The Anti-Gay Bigots Writing the 2016 GOP Platform

If one wants to encounter some of the most extreme homophobes and religious extremists in America, look no farther than the GOP platform committee where individuals like Tony Perkins, head of the hate group Family Research Council, are busy drafting the most anti-LGBT platform in the Republican Party's history.   Also on the committee is discredited crackpot "historian" David Barton whose mythical version of American history utterly ignores the Founders' desire for a secular civil government.  The drafters as a group are so extreme that its akin to having the Spanish Inquisition draft policies toward the Moors that once ruled a significant portion of Spain.    The Daily Beast offers a glimpse of some of these frightening lunatics.  Here are highlights:

The committee writing the [GOP] platform on which he’s [Donald Trump]supposed to run is filled with anti-gay bigots. 

The committee, which is currently meeting in Cleveland, is charged with crafting an overarching document that describes the general principles of the party. Until mid-week, they will be voting on America’s tax policies and the party’s orientation toward LGBT issues—but there are legitimate questions about their previous words and deeds.
 For example, Cynthia Dunbar of Virginia once compared the gay rights movement to efforts “in pre-Holocaust Germany, as far as propaganda and presentation and swaying the whole mindset of a nation.”

Hardy Billington, of Missouri, took out anad in a local paper saying that homosexuality is killing people at “two to three times the rate of smoking.”

The committee also features members such as Mary Forrester, of North Carolina, who wrote an op-ed in 2008 that alleged that the “homosexual agenda is seeking to change the course of Western Civilization” and that “most societies that condoned homosexual behavior did not survive past one generation.”

And David Barton, a committee member from Texas, believes that God is preventing the medical profession from finding a cure for HIV/AIDS, and claimed that gay people die “decades earlier” than others and have more than 500 partners apiece in their lifetimes.

Barton told The Daily Beast that these statements did not represent his views, and this was “an example of something taken out of context and mischaracterized. I’m an advocate for faith-based conservative values, which include love, grace, and truth, focusing on traditional family values.”

The Daily Beast reached out to all the delegates in this article for comment, but many did not immediately respond.

 And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  As for Tony Perkins, do a search of his name on this blog if you want many examples of his anti-LGBT animus and the never ending lies he tells about us. Plus, he's a racist with white supremacist ties for good measure.  These people sadly are the face of today's Republican Party. 

Kim Davis: Canary in the Mine Called Theocracy

The spittle flecked hysteria of the Christofascists and parasites of the professional Christian crowd is off the charts in the wake of the much deserved jailing of Kim Davis, the Rowan County Clerk, Kentucky clerk of court who views herself to be above the law of the land because of her bizarre and warped religious beliefs.  From faux historian David Barton, to Fox News provocateur Todd Starnes, to con-artist pastors, the shrieks that there is a war against Christians and that America is now like Nazi Germany have reached a crescendo - as have the money begs from the usual suspects.  Mike Huckabee has joined the money beg crowd with donations going directly to his presidential campaign site.  The common thread throughout the bluster and theatrics is that these people want a fundamentalist Christian theocracy and their insanity would be almost humorous if they were not so potentially dangerous.  As I have questioned before, when will there hate speech lead to violence or deaths of those they deem enemies of their theocratic agenda.  A column in the Huffington Post by an Episcopal priest looks at the danger these people pose to constitutional government and the rule of law.  Here are excerpts:

As one commenter on my Facebook page put it "This is the appropriate response. Don't condemn her for hypocrisy, don't make fun of her clothes; just jail her for contempt of court until she either does her job or quits her job. That's how the state should have handled George Wallace and Ross Barnett fifty years ago, and that's how they should handle their anti-gay counterparts now."

Exactly. But do not for a moment think that this is the end of the story. Ms Davis has auditioned for and has now won the role of Poster Child for the "Religious Liberty" movement. It is a movement that includes the scores of RFRAs (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) pending in state legislatures around the country designed to do nothing to protect actual religious liberty and everything to turn a fundamental protection of the First Amendment into a weapon of mass discrimination. 

Kim Davis is arguably the canary in the coal mine called Theocracy -- "a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler." Her case is a test case for those who confuse their theology with our democracy and would replace liberty and justice for all with "liberty and justice for those who believe what I believe." And make no mistake about it: the threat is very real.  

Whether it's denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples or denial of reproductive health care to women, the trend of conflating individual religious beliefs with public policy decisions is a slippery and dangerous slope to the erosion of genuine religious liberty -- which is both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion.

Because here's the deal: Religious persecution is when you're prevented from exercising your beliefs, not when you're prevented from imposing your beliefs.  

Because the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they wrote the First Amendment -- and what they were doing was making us a nation founded on the bedrock value of religious liberty that provides both freedom of and freedom from religion -- not only protecting each and every one of us to believe what we choose but also protecting us from discrimination based on the beliefs of others.

