The Religious Right's Hypocrisy Filled Battle on Trump’s Behalf

I have long argued that there is no group of individuals more immoral and morally bankrupt than the so-called "Christian Right" who I refer to as the Christofascists.   They feign piety and wear their fake religiosity on their sleeves even as they support Republicans pushing policies that are the antithesis of the Gospel message.  Hate, bigotry and misogyny are their hallmarks.  And then there is their allegiance to Der Trumpenführer, who as you will recall made these remarks:

You know and ...She used to be great. She’s still very beautiful.

I moved on her, actually. You know, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it.

I did try and fuck her. She was married.

You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything. . . . Oh, it looks good.

Yes, the infamous Access Hollywood tape.   Not exactly exemplary language in any context much less among those who claim to be devout Christians - although, they ceased to be that many years ago when white nationalism and GOP greed and bigotry driven politics became their true gospel.  Now, despite ample evidence that Donald Trump is a pathological liar and that the GOP policies that they support will harm millions of Americans, the Christofascists are rallying to Trump's defense.  Their moral bankruptcy is now complete.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at how low these people have stooped.  Here are excerpts:  

President Trump’s escalation of his inflammatory claims that Obama loyalists are out to get him, . . . .  has brought his Breitbart-fueled siege mentality to a new level of conspiracy-mongering.

A host of fact-checks and explainers have poked holes in Trump’s claims, pointing out that they lack any evidence or substantiation. But even as the mainstream media has attempted to re-attach the public to reality, another group of people is already showing signs that it may rise to his defense: the religious right.

In so doing, the religious right — a core Trump constituency — is revealing something interesting about the bond that these millions of Americans have formed with Trump. His religious-right defenders see themselves as warriors in an epic battle for Christian America, not unlike the one underlying the agenda envisioned by top Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon — and as Trump hunkers down, they are invested in the narrative that Trump’s critics are satanic enemies bent on destroying him.

White evangelicals are Trump’s most ardent supporters. A January Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 66 percent of white evangelicals had a favorable view of Trump, the only religious constituency boasting a majority with a positive impression of him. 

Now religious-right figures are rising to Trump’s defense in the battle over whether Obama tapped his phones. For instance, Charisma magazine, a leading source for charismatic and Pentecostal writings, is credulously citing Breitbart as proof of the need for a congressional investigation of Trump’s claim that Obama ordered the wiretap. Charisma has long been a cheerleader for Trump; during the campaign, it promoted widely disseminated comparisons of Trump to the Persian King Cyrus, referred to in the Book of Isaiah as God’s “anointed” one.

Meanwhile, the Christian Broadcasting Network, which has long provided Trump favorable coverage, has also lent support to Trump’s claim about Obama.

The larger context here is that the religious right is girding for a much longer fight alongside Trump. His signing of his new travel ban today will signal to the religious right that he remains a strong defender of their Christian nation. A Pew pollin February found that 76 percent of white evangelicals supported his original executive order, and a Public Religion Research Institute poll found that white evangelicals are the only constituency whose support for a Muslim ban has grown since last year.

The policy-focused segment of the religious right . . . .  regularly praise the president in the hopes that he will grant their wishes for nominations and appointments, and will eventually sign a broad executive order creating unprecedented religious exemptions for opponents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality and reproductive rights.

In a sense, what we’re seeing is a developing alliance of sorts between Breitbart and the religious right. Some of the religious right’s rhetoric about the Trump era has echoes in the worldview of Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and the mastermind of the Breitbart style.

[S]ome leading religious-right pundits appear ready to defend what they see as a Christian America, led by Trump, that is under attack by enemies, which include the left, the so-called “deep state,” Obama, a Muslim fifth column, and what they portray as immigrant and refugee criminal elements. 

This fuses two Trump allies in a shared belief in a civilizational showdown. With the White House giving all indications that it will stand by the notion that Obama wiretapped Trump’s phones, it would not be surprising if more religious-right figures rallied behind the claim, leading millions of evangelical Christian voters to believe it.

