The Coming Demise of Evangelicals as a Political Force

One of the continuing toxic poisons in American politics is, in my view, white evangelicals who seek to impose their reactionary and exclusionary views on all citizens.  Over the last decades, this toxic mindset has taken over the Republican Party and, when looks at the history of the evangelical movement, has made white supremacy a pillar of today's GOP.  The good news is that the political power of the white evangelicals may be about to plummet as younger evangelicals are walking away from what has become a partisan religious movement defined by hatred of others.  A piece in Newsweek looks at what is hopefully the beginning of the end of white evangelical political power, an end hastened in part by evangelicals' embrace of Donald Trump, a man who is the embodiment of everything a true Christian should oppose and find abhorrent. Here are article highlights:

Alex Camire left the church a few months before his pastor announced from the pulpit that the election of Donald Trump was “a miracle of the Lord.”

The 29-year-old Connecticut social worker had been raised in the evangelical tradition; his parents were married in it. But Camire’s faith had started to fail a decade earlier when his church deemed his mother’s alcoholism—and his parents’ subsequent divorce—a sin. Later, a secular college education taught him that “the world”—the community outside the church—wasn’t going to drag him into a cesspool of sex and drugs, as he’d been taught from childhood. His pastor’s outspoken support of Trump convinced him he’d made the right decision.

Californian Jason Desautels similarly began to doubt his faith as a teen. In the week after the Oklahoma City bombing, his church’s minister railed against “sand people” and Muslims. “When it came out that the bomber was a white nationalist, he didn’t apologize or even say anything,” Desautels recalls. “And the adults seemed to be all fine with it. That planted the seed.”

Later, as an Army infantryman in Iraq, Desautels, now 39, moved further from the church. “I was in the land of Father Abraham,” he says. “I had this weird spiritual moment when I realized that these families had lived in this neighborhood for longer than America had been a nation, and here we were telling them what to do.” He cut ties completely with his church after his sister came out as gay and felt she had to apologize to their parents.

Blake Chastain, 35, entered Indiana Wesleyan University the week of 9/11, with hopes of graduating from the seminary. Instead, he began to fall away from the church when he couldn’t reconcile what he was learning in Bible study with his professor’s support for the Iraq War. “Conservative Christianity,” he says, “was at odds with the teachings in the Bible.”

All three men are on the front lines of a growing movement among millennials that is reshaping the evangelical church and the nation’s political landscape. Since the 1970s, white evangelicals have formed the backbone of the Republican base. But as younger members reject the vitriolic partisanship of the Trump era and leave the church, that base is getting smaller and older. The numbers are stark: Twenty years ago, just 46 percent of white evangelical Protestants were older than 50; now, 62 percent are above 50. The median age of white evangelicals is 55. Only 10 percent of Americans under 30 identify as white evangelicals. The exodus of youth is so swift that demographers now predict that evangelicals will likely cease being a major political force in presidential elections by 2024.

To be sure, evangelical Christians have been rewarded for their support of Trump after enduring eight years wandering in Barack Obama’s political desert. They have two new conservative Supreme Court justices, and there have been nine self-professed evangelical Cabinet members, plus a flurry of laws and executive orders clamping down on gender roles, abortion and LGBTQ rights. But experts say this may represent the last bounty for a waning political power. Unlike their parents, the younger generation is not animated by the culture wars; many are pushing for social justice for migrants and LGBTQ people and campaigning against mass incarceration—positions more in line with the Democratic Party. 

The result is a shrinking conservative bloc, something that could weaken white Christian political power—and, consequently, a Republican Party that has staked its future on its alliance with the religious right. It’s a conundrum that the father of modern GOP conservatism, Barry Goldwater, predicted in 1994: “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem.”

The association of the religious right and the Republican Party has its roots in the 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, after which white Southerners began to flee public schools following forced desegregation. They opened so-called segregation academies: religious schools that were tax-exempt. When the IRS came after evangelical colleges like Bob Jones University, which officially prohibited interracial dating, the schools were faced with losing their tax-exempt status.

That would have meant financial doom. But a Republican activist named Paul Weyrich—with patronage from Western segregationist beer billionaire Joseph Coors—forged alliances with Southern religious leaders like Jerry Falwell and successfully lobbied to soften IRS enforcement. . . . Republican strategists used the issues of abortion and gay marriage to cement the union and drive right-leaning Christians into the voting booth.

But demographic trends are steadily diluting their outsize clout. Researcher Robert Jones, author of The End of White Christian America, has tracked what he calls a “stair-steps downward trajectory of white Christian presence in the electorate.” In 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected, 73 percent of the electorate was white and Christian. By 2012, that number was 53 percent. “If current trends hold steady, 2024 will be a watershed year—the first American election in which white Christian voters do not constitute a majority of voters,” Jones, who heads the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), tells Newsweek.

[T]heir ranks are now dwindling, driven largely by the youth exodus. According to Jones, white evangelicals constituted 21 percent of the U.S. population when Obama was elected in 2008. Eight years later, in 2016, that number dropped to 17 percent. Today, they make up 15 percent of Americans.

For an analogy, he uses Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s landmark “stages of grief” experienced by the dying and their loved ones to describe what’s happening to evangelicals and American politics. First comes denial, then anger, followed by bargaining, depression and acceptance.

