SCOTUS Slaps Anti-LGBTQ Groups for Misgendering Gavin Grimm

As I have said many times over the last decade and a half and longer, no one lies as consistently or viscous as the "godly Christians" and their "family values" organizations.  The truth, scientific and medial knowledge mean nothing to these people who are most motivated by hatred towards others and who seemingly only feel happy about themselves when attacking and denigrating others be it through spokesmen such as Tony Perkins of Family Research Council who has documented ties to racist and white supremacist groups to the briefs that these purported non-profit, "educational" organizations file in federal law suits where LGBT rights issues are at play.  Indeed, I still believe that some of the insane and vicious briefs filed by these groups in the Lawrence v. Texas case may have actually helped the LGBT cause because their were so vile, dishonest and unhinged.  Now, in G.G. v. Gloucester County, as Slate reports, we may be seeing a similar phenomenon where these groups have revealed the deep animus that motivates them.  The myth is that conservative Christians are kind and decent when in reality, they are not whatsoever. One can only hope the Supreme Court moves forward notwithstanding Der Trumpenfüher' effort to undermine the appeal from the 4th Circuit which had ruled in Grimm's favor. Here are article excerpts:

In March, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, a case about transgender bathroom access. Gavin Grimm, the plaintiff—who has legally and medically transitioned from female to male—argues that under Title IX, his high school must let him use the men’s bathroom. The case has drawn a great deal of interest from both liberal and conservative advocacy groups, many of which have filed amicus briefs in support of either Grimm or his school. Three of these briefs caught my eye this week—one filed by Liberty Counsel, and two filed by the National Organization for Marriage together with the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. These briefs, which argue against Grimm’s right to use the men’s bathroom, identifies him this way in their front-page captions (emphasis mine):

G. G., BY HER NEXT FRIEND AND MOTHER, DEIRDRE GRIMM

But the Supreme Court, as well as all lower courts, identify him this way:

G. G., BY HIS NEXT FRIEND AND MOTHER, DEIRDRE GRIMM

That slightly odd formulation reflects the formal way that federal courts style a juvenile litigant’s name. (Grimm is 17.) It also obviously necessitates a gendered pronoun use. Did these anti-LGBTQ groups misgender Grimm by mistake? I posed the question to Liberty Counsel on Wednesday, and the organization confirmed that it used a female pronoun because “Gavin Grimm is a biological girl who now says she subjectively ‘identifies’ as a ‘boy.’ ”

These groups may passionately believe that Grimm is a girl—but unfortunately for them, they aren’t entitled to change his gender in the caption of their amicus briefs. The court has very specific rules governing these briefs, and Rule 34 of the Rules of the Supreme Court requires that each brief “shall bear on its cover ... the caption of the case as appropriate in this Court.”

On Thursday, I asked the Supreme Court’s press office whether the clerk of the court considered the altered pronoun in the briefs’ captions to be “appropriate.” And on Friday, a spokeswoman for the court informed me that the clerk, Scott S. Harris, had sent out letters reprimanding the groups that misgendered Grimm and demanding that they comply with the rules moving forward. You can read the letters here and here

[This should] effectively disqualify these amicus briefs from serious consideration. By misgendering Grimm, these briefs clearly reflect the kind of animus that moved the school board to bar Grimm from the correct bathroom in the first place. The briefs reject the very validity of Grimm’s identity in a manner that is both offensive and petty. Indeed, these organizations are so eager to deny Grimm this basic dignity that they intentionally flouted the rules of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is difficult to imagine a justice citing anything these groups’ briefs say—even those who vote against Grimm. Liberty Counsel, NOM, and the CCJ have given the game away, revealing that while they claim to care about bathroom predators, they are really attempting to repudiate trans people’s identity.

And to think—they might’ve convinced a few justices to cite their bigoted illogic if they had only put aside their animus for a moment and followed the rules of the court.

Again, in my experience, especially in the political realm, conservative Christians have been afforded undeserved deference from the media and others who have fabricated the myth that these people are kind and decent.  They are not.  They willingly embrace ignorance, bigotry and hatred of others.

Millennials seem to have recognized this truth, hence the massive exodus of Millennials from organized religion, especially Christianity. 

Note: The husband and are personal friends wit Gavin Grimm and his amazing mother Dierdre Grimm.  Gavin is being honored on April 1, 2017. along with me at Equality Virginia's Commonwealth Dinner in Richmond, Virginia, where Governor McAuliffe is the keynote speaker.  

Will the "Christian Right" Recover Any Shred of Legitimacy Post-Trump?

Since I began following the so-called "Christian Right" roughly 20 years ago, I have discovered several things.  One is that those encompassed by the term are neither Christian, nor are they right. Second, literally no one lies and spreads deliberate falsehoods more than the parasitic professional Christian crowd, especially falsely named "family values" organizations.   The irony is that now, while a civil war rages within the Republican Party, a similar civil war is raging within the so-called evangelical Christian demographic.  Two pieces look at this latter civil war.  The first is in Christianity Today and slams Donald Trump - and by extension evangelicals supporting Trump.  The second is at MSNBC and asks the question of whether the :Christian Right" movement can recover after Trump.   Here are highlights from Christianity Today:

Just because we are neutral, however, does not mean we are indifferent. We are especially not indifferent when the gospel is at stake. The gospel is of infinitely greater importance than any campaign, and one good summary of the gospel is, “Jesus is Lord.”

The lordship of Christ places constraints on the way his followers involve themselves, or entangle themselves, with earthly rulers.

[S]ome rulers and regimes are especially outrageous in their God-substitution. After Augustus Caesar, the emperors of Rome became more and more elaborate in their claims of divinity with each generation—and more and more ineffective in their governance. Communism aimed not just to replace faith in anything that transcended the state, but to crush it. Such systems do not just dishonor God, they dishonor his image in persons, and in doing so they set themselves up for dramatic destruction. We can never collude when such idolatry becomes manifest, especially when it demands our public allegiance.

This year’s presidential election in the United States presents Christian voters with an especially difficult choice.

But not all evangelical Christians—in fact, alas, most evangelical Christians, judging by the polls—have shown the same critical judgment when it comes to the Republican nominee. True, when given a choice, primary voters who claimed evangelical faith largely chose other candidates. But since his nomination, Donald Trump has been able to count on “the evangelicals” (in his words) for a great deal of support.