When the nation hopefully throws off the Trump regime - and hopefully, Congressional Republicans as well - one hope I have is that the Christofascists will have so discredited themselves and showed their moral bankruptcy that the exodus from religion becomes a stampede.  Both Trump and his Christofascist supporters are despicable and reprehensible.

Segregation, Not Abortion Formed the Religious Right

Jerry Falwell got his start fighting for segregation - Getty Images

I often note that most of the anti-gay "family values" organizations also have a strong undercurrent of racism, with many of the self-anointed leaders descended from active segregationists.  Indeed, Tony Perkins at Family Research Council has documented dealings with the KKK and has spoken at white supremacist gatherings.   These people only care about minorities, especially blacks, when it comes to suckering them into doing the bidding of the lily white family vales crowd.  Here in Virginia, one sees The Family Foundation play black pastors as if they were trained circus dogs.  A piece in Slate makes the case that what really caused the coalescent of the Religious Right wasn't a reaction to Roe v. Wade, but instead support for segregation and the Jim Crow laws. In Virginia during "Massive Resistance", many of the schools that whites fled to were so-called Christian academies, many of which still flourish today.  Here are excerpts from the Slate article:

The modern religious right formed, practically overnight, as a rapid response to the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade. Or, at least, that's how the story goes. The reality, Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth professor writing for Politico Magazine, says, is actually a little less savory to 21^st century Americans: The religious right, who liked to call themselves the "moral majority" at the time, actually organized around fighting to protect Christian schools from being desegregated. It wasn't Roe v. Wade that woke the sleeping dragon of the evangelical vote. It was Green v. Kennedy, a 1970 decision stripping tax-exempt status from "segregation academies"—private Christian schools that were set up in response to Brown v. Board of Education, where the practice of barring black students continued.

Desegregation, however, was a different issue altogether. Anger about forced desegregation of private schools galvanized conservative Christians. Bob Jones University stalled and resisted admitting black students, forcing the IRS to strip its tax exempt status in 1976, an event that spurred evangelical leaders to action. Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich, two conservative activists who had been seeking a way to marshal evangelicals into a Republican voting bloc, pounced. Balmer writes:

Weyrich saw that he had the beginnings of a conservative political movement, which is why, several years into President Jimmy Carter’s term, he and other leaders of the nascent religious right blamed the Democratic president for the IRS actions against segregated schools—even though the policy was mandated by Nixon, and Bob Jones University had lost its tax exemption a year and a day before Carter was inaugurated as president. Falwell, Weyrich and others were undeterred by the niceties of facts. In their determination to elect a conservative, they would do anything to deny a Democrat, even a fellow evangelical like Carter, another term in the White House.

The argument they used to defend school segregation will sound familiar to anyone following the lawsuits against mandatory contraception coverage in health insurance plans or the battles over whether businesses have a right to refuse gay customers: "religious freedom."

How did abortion eclipse pro-segregation as the rallying cause of the evangelical right? Balmer argues that Weyrich, in particular, was a sharp enough political thinker to realize that pro-segregation sentiment was enough to get the ball rolling, "but they needed a different issue if they wanted to mobilize evangelical voters on a large scale." They took their new coalition of evangelicals and pointed them in the direction of fighting abortion. The strategy worked.

[T]here was one other shift in the public consciousness going on at the time. The "Stop ERA" campaign, headed up by Christian right leader Phyllis Schlafly to kill the Equal Rights Amendment banning sex discrimination, got moving in 1972. By the time male Christian conservative leaders like Weyrich and Falwell decided to make abortion a centerpiece issue, Schlafly had done the yeoman's work of convincing huge numbers of evangelical Christians that feminists were a threat to the very fabric of society. With hostility to women's equality rising, making the anti-abortion pitch was probably much, much easier. 

Balmer notes at the top of his piece that it's common for anti-choicers to compare themselves to abolitionists. Once you know the pro-segregationist history of the religious right, however, it becomes clear that this comparison is not only obnoxious, but offensive. 

