion?

I have espoused the view many times that the Republican Party's descent into insanity began when the far Christian Right - what I call the Christofascists began to infiltrate and take over local city and county committees and caucuses.  At least 15 years ago, it became clear to me that their goal was to force their religious beliefs and social views on all citizens.  While not all members of the Tea Party are Christofascists, some 85% of them identify as "conservative Christian."  This reality means, reason, logic and acceptance of objective reality is anathema to far too many of them. They are in open rebellion against modernity, changing racial demographics and a decline of white privilege that allowed many of them to feel good about themselves.  Andrew Sullivan correctly views the Tea Party as a quasi-religious cult.  Ultimately, it is this religious fanaticism that must be defeated if we are to regain a balanced constitutional government.  Here are excepts:

I believe that you cannot understand the current GOP without also grasping how bewildered so many people are by the dizzying onset of modernity. The 21st Century has brought Islamist war to America, the worst recession since the 1930s, a debt-ridden federal government, a majority-minority future, gay marriage, universal healthcare and legal weed. If you were still seething from the eruption of the 1960s, and thought that Reagan had ended all that, then the resilience of a pluralistic, multi-racial, fast-miscegenating, post-gay America, whose president looks like the future, not the past, you would indeed, at this point, be in a world-class, meshugganah, cultural panic.

When you add in the fact that the American dream stopped working for most working-class folks at some point in the mid 1970s, and when you see the national debt soaring from the Reagan years onward, made much worse by the Bush-Cheney years, and then exploded by the recession Bush bequeathed, you have a combustible mixture. It’s very easy to lump all this together into a paranoid fantasy of an American apocalypse that must somehow be stopped at all cost. In trying to understand the far-right mindset – which accounts for around a quarter of the country – I think you have to zoom out and see all of this in context.

The first black president could, perhaps, clean up some of the mess of his predecessor, but as soon as he moved on an actual substantive change that he wanted and campaigned on, he was deemed illegitimate. Even though that change was, by any standards, a moderate one, catering to private interests, such as drug and insurance companies; even though it had no public option; even though its outline was the same as the GOP’s 2012 nominee’s in Massachusetts, this inching toward a more liberal America was the casus belli. It still is – which is why it looms so large for the Republican right in ways that can easily befuddle the rest of us.

But it is emphatically not the real reason for the revolt. It is the symptom, not the cause. My rule of thumb is pretty simple: whenever you hear a quote about Obamacare, it’s more illuminating to remove the “care” part. And Obama is a symbol of change people cannot understand, are frightened by, and seek refuge from.

That desperate need for certainty and security is what I focused on in my book about all this, The Conservative Soul. What the understandably beleaguered citizens of this new modern order want is a pristine variety of America that feels like the one they grew up in. They want truths that ring without any timbre of doubt. They want root-and-branch reform – to the days of the American Revolution. And they want all of this as a pre-packaged ideology, preferably aligned with re-written American history
And given the apocalyptic nature of their view of what is going on, it is only natural that they would seek a totalist, radical, revolutionary halt to all of it, even if it creates economic chaos, even if it destroys millions of jobs, even though it keeps millions in immigration limbo, even if it means an unprecedented default on the debt.

This is a religion – but a particularly modern, extreme and unthinking fundamentalist religion. And such a form of religion is the antithesis of the mainline Protestantism that once dominated the Republican party as well, to a lesser extent, the Democratic party. 

It also brooks no distinction between religion and politics, seeing them as fused in the same cultural and religious battle. Much of the GOP hails from that new purist, apocalyptic sect right now – and certainly no one else is attacking that kind of religious organization. But it will do to institutional political parties what entrepreneurial fundamentalism does to mainline churches: its appeal to absolute truth, total rectitude and simplicity of worldview instantly trumps tradition, reason, moderation, compromise.

[T]his is not just a cold civil war. It is also a religious war – between fundamentalism and faith, between totalism and tradition, between certainty and reasoned doubt. It may need to burn itself out – with all the social and economic and human damage that entails. Or it can be defeated, as Lincoln reluctantly did to his fanatical enemies, or absorbed and coopted, as Elizabeth I did hers over decades. But it will take time. The question is what will be left of America once it subsides, and how great a cost it will have imposed.

I view the Christofascists and their Tea Party cousins to be a clear and present danger to America.  More citizens need to recognize this reality and these foul forces which are motivated by hate and fear of anyone deemed "other" need to be defeated completely and utterly discredited.