This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trump’s past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest—indeed, sexual assault—might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.

[T]here is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. . . . That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.

And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.

Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us—in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.

Pretty damning of evangelicals supporting Trump.  Candidly, I agree whole heartedly.   Trump is revealing the moral bankruptcy and utter hypocrisy of many in the Christian Right, especially flim-flam artists like the leaders of Family Research Council, Franklin Graham and so many others.  The MSNBC piece looks at whether the so-called godly folk can ever recover from their self-prostitution to the Trump phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

Harvest Bible Chapel’s James MacDonald, a megachurch leader and a member of Donald Trump’s evangelical council, could hardly contain his disgust on Saturday after learning about the candidate’s 2005 comments about women.

“Mr. Trump’s comments released yesterday – though 10 years ago (he was 60) – are not just sophomoric or locker room banter,” MacDonald wrote in an email. “They are truly the kind of misogynistic trash that reveals a man to be lecherous and worthless – not the guy who gets politely ignored, but the guy who gets a punch in the head from worthy men who hear him talk that way about women.”

So, MacDonald was resigning from his role on Team Trump? The pastor was severing his ties to a man who’d proven himself “lecherous and worthless”? Actually, no. MacDonald was upset, but not enough to withdraw his support for Trump’s candidacy.

There’s a lot of this going around. A wide variety of Evangelical Christian leaders and power players in the religious right movement have said they weren’t pleased with the latest Trump revelations, but they’re devoted to the GOP nominee anyway. Indeed, by some measures, the Christian Right’s leadershave stuck with Trump in greater numbers than congressional Republicans.

The New Republic’s Sarah Jones recently made the case that a reckoning is inevitable.

The religious right isn’t dead yet. But after this election becomes history, the movement will be forced to reckon with the consequences of its quest for power. Young adults, who overwhelmingly oppose Trump, are already leaving conservative churches, and the religious right’s Trump moment will surely only fuel this trend. If it had maintained a consistent public morality, maybe it could have retained some countercultural appeal. Now that its most visible leaders have sacrificed that authority, it has nothing left. […]

In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ tells his disciples that no one can serve two masters; you’ll be loyal to one and not to the other. By endorsing Trump, the religious right chose a master—and sacrificed everything it says it stands for. 

It’s a fair prediction. The next time there’s a major national debate over a moral/cultural issue, and pro-Trump religious right leaders present themselves as standard-bearers for “family values” and traditional theological norms, is there anyone, anywhere, who’ll be able to contain their laughter?

These people are morally bankruptcy and need to be rejected by decent moral people.  They need to become political and social pariahs.  

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The Myth of "White" Christianity

As white supremacists rally to Donald Trump - including those masquerading under the smoke screen of "Christian" family values organizations such as Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and American Family Foundation - one myth being peddled is the myth of "White Christianity" that ignores the historical roots of Christianity.  Likewise, it ignores the reality that wherever white Europeans took Christianity, it more often than not coincided with the elimination or enslavement and exploitation of native populations and the sometimes ruthless suppression of indigenous religions. Indeed, even papal declarations supported slavery.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this myth that ignores the death and destruction that went hand in hand with the spread of Christianity by European missionaries and conquerors.   Here are excerpts: 

On the first day of the Republican National Convention congressman Steve King suggested that white people had been responsible for humanity’s greatest achievements including, among other things, the spread of Christianity.

King argued: “I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about? Where did any other sub-group of people contribute more to civilization?” When he was pushed about whether or not he meant Caucasians, King responded, “Than western civilization itself that’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States of America, and any place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world.”

King is woefully underinformed about the contributions to human knowledge made by non-Caucasians. He seems to think that “Western Civilization” is monolithic and white. He is willfully blind to the way that the accomplishments he is focused on were often achieved using non-white slave labor or financed using natural resources stolen from colonized peoples. Is it really a “white accomplishment” if it is financed and earned by non-whites? 

Perhaps the most egregious error here is the assumption that Christianity was spread by white people. Because if Christianity is the linchpin in his view of history and accomplishment, I have some bad news for him.

Jesus and the twelve disciples were all Jews who lived in ancient Palestine. The majority of Jesus’ first followers were fishermen from the Galilee region. In movies and in European artwork Jesus is regularly portrayed as Northern European, but this doesn’t make it so. No matter how hard Megyn Kelly argues this point. On the basis of skeletal remains, physical anthropologists estimate that the average first-century Galilean male was around 5’ 4” and 136 pounds. If we take ancient style as our guide they are likely to have sported dark hair and a beard, and possessed deeply tanned skin.
 Paul, the self-appointed “apostle to the Gentiles,” was originally from Tarsus, an ancient university town in what is now south-central Turkey. He was a Roman citizen, which more than his race guaranteed him higher social status in the world of Jesus’ day. But like the other apostles he was likely to be a darker-skinned Mediterranean Jew. 

Augustine, Catholic saint and arguably one of the most influential thinkers in human history (to say nothing of Christian theology), was also not white. He was born and lived the majority of his life in North Africa. A more accurate (albeit extremely flattering) portrait of him can be found on the John Nava tapestries in Los Angeles. He looks a lot more like Denzel Washington than you probably imagined.

The truth is that if what King means by white and western is European and pale (put otherwise, people Donald Trump might allow to immigrate here), none of the first followers of Jesus or many of the key figures in the first four hundred years of the Christian Era would qualify. These are the people without whom Christianity wouldn’t exist.

Donald Trump's America - Arrogant Ignorance

I often lament the state of affairs in American society today and make the case that much of the toxicity and poisonous atmosphere is due to the right wing politicians and the Christofascists and white supremacists.  Worse yet, when these individuals are not busy disseminating hate and discord, they are focused on embracing ignorance and undermining safety regulations, employment protections and addressing growing problems such as global warming.  Hatred, bigotry and the celebratory embrace of ignorance are the hallmarks of these people and groups which have found their personification in Donald Trump. Facebook friend Brody Levesque has a piece at  The New Civil Rights Movement that lays out this menace Trump and his followers pose to America.  Here are excerpts: 

The past month or so has been especially bloody between the slaughter of innocents at the Pulse nightclub, the murders –  actually summary executions of unarmed Black men by law enforcement in extremely questionable circumstances – to the homicides of police officers in Dallas, Texas, and then Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The problem, however, is that these acts of violence very much are the current reflection of reality of life today in the United States.