And my religious liberty as a Christian is only as protected as the religious liberty of every other person of every other faith -- and yes, that includes the liberty of those who choose "none of the above." And all of our liberty is threatened when the religion of any American citizen is misused to discriminate against the equal protection of any other American citizen.

Kim Davis may indeed be a victim -- but she is most certainly not the victim of religious persecution. She is the victim of theocrats in patriots' clothing exploiting her as a canary in the coal mine called Theocracy as they continue to see just how far they can go in turning this nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal into "a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler."

As I have argued for years now, militant fundamentalist Christians are a clear and present danger to the nation.  As they become increasingly marginalized and more citizens flee their ugly version of Christianity, the likelihood for violence will increase. 

Christianists and GOP Continue to Stand By David Barton's Lies

I've looked at David Barton - a faux historian if there ever was one - on this blog.  Frighteningly, the man continues to rewrite history, particularly American history, to reenforce the myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation" despite all of the evidence to the contrary.  Barton writes what the Christofascists and increasingly ignorant GOP base wants to hear.  When it comes to truth a veracity, Barton seems to have taken the work of Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels as his template.  Truth, objective facts, and reason simply have no place in today's Republican Party.  A piece in Right Wing Watch looks at Barton's continued embrace by the far right.  Here are excerpts:

Over the weekend, Politico ran a profile of David Barton which pointed out that he remains extremely popular with the Religious Right and members of Congress, despite the fact that he is the author of the "least credible history book in print" and his "scholarship" is laughable.
The piece noted that even his supporters have been forced to secretly edit videos and programs posted on their websites in order to remove some of Barton's more egregious falsehoods, yet they continue to stand by him, as Barton brags that the mounting evidence of his fundamentally inaccurate history has not damaged his reputation one iota:

During their campaign to point out the errors in Barton’s work, his Christian critics asked two of the nation’s biggest evangelical advocacy groups, the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, to stop promoting his faulty scholarship.
The FRC responded by quietly pulling from its website a popular video showcasing clips of Barton leading one of his Capitol tours. FRC Vice President Kenyn Cureton said the video was removed because of “a few historical inaccuracies.”
But the group continues to promote Barton elsewhere on its website as a “good friend” and “close ally.”
Focus on the Family, meanwhile, edited two videos on its website featuring a lengthy interview Barton gave to Focus radio. The editing deleted a segment in which Barton declares that Congress printed the first English-language Bible in America — and intended it to be used in schools. That’s one of Barton’s signature stories — it’s a highlight in his Capitol tour — but historians who have reviewed the documentation say it’s simply not true.

- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/among-religious-right-david-bartons-reputation-remains-untarnished#sthash.LAlkQiu7.dpuf

Over the weekend, Politico ran a profile of David Barton which pointed out that he remains extremely popular with the Religious Right and members of Congress, despite the fact that he is the author of the "least credible history book in print" and his "scholarship" is laughable.

The piece noted that even his supporters have been forced to secretly edit videos and programs posted on their websites in order to remove some of Barton's more egregious falsehoods, yet they continue to stand by him, as Barton brags that the mounting evidence of his fundamentally inaccurate history has not damaged his reputation one iota:

During their campaign to point out the errors in Barton’s work, his Christian critics asked two of the nation’s biggest evangelical advocacy groups, the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, to stop promoting his faulty scholarship.

The FRC responded by quietly pulling from its website a popular video showcasing clips of Barton leading one of his Capitol tours. FRC Vice President Kenyn Cureton said the video was removed because of “a few historical inaccuracies.”

But the group continues to promote Barton elsewhere on its website as a “good friend” and “close ally.”

Focus on the Family, meanwhile, edited two videos on its website featuring a lengthy interview Barton gave to Focus radio. The editing deleted a segment in which Barton declares that Congress printed the first English-language Bible in America — and intended it to be used in schools. That’s one of Barton’s signature stories — it’s a highlight in his Capitol tour — but historians who have reviewed the documentation say it’s simply not true.

Barton again signifies what has become of the Republican Party where once upon a time crackpots like Barton would either not have been given the time of day or would have been dismissed as a crack pot.  That was then.  Now, Barton is main stream in a political party that is increasingly an extremist sectarian organization. 

A Founding Father's Take on Religion - And Today's Christian Right

David Barton and other crackpots within the Christofascist circles continue to disseminate the myth that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation."  Like most of what comes out of the mouths of these folks it is a blatant lie that seeks to take advantage of the ignorance of accurate history which is so pervasive within the American public.  This bog has noted before the Founding Fathers' pointed suspicion of religion and the fact that most could best be described as deists - e.g., Thomas Jefferson.  Civil Commotion makes note of James Madison’s Memorial And Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.  Here is a pertinent quote:

The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.