The bottom line?  Your Christian conservatives are not the nice people they pretend to be.  The truth is something quite different.

OWS vs. the Tea Party

Dan Nexon came up with the chart above - click on it to enlarge the image - that compares the strengths and weaknesses of the Tea Party versus the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. The good news is that the core constituency of the Tea Party is old white people, a group that is literally dying off, albeit perhaps not fast enough to save the country from damage flowing from their lunacy, and which represents a declining percentage of the public. I don't agree with everything that the OWS crowd wants, but they at least seem to be looking to the future while the Tea Party is all about the past, maintaining religious based bigotry, and rejecting modern scientific knowledge. They want to return to an America that in part never really existed and they want to maintain white supremacy.

The Link Between Religion and Anti-Gay Bigotry

I get called out on occasion by self-professed Christians who feel I am too hard on religion and religious individuals. I guess it's a matter of perspective. I view the issue from a legal/constitutional perspective. When viewed from this perspective, the right to religious freedom of one citizen stops when it imposes on (or destroys) the civil liberties of other citizens of differing beliefs. Yes, there are many LGBT accepting Christians, but they generally remain invisible - at least when it counts, including on main stream media broadcasts. Moreover, whether these offended individuals like it or not, there is an undeniable link between religious belief and the effort to stigmatize and demonize LGBT Americans (note the quoted passage in the image at left). An article in the Essex Human Rights Review sums up the linkage. Here are some highlights:

The anti-gay rights movement, . . . . propagates discrimination. This includes sodomy laws (which are discriminatory on the basis of sex and sexual orientation), and discrimination in various spheres such as employment, marriage, child adoption and guardianship, inheritance, health care, and education, in violation of the fundamental principle of equality before the law.

The Religious Right has been framing different values and beliefs against gays and their human rights. Among them are claims that homosexuality is immoral, unnatural and against God’s plan, that homosexuality and paedophilia are connected, and that gays pose a threat to society in general. Many of these claims are backed by conservative religious doctrines, . . . .

The fact that hostility toward the LGBT community in the Christian Right has been growing is an essential point that cannot be underestimated. It disproves the argument that ‘moral’ values are constant and invariable, and demonstrates that the religious conservatives have changed their position on homosexuality and have become increasingly antagonistic, especially as explicit opposition to other minorities has become socially unacceptable.

The rhetoric and reasoning of the anti-gay rights movement can be divided into two basic framing categories. The first one refers to the immorality of homosexuality. Since the bulk of such arguments is based on the Scriptures and people’s relationship to God, it can be argued that such arguments mostly target Christians, although this does not necessarily exclude others.

‘The Christian Right has been effective over the years in promoting the message that “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” should be the norm in any decent society.’ Therefore, it should be obvious that God has not created homosexuality, and consequently homosexuality works against the plan God has for humanity. A natural implication of such an argument is that people cannot be gay by birth. If God did not create homosexuality, it cannot be inherent in people. Gays choose to be gay, and it is because of their wrong choice that they are condemned.

To counteract the theory that homosexuality is inherent, Christianity Today asserts that ‘homosexuality is contrary to nature, and that it is part of degeneration of man that guaranteed ultimate disaster in the life and the life to come’ and that ‘those who practice it shall not inherit the kingdom of God.’57 By portraying homosexuality as a choice, the Religious Right opposes the gay rights movement’s argument that gays deserve the same rights as everybody else, just like women and ethnic minorities.

Since religious values, such as the story of creation, procreative sex, and a limited set of permissible sexual acts, are significant for conservative believers, the Religious Right focuses its appeals on influencing these people.

In the discourse on homosexuals and their human rights, however, the Religious Right seems to have dominated the agenda and liberal churches appear to be in a position of retreat. Although it seems that the attitudes of liberal churches are more positive and inclusive of LGBT populations, their voice is more subdued than the conservative outcries.