Contemporary society of the United States is in deep trouble; it is unsafe and discriminatory (read: racist/misogynistic/homophobic/xenophobic.) It is awash in a virtual ocean of guns, most of which have no business being in the hands of civilians or law enforcement alike. The deep divisions that now exist in terms of economic, political, and religious status are propelled by well funded minority "family" or religious groups tied to the American right/conservative-Christian movement, threatening to undo any real form of progress forward for the American way of life, especially on so-called "cultural issues."

President Barack Obama has attempted to be a voice of reason as he asks Americans to pull together and make an effort to stop the violence, saying that such violence is not the American way nor reflects American values as a nation.

The President's efforts have been met by the right-wing with accusations that his actions and speeches actually foment the violence, and those in opposition blame him personally. Of course in Washington it is a rarely acknowledged open secret that a majority of the President's right-wing opposition – read: Republican – are angry that he is even sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office in the first place. They'd rather he were wearing white gloves, a snazzy formal tux, and was standing next to the desk while serving a white guy seated behind it.

The so-called cultural wars have now turned from rhetorical into actual combat. . . . . [the] reality is that the right-wing, supported by radical Christian fundamentalists, have over the past 45 or so years not only accumulated vast political power, but additionally have succeeded in holding the American governmental system at local, state, and federal levels hostage to their narrow vision. This vision, this divisiveness as evidenced by the total lack of legislative work product out of Washington to address the issues that plague everyday Americans, has now completely paralyzed the federal government.

The Christian right-wing's taking control at a local level of school boards, governments, and statehouses over the past forty years, along with their marriage to the Republican party, has created a state of erosion of the American educational system. This in turn has created a scenario where ignorance in key critical areas of sciences and civics has primarily contributed to the national state of arrogant ignorance. It has also led to a sense of meaningless hyper partisan religious centric ideology which has devolved governing into a state of inaction and hyper-gridlock.

While the United States may have fought a bloody civil war in the mid-nineteenth century to end slavery, it has never shook off its problem with its embedded racism. These days, fueled by recent acts of terrorism and abetted by that same so-called Christian ideology that literally affirmed biblical approval for slavery over a century ago, has now given arise in a resurgence xenophobia, which previously included Irish, then Chinese, and Italian, now lashes out at Muslims, and others of color in particular who don't fit the “ideal” model of what is deemed "American."

These worst traits have been embodied and personified in the Republican nominee in the presidential race, Donald Trump, whose public statements reflect this sorry state of affairs. From immigrants to women's rights to Muslims, Trump has unashamedly and unrepentantly bashed them all.

Of course it is more than just an issue of racism. The right-wing have also demonised women's choices over their own bodies and reproductive health issues, as well as targeting LGBTQ persons by categorising them as little more than deviant and pedophiles – sinners who merit only damnation, judgment, and ostracism by the "acceptable proper Christian society" and culture that upholds "true American values." The right-wing's open warfare waged on the American transgender community and its allies claims that they are upholding true Christian values, American values, against the "predators" that, supposedly, are the transgender persons. 

This whites only, Christian only, privileged thinking is further aided by a complacent and sometimes active co-conspirator/partner in the form of the right wing media, particularly Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Corporation. 

Columnist and political pundit Andrew Sullivan summed up Monday evening's RNC: 

The degeneracy of conservatism – its descent into literally mindless appeals to tribalism and fear and hatred – was on full display. You might also say the same about the religious right, the members of whom have eagerly embraced a racist, a nativist, a believer in war crimes, and a lover of the tyrants that conservatism once defined itself against. Their movement long lost any claim to a serious Christian conscience. But that they would so readily embrace such an unreconstructed pagan is indeed a revelation.

The problem is that as a whole, it seems that Americans are loathe to confront their demons, especially the grand daddy of them all: religious influence. While the First Amendment grants "freedom of religion," it also grants freedom FROM religion and the unholy marriage of the Christian right to the American body politic needs to have a divorce.

Americans need to confront the fact that white privilege exists, it is a reality, and it has no place in modern society. Americans need to wrap their arms around the fact that like in the other species that inhabit this planet, there are variants and natural occurrences and that human beings who are LGBTQ are just that; human beings. Americans need to recognise that the United States by no means is the "superior" culture and society in the global community.

Finally, Americans need to reevaluate a political process that allows a person like Donald Trump to even be considered as a viable candidate for the Office of President of the United States.

Very well said!

Ted Cruz’s Coup Against Right-Wing Queen of Hate

Over the years I have followed right wing :family values" groups to know what the enemy is up to so to speak.  One of the groups I have monitored is Eagle Forum - Phyllis Schlafly's organization that is steadfastly against women's rights, gay rights (even though Schlafy has a gay child) and which has a strong racist under current to it - like most lily white "Christian" organizations.  Moreover, Schlafly's an egomaniac with a ego as large as Donald Trumps - which is why she has been eager to endorse Trump's fascist agenda.  Now, in a delicious coup attempt, it appears that Schlafy is at risk of being dethroned from her organization by board members who support of Ted Cruz.  Making it more delicious, one of Schlafy's own children is seemingly are part of the would be palace coup.  Here are highlights from The Daily Beast:

One of the right-wing’s most prominent empires is reeling—and its president says it’s Ted Cruz’s fault.  

Eagle Forum, a conglomerate of conservative groups which anti-feminist icon PhyllisSchlafly started in 1972, has been rocked by inner turmoil over the last week that has pit family members against each other. 

And the group’s head, Ed Martin, says Cruz’s campaign is using its much-discussed “dirty tricks” to sow conflict in the organization as revenge for Schlafly’s endorsement of Donald Trump. 

Schlafly, one of conservatives’ most prominent and visible leaders, played a key role in blocking the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment, and her group claims 80,000 members.

Martin said the Cruz team set its sights on Eagle Forum when Schlafly endorsed the Texan’s opponent. And he said Cruz supporters in the organization leaked private emails to the campaign, and that Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, confronted him about statements in the leaked emails.

Since the first Republican nominating contest, the Cruz campaign has faced allegations that its staff uses underhanded and shady tactics to pull off wins. Cruz himself apologized to then-candidate Ben Carson for an email that went to Cruz supporters the day of the Iowa caucuses suggesting Carson was about to pull out of the race. And Trump regularly criticizes Cruz’s personal integrity, leading rally crowds in chants of “Lyin’ Ted! Lyin’ Ted!”