Because experience witnesseth that eccelsiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks, many of them predict its downfall. On which Side ought their testimony to have greatest weight, when for or when against their interest?

These views sound like Madison could be talking about the state of religion in America today where the Christofascists and their puppets and political whores in the GOP seek to inflict their poisonous beliefs on all citizens.  The Christianist agenda is the direct opposite of what Madison espoused.  

Debunking the Christianist Claim that America Descending to Godlessness

As a history major in college and one who has always done massive amounts of historical reading on my own, I constantly am distressed by the manner in which the religious extremists of the far right - the Christofascists who seek to force their beliefs on all citizens - demonstrate a very selective reading of history.  They leave out whatever is inconvenient - much as they do with their recitation of Bible verse - and fabricate entire new story lines when the truth doesn't fit their theocratic purposes.  Faux historian David Barton is a prime example of the latter phenomenon.  An op-ed in the New York Times written by a history professor looks at the rantings of  the likes of Bryan Fischer at AFA and then looks at the real history of religion - and Christianity in particular - in America.  The true picture is not surprisingly far different from that painted by the truth and veracity challenged mouth pieces of the Christianists.  Here are some column highlights:

Conservative activists insist that they protest these developments not to defend special privileges for Christianity, but to respect the founders’ desire for universal religious liberty — rooted, they say, in the Christian tradition. The controversial activist David Barton has devoted his career to popularizing this “forgotten history” through lectures, books and home-school curriculums. 

Bryan Fischer, spokesman for the American Family Association, told me that he saw the “nones” as proof that “the foundations of our culture are crumbling.”  

How accurate is this story of decline into godlessness? Is America, supposedly God’s last bastion in the Western world, rejecting faith and endangering religious liberty? 

The truth is that “nones” are nothing new. Religion has been a feature of human society since Neanderthal times, but so has religious indifference. Our illusions of the past as a golden age of faith tend to cloud our assessment of today’s religious landscape. We think of atheism and religious apathy as uniquely modern spiritual options, ideas that Voltaire and Hume devised in a coffee house one rainy afternoon sometime in the 18th century. Before the Enlightenment, legend has it, peasants hurried to church every week and princes bowed and scraped before priests. Historians have yet to unearth Pew studies from the 13th century, but it is safe to say that we frequently overestimate medieval piety. 

In 1584, census takers in Antwerp discovered that the city had a larger proportion of “nones” than 21st-century America: a full third of residents claimed no religious affiliation.  

Rates of church attendance have never been as sterling as the Christian Right’s fable of national decline suggests. Before the Civil War, regular attendance probably never exceeded 30 percent, rising to a high of 40 percent around 1965 and declining to under 30 percent in recent years — even as 77 percent still identify as Christians and 69 percent say they are “very” or “moderately” religious, according to a 2012 Gallup survey.

We know, then, that the good old days were not so good after all, even in God’s New Israel. Today’s spiritual independents are not unprecedented. What is new is their increasing visibility.  .  .  .  Americans are drifting out of the grip of institutionalized religion, just as they are drifting from institutional authority in general.

‘Religious authority’ is no longer clergy in the pulpit saying ‘Vote for Eisenhower,’ but forwarded URL links or gossip exchanges in chat rooms. There is no referee.”  For a very long time, Protestant leaders were those referees. If individual impiety flourished in centuries past, churches still wielded significant control over civic culture: the symbols, standards and sexual mores that most of the populace respected in public, if not always in private. Today, more and more Americans openly accept extramarital sex, homosexuality and other outrages to traditional Christian morality.

For most of our history, the loudest defenders of the separation of church and state were not rogue atheists, but Protestants worried about Catholics seeking financing for parochial schools or scheming their way into public office to take orders only from mitered masters in Rome.  Activists on both the left and the right tend to forget this irony of the First Amendment: it has been as much a weapon of religious oppression as a safeguard for liberty.

Conservative Christian activists hold those sectarian foundations more dearly than they admit, and they are challenging the Obama administration’s efforts to frame access to contraception and same-sex marriage as civil rights immune to the veto of “private” conscience.  

These legal efforts are less an attempt to redefine religious liberty than a campaign to preserve Christians’ historic right to police the boundary between secular principles and religious beliefs. Only now that conservative Christians have less control over organs of public power, they cannot rely on the political process. Now that the “nones” are declaring themselves, and more Americans — including many Christians — see birth control as a medical necessity rather than a sin, Mr. Sears sees a stark course of action for the Catholic and evangelical business owners he represents: “Litigation is all that our clients have.” Their problem, however, is more fundamental than legal precedent. Their problem is that America’s Christian consensus is fragmenting. We are left groping for something far messier: an evolving, this-worldly, compromise.