Robert Wuthnow argues that liberal Christians have let fundamentalists ‘set the agenda’. . . . Wuthnow describes liberal Christians as accommodating toward modernity and change, as a result of which they appear non-traditional. He further suggests that the positions of those Christians require complicated reasoning; and this, in turn, makes it more difficult for them to transmit their principles to their children. Because their positions are not so easily broadcast to the general public, liberal churches also appear less capable of framing their religious beliefs for the promotion of human rights of the homosexual.

[R]eligion is a very important source of evaluation of gays and lesbians. . . . Through framing, the Religious Right portrays religious beliefs and values in a way that appear anti-gay. There is no logical reasoning that gays pose a threat to society.

Big Business In Tennessee Side With Cristofascists

As AmericaBlog Gay is reporting, the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce - chaired by Nissan, and whose other board members include such companies as FedEx, AT&T, Comcast, DuPont, Pfizer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Caterpillar, KPMG, Whirlpool, Embraer, Alcoa, and United HealthCare all actively lobbied for a religious right bill in the Tennessee the purpose of which is to rescind Nashville's civil rights protections for gay and transgender citizens. But the bill goes even further: it bans every city in Tennessee from passing any civil rights laws, for anyone. It looks like I'll be canceling my Federal Express account today and selling some of the stocks I inherited from my late mother - FedEx being one of them. I also wish I'd know about Nissan's role - my daughter would be driving a different brand of vehicle. These corporations apparently feel free to show contempt for LGBT citizens. Well, that needs to be a two way street and the LGBT community needs to treat these companies with the same contempt that they demonstrate towards us. Please sign the petition to let these companies know that they will be paying a price. Here are some highlights on this corporate bigotry:
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Nissan . . . FedEx, AT&T, Comcast, DuPont, Pfizer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Caterpillar, KPMG, Whirlpool, Embraer, Alcoa, and United HealthCare - actively lobbied for a religious right bill. The bill passed yesterday. It's on its way to the state's Republican governor for his signature, unless he vetoes it.
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And these companies led the way in making it happen. And let me reiterate, these companies aren't just members of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce. These compares are all on the board of directors of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce. They run the TN Chamber.
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Make no mistake, this was legislative gay-bashing at its worst. The legislation was crafted by the religious right in order to repeal Nashville's new ordinance protecting gay and trans residents from discrimination. Apparently not discriminating against their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees was just too much to ask from FedEx, AT&T, Comcast, DuPont, Pfizer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Caterpillar, KPMG. Whirlpool, Embraer, Alcoa, and United HealthCare. According to the TN chamber of commerce, of which they all sit on the board, abiding by such protections would be too much of an "additional burden." Really? It's now a burden to simply not discriminate against your own employees? I'm a lawyer, it's really not that complicated of legal advice. Simply don't discriminate against your employees. How complicated is that? So why would these companies, as board members of the TN chamber, permit their own organization to kill this gay and trans civil rights law?
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And don't for a minute buy the chamber's excuse that this is about business, not prejudice. Every other minority is protected in the state under federal law. Gays and trans are not. The law was the idea of the religious right. The lead lobbyist on the law was the religious right. The only victim of the law was the LGBT community.

Randy Forbes Pushing Resolution on National Role of Religion

Just the other day we commented on Randy Forbes' rant against the hate crimes bills in the House of Representatives. Now Forbes is pushing a worthless resolution that has no purpose other than to provide orgasms to far right Christianists by "affirming the country’s “rich spiritual and religious history.” If Forbes were from anywhere in the Hampton's Roads area other than Chesapeake - one of the most reactionary cities in the area when it comes to social issues and recognizing the separation of church and state - he'd never dare introduce such a resolution, particularly when the nation has so many much more pressing issues that need to be addressed. And the GOP wonders why it is losing support and appearing increasingly irrelevant and/or delusional. If Randy wants some accurate information on this nation NOT being a Christian nation, all he needs to do is call me and I will gladly provided it. Here are some highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

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As U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes tries again to get Congress to approve a resolution affirming the country’s “rich spiritual and religious history,” he’s taking issue with President Barack Obama’s recent comments on religion and politics.