Not everyone blames Cruz, of course. Adams and other board members—allied against Martin—adamantly dispute that 2016 politicking had anything to do with recent tensions. Nevertheless, the rift shows just how tense this election cycle has become for the Schlaflys, one of the conservative movement’s founding families—and just how fast seemingly unassailable organizations can descend into chaos.

[T]he board passed resolutions to fire Martin as president of that particular organization and to take control of its bank account, which Martin said holds $4 million. When that happened, Schlafly dissented, registering her support for Martin. Martin’s leadership of a separate Eagle Forum group went unchallenged. 

Martin’s sudden firing threw Eagle Forum into chaos, with the anti-Martin board members and Schlafly herself issuing separate statements with contradictory explanations of what went down. It seems likely that more fights will come as Eagle Forum’s board and leadership struggle for power.

For some, these fights are personal. One board member who voted to depose Martin, Anne Cori, is Schlafly’s daughter. 

Cori endorsed Ted Cruz in January. Fellow board members Cathie Adams, Eunie Smith, Rosina Kovar, and Carolyn McLarty have all endorsed the Texas senator as well.

Schlafly didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast. But in an interview with World Net Daily, she indicated that she thinks the group’s troubles are political payback. “This is a complete takeover attempt,” she told the site. 

In my view, Schlafy is one foul individual and the collapse of her organization would be a positive development for America.  The ultimate irony is that while she blathers about "family values," the groups actual values are akin to those of the notorious Borgia family in Italy.  

Dennis Hastert Demonized Gays While He Was the True Predator

Dennis Hastert is the poster boy for all of the anti-gay Republicans who demonize and strive to stigmatize gays even as they seek gay sex on the down low or, in the case of Hastert, molest under aged boys.  Indeed, the pattern is so consistent, that the "godly folk" - if they had any brains (admittedly, a very big if) - ought to start immediately questioning Republicans who jump on the anti-gay bandwagon.   A piece by Michelangelo Signorile at Huffington Post looks at the utter hypocrisy of Hastert - and by extension other GOP homophobes.  Here are column excerpts:

No, it wasn’t African-American young men of the ‘90s — supposedly feral, “fatherless” and “godless” urban youth hell-bent on murder and mayhem — who were “super-predators,” a myth since exposed and which was created by the Princeton political science professor John DiIulio (who later became George W. Bush’s first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives) based on junk science.

The same twisted ideas that led to the “super-predator” myth, which we’ve seen raised and debunked again during the current Democratic primary race amid discussion of the 1994 crime bill, have been used by anti-LGBT religious conservatives to argue against marriage equality. They promoted the notion that gays would destroy “traditional marriage,” which supposedly would contribute to a breakdown in the family, causing deviant and dangerous consequences.

Some of those arguments against marriage equality were informed by a similarly debunked myth that gay men are likely to be sexual predators, the lie perpetuated by anti-LGBT hate mongers for decades, using junk science to exploit and further rampant homophobia in society in same the way the “super-predator” myth used it to exploit and further racism.

Meanwhile, the true example of a “super-predator” appears to have been former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a man who prosecutors now say molested at least 4 boys, including a 14-year-old and one who years later took his own life.

Worse yet, through the years, as he covered up the sexual assaults he committed as a wrestling coach back in Yorkville, Illinois, Hastert pushed policies and positions as a House member and as the Speaker of a far-right GOP majority from 1999 to 2007 that demonized gays in part by portraying gay men as sexual predators.

[As] a Politico report last year . . .  revealed that Hastert had a file in his office labeled “Homosexuals,” which included the sexual predator smear against gay men:

The records show that Hastert’s office kept a legislative file titled “Homosexuals,” filled with policy statements from social conservative groups like the Traditional Values Coalition and the Family Research Council that criticized same-sex marriage and Clinton administration efforts to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. The file also includes a 1996 Weekly Standard article, “Pedophilia Chic” that warned that “revisionist suggestions about pedophilia” were being embraced by the left.

The scurrilous Weekly Standard piece raged on about teens supposedly being lured into sex by adult gay men. The Family Research Council, whose statements filled Hastert’s “Homosexuals” file, has perpetuated the lie that gays are more likely to engage in sexual assault against boys — among the defamatory claims that earned it the label of “hate group“ by the Southern Poverty law Center — and its leader, Tony Perkins, has called pedophilia “a homosexual problem.”

The Hastert story is revolting on so many levels. He sexually assaulted boys who trusted him as their wrestling coach, scarring them for life. And while he covered it up over a period of decades, he also assaulted an entire minority group that was under a barrage of attacks from religious conservatives, continually denying them civil rights and demonizing them and pummeling gay people over and over again, with bill after bill, informed by lie after lie. If there’s a true definition of a super-predator, Dennis Hastert is it.

If there is a Hell, Hastert should have a special reserved seat - along with all the predator Catholic priests and the Popes, cardinals, bishops and others who covered up for them and aided and abetted their molestation of children and minors.  They are all cut from the same hypocrisy filled cloth. 

The Far Right's War on Christmas

It is Christmas Eve - not that it feels like it with today's 80 degree weather - and in the lead up to today and Christmas Day tomorrow we have heard much bloviating (and money begs) from the "godly folk" about liberals' and "secular humanists"war against Christmas.  These same folks will fill the pews either night or in the morning, consumed with self-congratulatory false piety while bearing hatred toward others.  Most will never have a thought about "peace on earth and good will to men" unless they coincidentally sing the phrase in a Christmas carol.  Meanwhile, many of us will opt to not join crowds in packed churches, yet we may likely give far more thought to the spirit of Christmas than the "godly folk" who seemingly are best defined by who they hate - which is virtually everyone who differs from they themselves in any way.  The parable of the Good Samaritan is a lost concept on them.  Two columns in today's Washington Post look at the members of the far right Christian crowd and their sycophants in the Republican Party who have done the most to make a mockery of Christmas and the Gospel message.  Here are excerpts from the first:

They were refugees, fleeing for their lives from one Middle Eastern country to the next. As Matthew tells the tale, Joseph, fearing that the government had marked his newborn son for death, gathered up his wife and child and stole away by night across the Judean border into Egypt. And just in time . . . . a king named Herod, who’d heard some kid would one day become a rival king — proceeded to slaughter every remaining child in Bethlehem under the age of 2. 