 

Republican Insanity Is Increasing

As noted many times, I am a former Republican from a family of now former Republicans.  Indeed, my maternal grandparents were loyal Republicans long before many of today's most loud mouthed GOP demagogues were even born.  Yet I get incredibly vile e-mails and comments on posts - which I do not publish since I don't wish to give virulent haters a platform - which call me a flaming liberal and that are filled with four letter words and all kinds of explicatives.  To my mind it is all further proof that the Republican Party base is becoming even more deranged, delusional and untethered from objective reality.  The GOP base learned nothing form the 2012 debacle. A piece in The Daily Beast makes the same argument.  Here are highlights:

If you’d asked me six months ago whether the Republican Party would manage to find a few ways to sidle back toward the center between now and 2016, I’d have said yes. But today, on the basis of evidence offered so far this year, I’d have to say a big fat no. With every passing month, the party contrives new ways to go crazier. There’s a lot of time between now and 2016, but it’s hard to watch recent events without concluding that the extreme part of the base is gaining more and more internal control.

Let’s start with this recent party meeting in Boston. As with the previous winter meeting, the Republican National Committee was trying to spin inclusiveness as the theme and goal. But what real news came out of the meeting? Go to the RNC website. Before you even make it to the home page, you’ll be presented with a petition imploring you to “Hold the Liberal Media Accountable!” and “Tell CNN and NBC to drop their planned programming promoting Hillary Clinton or no 2016 debates!” 

As an “issue,” this is totally absurd. How many voters are going to walk into the booth on Election Day 2016, if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, thinking, “Gee whiz, I never cared that much for Hillary until I saw that wonderful biopic about a year ago, which is what sealed it for me!” Ridiculous. Besides, has anyone stopped to wonder whether Clinton herself wants these movies aired?

The driver is hatred of all news organizations that aren’t Fox News, which in turn reflects hatred of reality itself, hatred of the unhappy truth that there are facts in this world that can’t be neatly arranged behind a worldview of rage and racial resentment. Soon enough, the GOPers are going to get themselves to the point where the only debates are on Fox, moderated, as Reince Priebus suggested last week, by the likes of Sean Hannity. The Pravda-ization of the party, a process that’s been under way since Fox first took to the air back in 1996, will be complete. The kinds of questions candidates will likely be asked on Fox, and the kinds of answers they’ll know will be expected of them, will drive the party even further rightward.

 Now let’s turn to Congress. Six months ago, I might have thought the party could roll with immigration reform. In truth, I was a skeptic from day one, let the record show. But there were plenty of days when I doubted myself. Not much doubt today. . . . The GOP will do the bidding, to whatever it extent it can, of the extremists.

Conservative Myra Adams wrote on the Beast over the weekend that she didn’t see how a Republican could get to 270 electoral votes in 2016. She’s correct about that, but she may be wrong in assuming that most of these people even care anymore if they win. I think many would prefer to win, sure, all things being equal, but only on their narrow terms. And if they don’t, there is great glory in losing because of principle, and then once again purifying the party of its sellouts and squishes like Petelos. How much worse can they get? A lot.

Not to sound like a broken record, but as a former GOP City Committee member, I track the start of the GOP's descent into insanity to when the Christofascists were welcomed into the GOP out of short term expediency with no thought to what the long term damage would be.  By definition, the Christofascists are driven by religious extremism and a deliberate rejection of modernity and knowledge in favor of the half baked writings of ignorant nomads from 3000 years a go.  The handwriting was on the wall, but the GOP establishment refused to see it.

How Republican Obstructionism Could Hand Congress To Democrats

In general there is little if anything positive I can say about today's Republican Party.  And I say this as a former Republican who held a city committee seat and was a precinct chair for 8 years.  The party's embrace of ignorance and insanity is near complete and those few sane Republicans who remain (they should be on the endangered species list)  appear unable to stop the run away freight train comprised of the Christofascists and their close cousins in the Tea Party.  With luck, the extremism of the GOP will help the Democrats to not only hold control of the Senate, but also allow them to recapture the House of Representatives.  A piece in Think Progress looks at this premise.  Here are excerpts:

Why are Republicans so freaked out?  . . . .  Politico suggests the reason for the glumness is fear about the political fallout from the GOP’s unyielding, nihilistic approach to governance on issues like Obamacare and the debt ceiling. That problem may be far worse than they imagine. A close scrutiny of the data reveals several demographic weak points that the current wave of Republican crazy could activate, leading to the outcome they dread the most: Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

Start with minorities. It’s not well-known, but Republicans in 2010 benefited not only from relatively low minority turnout (standard for an off-year election) but also from relatively low minority support for Democratic candidates.
If minorities snap back to 77-22 Democratic support as a consequence of Republican misbehavior, and the expected 2 percentage point increase in the share of minority voters from population trends emerges, then the Republican 6.8 percentage point margin in 2010 will be immediately sliced in half. And if the minority vote goes even stronger for the Democrats, reaching 2012 levels, that would eliminate about three-quarters of the Republicans’ 2010 advantage all on its own.