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During a visit to Turkey last month, Obama said, “One of the great strengths of the United States is, although I have mentioned we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
That’s just incorrect, Forbes said Wednesday.

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An identical resolution, introduced by Forbes last year, died in a congressional committee. This year’s measure, HR397, is co-sponsored by 24 other legislators, but it has drawn criticism from opponents who say it is revisionist history because it doesn’t include historical information that would contradict Forbes’ views.

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The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Forbes’ proposal “is not a fair or accurate representation of what religious liberty has meant in this country.” “This is done solely to score political points now and in the event it ever comes up for a vote, to chastise as non-religious those who don’t vote for it,’’ Lynn said.

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The Rev. Geoffrey V. Guns, pastor of Second Calvary Baptist Church in Norfolk, said . . . “I would have a little concern with someone who would want to legislate that America is a religious nation,” Guns said. “Then you have to say, 'Whose religion?’ and, 'Who is religious?’”

Christianist Crocodile Tears

It's a bit mind boggling, but the Christo-fascists like James Dobson and Tony Perkins and similar religious fanatics who do not hesitate to condemn and bad mouth others are whining and shedding crocodile tears over being referred to as the "Religious Right." These folks are as un-Christian as they come, lie incessantly, knowingly cite bogus research, and have turned bay bashing into a cottage industry, yet they cannot stand the fact that their own hateful actions have now given the term "Religious Right" an extremely negative connotation - especially among younger voters who are increasingly flocking to the Democratic Party. One account of the disingenuous tears is at Right Wing Watch which describes the whining as follows:

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It seems that leaders of the Religious Right are tired of being associated with the Religious Right because nobody likes the Religious Right. Unfortunately for them, they are the Religious Right and that is what we are going to keep calling them . . . . If the phrase "Religious Right" has negative connotations, it probably stems primarily from the fact that the people who have traditionally represented the Religious Right have caused it to, you know, have negative connotations.

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When people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson go on television and blame the 9/11 attacks on "pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, [and] all of them who have tried to secularize America," that is the sort of thing that tends to create negative impressions about the Religious Right.

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Christianity Today provides some quotes from some of the worse hate merchants (e.g, Gary Bauer, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Tony Perkins of FRC, and a spokesman for Focus on the Family) who seek kid glove treatment for themselves even though they give none to others. Perhaps if they did not act like fascists and did not make hate towards other their stock in trade the term would not be viewed so negatively. Here are some highlights:

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However, several politically conservative evangelicals said in interviews that they do not want to be identified with the "Religious Right," "Christian Right," "Moral Majority," or other phrases still thrown around by journalist and academia. "There is an ongoing battle for the vocabulary of our debate," said Gary Bauer, president of American Values. "It amazes me how often in public discourse really pejorative phrases are used, like the 'American Taliban,' 'fundamentalists,' 'Christian fascists,' and 'extreme Religious Right.' "

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[M]any groups would rather distance themselves from the Religious Right, even though they may agree on several political issues. Richard Land said he corrects numerous reporters who call him a leader of the Religious Right, explaining that he represents a group of Southern Baptists who would probably consider themselves conservative evangelicals.

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Coming up with the best term to describe religious groups who are politically conservative can be tricky for writers. Rice University sociologist Bill Martin, who authored the book With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, resists the term "religious conservative" because it has connotations with a group that identifies itself as theologically conservative.

The Ongoing Christianist Menace

As 2008 comes to an end, a retrospective shows that the Christianists scored some significant victories - Proposition 8 and other anti-gay ballot initiatives being among them - even as the younger generations seem to increasingly reject the anti-gay mantra of hate merchants such as James Dobson, the men at Concerned Women for America, et al. But we cannot let down our endeavors for defeating the rabid Christianists who in their own way are just as big a danger as the radical Muslim fundamentalists. Both groups seek to impose an intolerant and brutal religious belief system on all people. As such, the message is clear: LGBT Americans and others who oppose theocratic government must keep up the battle to blunt the undermining of the separation of church and state.