[I]t’s clear that the authors of the New Testament intended to recount (for the believers) or compose (for the nons) a story that echoed the Old Testament’s concern for strangers, foreigners and refugees (“The stranger among you shall be as one born among you,” says Leviticus, “and you shall love him as yourself”), that foreshadowed Jesus’ teachings to care for castaways and the least among us. . . 

Who’s really waging a war against Christmas in 2015? Secular multiculturalists who, stealthily and nefariously, have somehow rendered Starbucks’s coffee cups a tad less festive? Or the self-proclaimed culture warriors on behalf of traditional values, who demand we leave refugees — even small children, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has made pitilessly clear — at the mercy of the latter-day Herods? Who condemn entire religions? Who fear and loathe strangers?

It’s been a banner year for fear and loathing, xenophobia and racism. What has made the year genuinely ominous is the emergence of fictions presented (often, but hardly exclusively, by Donald Trump) as facts that legitimize a sense of both grievance and hatred . . . 

Fed by talk radio, Fox News and paranoid websites, millions of our compatriots dwell in a parallel universe of alternative realities. My colleague Dana Milbank has noted that the fashion among conservatives is to dismiss hard facts that clash with their alternative realities as “politically correct.” 

Such right-wing fictions have always hovered on the fringes of the body politic, but what has enabled them to go more mainstream is the sense of displacement — from their previous position as a majority race, a thriving class, a dominant religion — that is now widespread among the white working class Trumpites and the evangelical Christians flocking to Ted Cruz’s banner. The mission of right-wing media and pols has been to exaggerate some of that displacement (the threat to white America), play down other parts of it (the evisceration of blue-collar living standards by corporate America) and lay the blame for it all on minorities, foreigners, liberals, feminists, gays — you know the list.  

Enmities, and most certainly not love, have become the core of the right’s appeal and message this year, not just in the United States but also across Europe. . . . They are most surely at odds with the spirit of Christmas. Walls on the border, religious tests for admission, despising the poor — good thing Joseph and Mary didn’t have to encounter our modern-day defenders of the right as they scrambled from one country to another, desperate to save their son’s life.

The second column picks up this theme.  Here are highlights:

This will not be the first or the last Christmas when the world mocks the day’s promise and when religion finds itself a source of violence, hatred and, among many not inclined toward either, a dangerous mutual incomprehension.

Killing in the name of God is not a new thing in history, and nothing does more to discredit faith.

[A]s Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi in Britain , argues in his remarkable book “Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence,” believers must face the painful facts.  “Too often in the history of religion,” Sacks writes, “people have killed in the name of the God of life, waged war in the name of the God of peace, hated in the name of the God of love and practiced cruelty in the name of the God of compassion.” 

[R]eligion “is at its best when it relies on the strength of argument and example. It is at its worst when it seeks to impose truth by force.” And the strength of example must mean that those who preach religious peace and toleration should practice them. This is why the rank prejudice being shown against Muslims, usually for political reasons, is so destructive . . . .

[T]here is an important lesson in the Christmas story that, God willing, will be heard from many pulpits. “As we mull over the debate about refugees, let us remember the doors that were closed in the face of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem,” O’Malley said. “We must ask our leaders to be vigilant and protect our citizens, but at the same time we cannot turn our back on so many innocent people who are hungry, homeless, and without a country.”

Eboo Patel, an American whose argument in his book “Acts of Faith” parallels the lessons from Rabbi Sacks and Cardinal O’Malley.  “To see the other side, to defend another people, not despite your tradition but because of it, is the heart of pluralism,” Patel writes. “We have to save each other. It’s the only way to save ourselves.” 

As noted, the husband and I will not be attending church services to mark Christmas.  But I like to believe that our support of various charities and our efforts to see justice and equality meted out equally to all is in keeping with the essence of the Gospel message.  To celebrate Christmas and Easter while patting one's self on the back even as the larger Gospel message is utterly ignored is the height of hypocrisy.  Indeed, it is akin to the behavior of the Pharisees who Christ reportedly roundly condemned.  Yet we see this hypocrisy and hatred towards others displayed daily by right wing "family values" organizations and Republicans prostituting themselves to the Christofascist. 

 

The Hypocrisy of the "Family Values" Crowd

click image to enlarge

As regular readers know, I hold the Christofascists and their fellow "family values" allies in particularly low esteem.  Not only do they embrace ignorance and peddle hatred towards others, but they are all too often utter hypocrites.  The image above that I saw on Facebook sums up their hypocrisy well. 

The Party of White People”: How the Tea Party Took Over the GOP

I often bemoan what has become of today's Republican Party.   I continue to believe that the GOP's lurch toward lunacy traces back to the rise of the Christofascists in the party, the beginnings of which I witnessed near the end of my time as a GOP activist.  That cancer later morphed into the the so-called Tea Party movement, a movement that the mainstream media continues to fail to identify as largely the Christian Right hiding under a different label so as to not repel those not in lock step with the Christofascists' theocray agenda.  Regardless of the name applied to the two movements, both were at first cynically allowed to infiltrate the Republican Party by the so-called GOP establishment that thought it could control the extremists of the movement.  Time has shown that this conceit proved terribly incorrect.  A piece in Salon looks at the process that allowed extremists and outright lunatics to capture the party.  Here are highlights:

On the anti-intellectual fringe, the narrative about the Founders was taken up by absolutists and paranoids who supported citizen militias and the like. Yet even those not on the fringe supported the radical rhetoric. It was, in some sense, built into the movement. The logic of their argument—that conservatives were losing the country, that it had fatally departed from the Founders’ intentions, that the republican experiment required periodic revolutions to renew old values—suggested that extreme and uncompromising measures were necessary to restore the nation to the old ways.

The Republican leadership, by contrast, was made up of realists. Though establishment politicians had used similar revolutionary rhetoric often enough—since at least the time of Ronald Reagan—when it came to governing they recognized the limits of their power and the importance of incremental change. But with the Tea Party revolution, the rhetoric became harder to control. The conservative base had slipped its leash. 

As early as August 2009, David Frum, a speechwriter for George W. Bush, warned that conservatives were playing with fire. “All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence,” he wrote during the angry summer recess. “It’s not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric.”