Another demographic problem for the GOP comes from a more surprising quarter: seniors. As Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps noted in a recent memo:

There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP.

We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare.

We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.

It is therefore quite plausible that the GOP will benefit far less from senior support in 2014 than in 2010. If the senior share of voters returns to normal levels (19 percent) and the Republican margin among this group drops to its post-2000 average (6 points, about where it is right now in the Democracy Corps polls) that would take care of the rest of the GOP margin from 2010, getting the Democrats slightly past the break-even point in the popular vote. 

[T]here are certainly potential avenues to shift the 2014 House vote even farther in Democrats’ direction. There is the youth vote, for example  . . . If relative minority turnout is better in 2014 than 2010, then there will be an even larger increase in minority vote share over 2010, pushing the Democrats’ margin farther toward what they need to take the House.

The conjecture may be off base but one thing is certain: striving to disenfranchise minorities and leave senior citizens to live on dry dog food as they face staggering medical bills is not the way to win votes.  And with younger voters strongly pro-gay, the GOP's blind allegiance to the Christofascist anti-gay jihad isn't helpful either.

Extremist Primary Electorate is Costing the GOP

As note before on this, other than a series of sustained electoral defeats, I do not know what can save the GOP from the insane Christofascists and Tea Party saboteurs who have highjacked the party grass roots and who predominate in primary contests.  Frankly, today's GOP base is utterly untethered from objective reality and lives in some bizarre imaginary alternate universe that doesn't - and never did - exist in fact and which bears no relation to the reality experienced by most voters.  The result is that primary candidates that excite the GOP base are in all likelihood viewed as radioactive by everyone else, including independent voters and self-styled moderates.  One only need to think of U.S. Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock as examples of the phenomenon.  A piece in the Washington Post looks ate the ongoing problem for the GOP:  Here are excerpts:

Republican chances for a Senate majority in 2015 took a bit of a hit today, with senior GOP Rep. Dave Camp announcing that he won’t run for the Michigan open seat. Whatever Camp’s chances, he was the GOP’s top choice, and with him out the chances are extremely good that Democrats will retain this seat.

This points to a broader, if mostly hidden, risk that the radicalization of the GOP primary electorate and many of its party actors poses for the party’s long term hopes.

Everyone talks about Senate seats lost to Republicans by awful candidates foisted on the GOP by the Tea Party, such as Todd Akin and Christine O’Donnell. But perhaps even more important is another Tea Party effect: the prospect of Tea Party upsets convincing strong candidates that primary elections are a hurdle they can’t surmount — leading them to decide not to run.

Candidates are important in Senate elections — it’s often the case that a strong candidate can be the difference between a sharply contested race and one that fizzles. The best candidates are usually professional politicians, and those politicians are, in the lingo of political scientists, strategic: they choose to run only when they believe that it’s a good time to run.

But the possibility of Tea Party upsets in primaries make it that much more difficult. If Senators Bob Bennett and Richard Lugar can’t get renominated, then why should someone such as Camp risk it when he has a perfectly safe House seat that he would have to give up?

We don’t get to know exactly how much of a factor this is in any particular decision. But there are signs it could broadly matter. In the last cycle, Republicans failed to recruit a solid challenger in states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — all states in which Republicans have at least a fighting chance. That seems to be happening this time around in the campaigns for open seats in Michigan and Iowa, and in the races against potentially vulnerable Democrats in Minnesota, Colorado, New Hampshire, and perhaps two or three others.

 [T]he GOP that has had the most recruiting trouble lately, and it’s almost certainly because Republican leaders can’t be trusted to clear the field for strong candidates. The temptation to support insurgents, even ones who would badly hurt the party’s chances in November, is just too strong for both party actors and voters in Republican primaries. 

It’s a real, and under appreciated, cost of the Tea Party effect. And it’s not going away any time soon.

To survive long term, the GOP has to find a means to send the Christofascists and the equally insane Tea Party crowd back to the political wilderness.  They are toxic and will become more of a liability with every passing year.

Pew Poll: Majority of Parents Not Upset to Have a Gay Child

 

In what is clearly more bad news for the gay-hating Christofascists, a new Pew Research Center survey comparing views on gays in 1985, 2000, and 2004 versus 2013 finds that in 2013, 55% of parents surveyed would not be upset to discover that they have a gay child.  Only 19% would be very upset - a figure that probably corresponds to the percentage of the population comprised of spittle flecked "godly Christians."   The findings are also noteworthy because they reveal a huge shift in the mindset of those over age 65.  While a majority still would be upset to learn the news, 47% now say they would not be upset.  The findings are yet further evidence that the GOP's anti-gay jihad is going to turn into a form of political suicide sooner as opposed to later - assuming the self-inflicted death process hasn't already begun.  Here are some details of the survey findings:

The new survey finds larger changes over the past decade in favorable opinions of gay men and lesbians. Ten years ago, the balance of opinion toward both gay men and lesbians was 
unfavorable: 37% viewed gay men favorably, while 51% viewed them unfavorably; 39% had a favorable impression of lesbian women while 48% had an unfavorable opinion.  Today, by a 55% to 32% margin, more have a favorable than unfavorable opinion of gay men. And about twice as many view lesbian women favorably (58%) than unfavorably (29%).