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As I have noted numerous times, while they whine incessantly about religious freedom and endeavor to depict themselves as victims of religious persecution, it is in fact the Christianists who despise religious freedom - for all but themselves - and who seek to undermine the religious pluralism that has made the USA successful in the past. Frederick Clarkson has a column that does a good retrospective on 2008. Here are some highlights:

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For a year or more in the run-up to the elections, we heard claims that the Religious Right is dead, dying or irrelevant and that the so-called Culture Wars are over, or about to be. Such declarations have turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There are many reasons for the staying power of the Religious Right. Among them is an extraordinary infrastructure developed over decades, especially at the state level.

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The Religious Right is on a mission, or rather a cluster of interrelated missions. They are religious in nature and transcend not only electoral outcomes but the lives of individuals and institutions. . . . For the aggressors in this largely one-sided war -- war is not merely a metaphor. It is far more profound and animating idea, stemming from conflicts of "world view," usually described as a "Biblical World View" against everything else. That is why we have seen decades of violence against abortion providers and against LGBT people, and almost nothing from other sides who are merely exercising their civil rights to believe differently or to seek greater equality under the law.

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[T]he Religious Right remains strong in the Republican Party, but that it intends and is capable of, waging and winning theocratic battles against LGBT and women's civil and human rights, as well as disrupting secular public education.

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There is a religious war going on in America in which one side seeks to thwart, and even to roll back, advances in civil rights. This poses one of the central challenges of our time for those of us who are not part of the Religious Right; those of us for whom religious pluralism and constitutional democracy matter, along with such closely related matters as reproductive freedom, marriage equality and free, quality and secular public education.

The GOP Conniption Fits Over Huckabee Continue

This interesting article from Power Line Online (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/01/019467.php) lays out what many in the GOP see happening if Mike Huckabee were to win the GOP nomination. Frankly, it is precisely what I hope will happen because it is the only way the Party will ever save itself from the Christianist strangle hold of the Frankenstein Monster that Karl Rove, Bush and others created out of expediency of the moment as opposed to a long term view. The GOP may be on the verge of finally reaping what it has sowed for the last decade or so. Here are some highlights:

It’s been a long time in coming. For years the Republicans have depended on evangelical voters to assure them control of the White House and at least a fighting representation in both houses of Congress. Sooner or later their most reliable, most motivated constituency would want more than just verbal assurances of support or even votes on issues of importance—abortion, gays in the military, and so forth. Eventually evangelicals would want a president of their own.

With Mike Huckabee’s victory in Iowa, however, the Republican party is now entering what might be called its Jesse Jackson moment. If Huckabee goes on to win more primaries he will have a reasonable claim to the nomination. He may, of course, lose New Hampshire, New York, California and Michigan. But let’s suppose that he manages to win enough primaries in the southern and border states to make the results in those three states irrelevant. It’s all a question of numbers. In spite of itself, the party might end up with him as its nominee, and with it, heading down the shortest road to disaster since the Goldwater debacle of 1964.

Make no mistake about it: an electoral defeat of these dimensions would represent a major watershed in the history of the Republican party. It would be faced with only two possible roads forward. One is to become the party of the religious right, a sectarian agglomeration somewhat like the small ethnic parties in inter-war Europe, perhaps capable of holding some governorships and seats in Congress but never again competitive in a presidential election. The other would be to cut itself free from the religious right and seek to appeal to the wide and growing tranche of independent voters who are socially liberal but economically conservative. In that case the Republican party would gradually resemble some of the “liberal” (that is, conservative) parties who periodically win national elections in Western Europe or Canada. These parties are friendly to market-based solutions to economic problems—that is, they are broadly libertarian.

Think this is impossible? Think again. The business of politicians is first and foremost to get elected, not to preach sermons. A Huckabee nomination would not merely assure a Democratic presidential victory but gains in both houses and a Supreme Court packed with justices somewhat resembling Ruth Bader Ginsberg. But the news is worse than that: even a Huckabee victory in the race to the White House (as difficult as it may be to imagine at this point) would also toll the death kneel of the Republican party as we have known it.