Some commentators wondered if perhaps the Republicans had foolishly tried to ride the Tea Party tiger. It had been clear for some time that the Tea Party combined legitimate outrage over Democratic policies with more disreputable elements that tended toward extreme directions, a dialectic that the conservative columnist Matthew Continetti called “the two faces of the Tea Party.” One side sought to repair various “deformities” in American politics. The other, according to Continetti, was “ready to scrap the whole thing and restore a lost Eden.” One side was reformist. The other was revolutionary. One was responsible. The other was dangerous.

Unfortunately for the Republican leadership, the Tea Party seemed barely interested in governance. Tea Partiers wanted, above all else, a confrontation with the president regardless of the wisdom of the conflict. And because the 2010 freshman class was so large, Speaker John Boehner did not have a functional majority to pass bills without Tea Party support. That dynamic made Republican attempts to convert the posture of rage into actual policy initiatives difficult if not impossible.

[W]hat the Tea Party–led Republicans demanded—a massive cut to spending that would increase over time, a balanced-budget amendment that would permanently limit spending in the future, and the promise that these aggressive cuts would somehow balance the budget rather than creating recession and larger budget deficits—was unprecedented. There was no way that Obama could give even half of what the Tea Party faction demanded. So what would otherwise have been a routine maneuver in public credit of the United States. The Tea Party threatened to burn down the house in order to “save” it.

They [the Tea Party] professed to want to shrink government to unleash the capitalist system and they argued that not raising the debt ceiling would be a first step. But a default would have plunged the nation’s economy back into recession, which would have lowered tax receipts and massively increased the debt. And the default would have further raised the cost of borrowing, which would then further increase the debt. So not raising the debt ceiling as a first step in stopping the debt cycle would have, in fact, massively increased the deficit, added enormously to the debt, and thrown the nation’s economy into chaos.

[A]s the [20102] election returns came in, it became apparent how out of touch Republicans had become. Obama won in decisive fashion, 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206. Even more disturb-ing—at least for Republicans—was the demographic composition of those who voted from Romney versus those who voted for Obama. Romney lost nearly every important demographic with one exception: 88 percent of Romney voters were white. In a nation that was turning increasingly brown, those numbers suggested crisis.

Watching the agony unfold, Sam Tanenhaus, one of the keenest of political observers, came to a disturbing conclusion: the Tea Party–led GOP was headed to the most extreme Jeffersonian position, that of John C. Calhoun prior to the Civil War. . . .  Calhoun’s views on federal power and the Tenth Amendment became central in the emergence of the newly conservative politics.

The Jeffersonian argument about maintaining founding principles had degenerated into a Calhounian vision of state-sponsored nullification and retrenchment. “Denial has always been the basis of a nullifying politics,” Tanenhaus believed, but after the election it was obvious that “modernity could not be nullified.”

How would Republicans now respond? They could either abandon their form of antigovernance—with its genuflections toward the Founders, its simplistic solutions to complex problems, and its general tendency toward obstruction. Or the party would remain, Tanenhaus predicted, “the party of white people.”

As stated above, I believe that the Christofascists have been key in this move to make the GOP the party of white people.  Look at all of the major "family values" organizations and you find two key things: (i) their leadership and rank and file members are lily white and only reach out to blacks and Hispanics when they want them (read black pastors in particular) to act as their trained circus dogs, and (ii) most are descended from the same roots as the segregationists of the 1950's and 1960's, who favored white "Christian academies" over allowing their children to mix with blacks in integrated public schools.   Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation traces to the folks who supported "Massive Resistance" and uses "family values" pronouncements to hide it racist, anti-minority agenda. 

Why You Can’t Kill the Christian Right Yet

As noted in a post yesterday, the number of Americans identifying as Christians  is falling and the numbers of the "nones" is soaring.  Long term, this should be welcomed news to anyone who supports the concept of separation of church and state and who recognizes that religion's main fruit is hate and division.  The bad news is that evangelical Christians remain a metastasizing cancer in the Republican Party and they are increasingly becoming dominionists who want their toxic brand of Christianity to set public policy for America and seem only too happy to have America remain involved in crusades against non-Christian "infidels," especially in the Middle East.  Adding to the problem is the fact that the Christian Right has a large number of parasites both in the leadership of "family values" organizations and in the pulpits who continue to whip up persecution complexes among the mentally challenged ranks of their followers who seemingly will believe every liar and bogus conspiracy theory (ignorance, of course, is celebrated with these folks).  A piece in Salon looks at why sadly, we cannot count the Christian Right dead - at least not yet.  Here are highlights: 

The news cycle has been busy lately, so I don’t know if left-leaning political observers have yet had time to plan their victory dance over the latest Pew Poll on religion. But you can be sure that when they notice some of these numbers, we will soon be seeing another round of “ding dong the religious right is dead,” accompanied by the usual patting on the back and self-congratulations that goes with it. After all, something quite significant has started to shift, and at first glance it doesn’t bode well for social conservatives: There has been an 8 percent decline in the number of Americans identifying themselves as “Christian” since 2007, along with a 6 percent increase in the number who call themselves “atheist, agnostic, and otherwise religiously unaffiliated,” to nearly 23 percent of all Americans.

[T]he left has good reason to see the growth of non-believers as a welcome addition to their coalition. After all, it’s highly unlikely that these people will be welcomed into the party that boasts candidates who say things like Zach Dasher (the nephew of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson), who ran for congress in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Take presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who suggested that atheist government employees should be fired:

“Some of you are frustrated and even upset and angry about America, and I get it. And I say to you, the answer is as simple as it is that the answer to the phones in our hearts that God is ringing. When we register people to vote, when we get them to the polls to vote, when we hire the people that will take our values to this city, and when we fire the ones who refuse to hear not only our hearts, but God’s heart.”

[S]ecular voters are often more scientifically based and see an activist government as a useful tool to solve problems. They are hostile to ideas such as climate change denialism and creationism and are more tolerant of social change such as civil rights and marriage equality. There is no philosophical reason that secularists could not be conservatives — indeed, history is full of them. But the modern Republican party is so closely aligned with rigid social conservatism and so dependent upon the Christian Right as an organizing institution that most secularists are not at home in the party at all.

So this is good news, right?  Unfortunately, as Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches ably demonstrates, that’s probably not correct. While it’s true that many Catholics and mainline Protestants have apparently switched to “unaffiliated” (which could mean many things) the evangelicals haven’t missed a beat . . . 