In 1985, a Los Angeles Times survey found that 64% of the public said they would be “very upset” if their child told them he or she was gay or lesbian. By 2004, that number had fallen by almost half (33%). Since then, it has declined another 14 points, to 19%.

Instead, a majority (55%) now says they would not be upset if they learned their child was gay or lesbian, a 19-point increase since 2004 and a 46-point increase since the mid-1980s.

Again, this has been an across-the-board shift in attitudes. Yet the change has been more dramatic among some groups than others. In 2004, fully 82% of those 65 and older said they would be upset if their child told them they were gay, and 50% said they’d be very upset. Today, only about half (47%) say they’d be upset and just 24% say they’d be very upset.

Among Republicans, the percentage saying they’d be very upset if they learned their child was gay or lesbian also has fallen by half – from 44% to 22% – since 2004.

In other bad news for the white Christofascists and their white supremacist allies in the GOP base, public acceptance of interracial marriage has likewise increased markedly:

The public also takes a more positive view of another social trend – more people of different races marrying each other. Currently, 37% say this is a good thing for American society, up from 25% in 2011 and 24% in 2010. About half (51%) say more interracial marriage does not make much difference, compared with 64% in 2011 and 61% in 2010. About one-in-ten (10%) continue to view this as a negative trend for American society.

 We can likely expect increasingly hysterical rhetoric from the "godly folks" and "family values hate groups as it becomes increasingly clear that their propaganda campaigns are not working.  Some would even say that the nastiness of this propaganda is helping the cause of LGBT equality as it hastens the decline of the Christian brand.

Biblical Scholars: Biblical Marriage Not Defined Simply As One Man, One Woman

I have made the argument on this blog and on The Bilerico Project that a careful reading of the Bible makes it very clear that "one man one woman" is not the structure of marriage endorsed or created by the Bible.  If anything, polygamy is the norm for marriage in the Bible, especially the Old Testament.  Not that the truth or honesty matters to the anti-gay Christofascists.  Now three (3) Biblical scholars has come out and stated the obvious: Biblical marriage is not "one man and one woman."  A piece in Huffington Post looks at this to me obvious conclusion.  Here are some article excerpts:

A trio of Iowa-based religious scholars penned an op-ed in a local paper this week, reminding readers that despite popular opinion, the Bible does not simply define marriage as between one man and one woman.

The joint editorial was written by Hector Avalos, Robert R. Cargill and Kenneth Atkinson and published in the Des Moines Register on Sunday. The men teach at Iowa State University, University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa, respectively.

"The debate about marriage equality often centers, however discretely, on an appeal to the Bible," the authors wrote. "Unfortunately, such appeals often reflect a lack of biblical literacy on the part of those who use that complex collection of texts as an authority to enact modern social policy."

The Bible's definition of marriage can be confusing and contradictory, noted the scholars. They stated in their column that a primary example of this is the religious book's stance on polygamy, a practice that was embraced by prominent biblical figures Abraham and David. Furthermore, Avalos, Cargill and Atkinson point out that various Bible passages mention not only traditional monogamy, but also self-induced castration and celibacy, as well as the practice of wedding rape victims to their rapists.

Ultimately, said Cargill, a Biblical "argument against same-sex marriage is wholly unsustainable. We all know this, but very few scholars are talking about it, because they don't want to take the heat."  He suggested that academics who continue to be cowed by a strident opposition do a disservice to their communities.

"Most people aren't dumb, they want to make an informed decision" on religiously charged questions, Cargill said. "If scholars aren't talking to them, they have to rely on talk show hosts and pundits, and that's not the most reliable source of information."

Many politicians have made a career out of using the Bible to justify opposition to hot-button topics like same-sex marriage or abortion. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for example, told a crowd of evangelicals in April that Americans cannot "retreat from our values and fail to make the case on issues like marriage -- because it is one man, one woman -- because God said it is."

Cargill said Bachman and her like-minded colleagues use a strategy he calls "cherry picking" to appeal to their base.

"Politicians who use the Bible aren't necessarily interested in the truth or the complexity of the Bible," he said. "They are looking for one ancient sound bite to convince people what they already believe."

The  Christofascists care nothing about the truth.  It is all about inflicting their own perverse and hate filled religious beliefs on all of society.