Posner points to studies showing that they have actually evolved over many decades of political involvement into a movement based on a “narrative of Christian nationalism.” She also notes that this might be what has driven some people out of their traditional religious homes. Unfortunately, the unaffiliated don’t have a shared identity or common institutions the way the Christian conservatives do, so they may not be much of a political counterweight.

Finally, and most importantly, the difference between the unaffiliated, atheist, secularist, “nones” — whatever you want to call them — and the Christian Right is the fact that the latter are a highly organized political machine that is controlled by professional political operatives like Ralph Reed, who runs the Faith and Freedom Coalition. It gets it’s people to the polls. Posner notes the depressing numbers:

This group [of religiously non-affiliated] is simply not a coherent political faction in and of itself. And I have no idea how one might organize such a group. It may not even be possible to organize them along the lines of their religiously unaffiliated status. So perhaps it would be best to simply stow the champagne and put away the party hats for the time being, and get back to work organizing voters on political grounds. That will likely sweep up most of these folks anyway, and would be more in keeping with America’s traditional understanding of the need for separation of church and state.

Unfortunately, that happens to be one tradition conservatives have completely abandoned.

How the Christofascists Invented a White Supremacist Jesus

If one follows the websites of the leading "family values" organizations all of which constantly proclaim their allegiance to the Bible as I have done for many years now, one that quickly becomes apparent is that these organizations are shockingly lily white and seem to reach out to minorities only when they want black pastors in particular to act as their water carriers and perform as trained circus dogs.   The other thing that quickly becomes apparent is that most of these "family values" Christians have white supremacist roots and truly are open to white, conservative Christians who look and think like themselves.  Blacks, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities are not welcome.  This same mindset is now the norm for the Republican Party in the wake of the Christofascists' cancer like growth in the GOP.  A piece in Salon looks at how these "godly folk" have turned Jesus into a white supremacist savior.  Here are excerpts:

Just in time for Holy Week, the State of Indiana has passed a new Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The law explicitly permits for-profit corporations to practice the “free exercise of religion” and it allows them to use the “exercise of religion” as a defense against any lawsuits whether from the government or from private entities. The primary narrative against this law has been about the potential ways that small businesses owned by Christians could invoke it as a defense against having to, for instance, sell flowers to a gay couple for their wedding.

Any time right-wing conservatives declare that they are trying to restore or reclaim something, we should all be very afraid. Usually, this means the country or, in this case, the state of Indiana is about to be treated to another round of backward time travel, to the supposedly idyllic environs of the 1950s, wherein women, and gays, and blacks knew their respective places and stayed in them.
And given our current anti-Black racial climate, there is no reason to trust that these laws won’t be eventually used for acts of racially inflected religious discrimination, perhaps against Black Muslims or Muslims of Arab descent, for instance. Surely this kind of law in this political climate sanctions the exercise of Islamophobia.

As a practicing Christian, I am deeply incensed by these calls for restoration and reclamation in the name of religious freedom. This kind of legislation is largely driven by conservative Christian men and women, who hold political views that are antagonistic to every single group of people who are not white, male, Christian, cisgender, straight and middle-class.
Nothing about the cultural and moral regime of the religious right in this country signals any kind of freedom. In fact, this kind of legislation is rooted in a politics that gives white people the authority to police and terrorize people of color, queer people and poor women. 

This white, blond-haired, blue-eyed, gun-toting, Bible-quoting Jesus of the religious right is a god of their own making. I call this god, the god of white supremacy and patriarchy. 

The Christian lawmakers seeking to use the law to discriminate against gay people are indicative of every violent, unrighteous, immoral impulse that organized religion continues to represent in this country. I have said elsewhere recently that it is a problem to treat racism as if it will simply go extinct. But as I watch the religious right engineer pain and obstacles for queer people in America’s heartland, I find myself wishing that this particularly violent and vicious breed of Christianity would die off.

What this vocal contingent of the religious right is seeking to restore is not religious freedom but a sense of safety in expressing and imposing dangerous, retrograde and discriminatory ideas in the name of religion. I continue to support the free and unimpeded expression of religion.

We need to reclaim the narrative of Jesus’ life and death from the evangelical right. They have not been good stewards over the narrative. They have pimped Jesus’ death to support the global spread of American empire vis-à-vis war, “missions,” and “free trade,” the abuse of native peoples, the continued subjugation of Black people, and the regulation of the sexual lives of women and gay people.

Discredited Paul Cameron Continues to Depict Gays as Predators

One thing that has continually amazed me is that among the "godly folk" one can be an "expert" or "researcher" even though one has absolutely no credentials to legitimize ones claims.  Worse yet, one can have been thrown out of numerous reputable associations for fraudulent work and the dissemination of out right lies, yet still be heralded as a respected "expert" by Christofascist circles.  A case in point? Paul Cameron who was thrown out of every legitimate association he had belonged to almost 30 years ago and who was found by one federal judge to be pushing fraudulent research.  Right Wing Watch looks at the lies and poison Cameroun continues to peddle, including the claim that gays prey on children.  Here are excerpts:

The “Pray In Jesus Name” program on Tuesday featured the first segment in a multi-part, in-person interview that host Gordon Klingenschmitt conducted with notorious anti-gay “researcher” Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute and it turned out to be every bit as crazy as one would expect an interview between an anti-gay exorcist and an advocate for executing gays to be.

Klingenschmitt, who is currently the Republican nominee for a seat in the Colorado state legislature, asked Cameron if gay people “use molestation as a recruiting tool,” and Cameron assured him that they most certainly do.

“Homosexuals, from the get-go, as long as we have recorded history, have used the molestation of boys as a way to recruit to homosexuality,” Cameron declared, claiming that his “studies” have found that sixty percent of boys who reported that their first sexual experience was a same-sex experience grow up to be gay.

“So this is a tremendous recruitment tool,” he said. “If a gay can get to your son first, the chances are about 50-50, as near as we can tell, that your son is going to be a practicing homosexual to some degree.”

As I have said before, no on lies like the "godly Christian" crowd.

False Facts and the Conservative Distortion Machine

The "godly Christian" crowd that makes up the core of the Republican Party's ever more putrid party base blather incessantly about "family values" and "biblical values" yet no one lies and distorts the truth more than these people and their allies in the far right media outlets.  Fox News is a prime example, but the pattern of lies, deceptions and deliberate distortions is sadly the norm and not the exception when it comes to the "conservative media."  It's a prime example of the hypocrisy that is a principal characteristic of today's self-styled conservatives, many of whom simple care nothing about the truth even as the congratulated themselves on their supposed piety and righteousness.  A piece in Salon looks at the pattern of the lies and distortions that aim to brainwash and deceive the cretin filled GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

Citizens are misinformed — often badly so. It’s not just that they lack good information — which would merely make them uninformed — they have plenty of bad information that leads them to believe untrue things. Or more likely the other way around: They believe untrue things, and that leads them to collect — even invent — bad information to flesh out what they already believe.

This was vividly illustrated by a 1991 study that found that the more people watched TV during the first Gulf War, the less they knew about fundamental issues and facts, even as they were more likely to support the war. Wanting to believe that the U.S. was involved in a noble cause, for example, only 13 percent knew that when Iraq first threatened to invade Kuwait, the U.S. said it would take no action, while 65 percent falsely “knew” that the U.S. said it would support Kuwait militarily.

But the problem is hardly limited to this one example, or to issues of war and peace more generally. Misinformation in public life isn’t the exception, it’s the rule, and researchers have been grappling with that fact, and its implications, for some time now.

The study, “How Voters Become Misinformed: An Investigation of the Emergence and Consequences of False Factual Beliefs,” found that “voters’ values and partisanship had the strongest associations with distorted beliefs, which then influenced voting choices. Self-reported levels of exposure to media and campaign messages played a surprisingly limited role,” despite the presence of significantly mistaken “facts,” which were used to help construct the knowledge distortion index.

“Political debate and policymaking are hard enough, but if people from opposing ideological camps come in with their own sets of facts, that makes it really tough to have a vibrant debate that leads to good public policy,” Reedy said. “That’s a big part of why we created the knowledge distortion index and have been studying these issues, is to try to help figure out how to combat the problem of ideological distortion of political knowledge.”

“we looked at the connection between people’s distorted factual beliefs and their views on the public policy issues related to those. We ran statistical tests to see the effects of the typical factors on someone’s opinion on a policy issue — things like their demographics and political values — and also the impact of knowledge distortion. We found that knowledge distortion did indeed have an independent effect on one’s policy preferences . . .

“Our strongest results, I think, are just confirming that this values-based political knowledge distortion is happening and it’s having an independent effect on one’s vote choice,” he concluded.
As the study itself said:

Whatever future refinements may be made to the values-based distortion model, the unsettling evidence remains that many voters are systematically misinformed on political issues, and those erroneous factual beliefs appear to influence how they mark their ballot on election day.

This is a disturbingly serious problem for a political system that purports to not only reflect the “will of the people,” but that also respects reality as a basic matter of course. “Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams observed — a true man of the Enlightenment. “Facts are stupid things,” Ronald Reagan famously misquoted him. It’s painfully obvious whose world we’re living in now. It’s a good deal less obvious how to escape. 

Go to the website of any "family values" organization, Townhall.com, or Wing Nut Daily and you will see a deliberate distortion of facts aimed at pushing the ignorant to vote to support the Christofascist/ Tea Party agenda.

Refusing Sanctuary to Children in Need

Throughout its history, America has done some very horrific things ranging from what equates to the genocide of Native Americans, stealing Hawaii by overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy, retaining slavery decades after many European nations banned it, to mistreatment of the unfortunate.  Today, we are seeing the ugliest aspects of America along our southern boarders where "real Americans" - many who hypocritically claim to be Christians - are demonstrating and engaging in hateful behavior rather than allow children from Central America into this country.   If you want to know why I hold conservative Christians/Tea Party folks in such open contempt, just watch their behavior in parts of California, Texas and Arizona.  It is particularly telling that it is us agnostics, atheist and deists - liberals if you will who are upset by the horrible behavior of our fellow Americans.  A piece in the Dallas Morning News looks at the disgraceful behavior of these foul individuals.  Here are highlights:

Exactly 75 years and one month ago the St. Louis, a German trans-Atlantic liner carrying 938 Jewish refugees, was turned away from the United States, forced to return to Europe. U.S. law didn’t allow them sanctuary.

Today we are preparing to send 45,000 children back to Central American countries controlled by drug cartels that routinely torture, rape and kill children who refuse to work for them. So routinely, so often are children menaced that their families sent them away, alone, across thousands of miles on just the slimmest of hopes that they might be safe.

U.S. law doesn’t allow them sanctuary.

The St. Louis is famous now as a failure of compassion that haunts American history. It is so easy to imagine the despair of those passengers, forced to return to countries that would soon be overrun by the Nazis. It is difficult to imagine an America that would be so cruel and insensible to the terror of others. President Franklin Roosevelt is still held accountable for his failure to respond.

And now we have President Barack Obama promising to send the children back. We have an America demanding that he do so, and in fact, blaming his administration for not securing the borders more tightly so that those desperate Central American families would have had no hope at all that their children might find sanctuary.

There are differences, of course, between these children and Jews on the St. Louis.

These children didn’t arrive on an ocean liner. They walked through some of the most hostile, hot, barren, dangerous country in the world. No one knows how many died. Their parents weren’t with them. They were sent by poor families so terrified for their safety that they paid many thousands of dollars and entrusted their children to criminals hoping they might arrive in America and be safe.

We have heard their stories now. Stories of children who are publicly stripped naked and gang raped by drug syndicates. Stories of children maimed. Stories of children murdered.

Hearing how callous the world was to the suffering of Europe’s Jews, we are baffled. We wonder how that slaughter could have been allowed to happen. We wonder why countries closed their borders.

I don’t wonder anymore. I’ve listened to the politicians, read the editorials and heard the voices of American citizens demanding that terrified children be sent back into harm’s way.

Our hearts are not touched by these children. We want the law enforced. This is our country. Ours. And we don’t have to share it. Not now. Not 75 years ago.

We haven’t changed at all.

Why? It’s simple, really. A matter of us and them. Yes, these are children whom we’ll send back to be raped, maimed and killed. But they aren’t our children. Our children are precious.

If there is a Hell, I suspect that the largest numbers of those there will be the falsely pious "godly folk," the fundamentalist preachers, the bitter Catholic clergy and, of course, countless members of the Tea Party and members of falsely named "family values" organizations that market hate and bigotry against others.