“We are past denial. People see the writing on the wall in terms of demographic change. And that is also why we see immigration taking over and becoming the flagship issue. That and a wall symbolize the resistance to this demographic change,” Jones says. “I think we are somewhere between anger and bargaining. And in many ways, this shotgun marriage between Trump and white evangelicals happened under some duress and is a desperate bargain that you make at the end of life. That is what we’re really seeing here.”

To understand what’s happening among evangelicals, researchers study the results of PRRI’s annual, wide-ranging, 80,000-interview American Values Atlas poll. In the most recent survey, from 2017, 40 percent of individuals under 30 claim “no religious affiliation” (sometimes called “the nones”). “White evangelicals are a big part of that decline,” Jones says. . . . “They cite partisanship,” Jones says. “That’s a big turnoff for young Americans. And so is negative treatment of gay and lesbian people.”

Polls find that upward of 80 percent of young people now support same-sex marriage. That number includes young Republicans and evangelicals under 30. . . . Some major evangelical leaders and thinkers, not surprisingly, reject this assessment.

Christopher Maloney, 32, was raised evangelical, stepped away from his faith and has released a documentary film on the exvangelical movement called In God We Trump. He disagrees with Moore that young evangelicals like him will come back to the fold.

“People around my age and younger were already deconstructing their evangelical faith in large numbers before Trump came along,” he says. “What the 2016 election did was accelerate what was already happening. We had begun edging toward the doors, and when evangelicals embraced Trump we bolted outside. To be honest, I don’t see a return of younger generations to the church as we know it.”

They aren’t interested, he says, in going to a central place to worship anymore, particularly when those fellow churchgoers are Trump supporters. “Millennials largely live by Christian ethics without any formal doctrine or dogma,” he says. “We just don’t need a religious structure to tell us how to be kind to one another.”

The disaffected ranks include women like Dawne Marx, a 53-year-old Texas mother of five, who walked away from her church community in 2016 after decades of voting with the evangelical fold. “I was a single-issue voter, a pro-life voter,” she tells Newsweek. “It was so nice and tidy. I didn’t have to think about anything else.”

Then she saw the images of family separations at the Mexican border and listened as the president casually dismissed the Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi:

“All of a sudden there is Trump. And children wrapped up in aluminum blankets in cages and this crass, crude man, on a daily basis, saying things like, ‘OK, so a journalist got chopped up.’ And he’s saying, ‘We have a $100 billion contract, and there are a lot of jobs on the line.’ It’s like: They chopped somebody up!”

As one of the individuals in the article correctly noted, conservative Christianity is at odds with the teachings in the Bible.  It has become the home of modern day Pharisees who are the antithesis of what Christians should be. It deserves to die. 

The Death of Christianity in the America

I have often made the argument that if Christianity dies in America it will be because of the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who are literally killing the Christian brand with many, but especially the younger generations.  They have made Christianity a message of hate and hypocrisy and their long success in conning the public into believing that they are nice and decent people seems to be coming to an end.  I was very surprised to see this argument made in a column in of all places Baptist News Global.  Here are highlights from the column which is spot on: 

Christianity has died in the hands of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism ceased being a religious faith tradition following Jesus’ teachings concerning justice for the betterment of humanity when it made a Faustian bargain for the sake of political influence. The beauty of the gospel message — of love, of peace and of fraternity — has been murdered by the ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers who have sold their souls for expediency. No greater proof is needed of the death of Christianity than the rush to defend a child molester in order to maintain a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Evangelicals have constructed an exclusive interpretation which fuses and confuses white supremacy with salvation. Only those from the dominant culture, along with their supposed inferiors who with colonized minds embrace assimilation, can be saved. But their salvation damns Jesus.

To save Jesus from those claiming to be his heirs, we must wrench him from the hands of those who use him as a façade from which to hide their phobias — their fear of blacks, their fear of the undocumented, their fear of Muslims, their fear of everything queer.

Evangelicalism has ceased to be a faith perspective rooted on Jesus the Christ and has become a political movement whose beliefs repudiate all Jesus advocated. A message of hate permeates their pronouncements, evident in sulphurous proclamations like the Nashville Statement, which elevates centuries of sexual dysfunctionalities since the days of Augustine by imposing them upon Holy Writ. They condemn as sin those who express love outside the evangelical anti-body straight jacket.

Christianity at a profit is an abomination before all that is Holy. From their gilded pedestals erected in white centers of wealth and power, they gaslight all to believe they are the ones being persecuted because of their faith.

Evangelicalism’s embrace of a new age of ignorance, blames homosexuality for Harvey’s rage rather than considering the scientific consequences climate change has on the number of increasing storms of greater and greater ferocity. To ignore the damage caused to God’s creation so the few can profit in raping Mother Earth causes celebrations in the fiery pits of Gehenna.

Evangelicalism forsakes holding a sexual predator, an adulterer, a liar and a racist accountable, instead serving as a shield against those who question POTUS’ immorality because of some warped reincarnation of Cyrus. Laying holy hands upon the incarnation of the very vices Jesus condemned to advance a political agenda — instead of rebuking and chastising in loving prayer — has prostituted the gospel in exchange for the victory of a Supreme Court pick.

Evangelicalism either remained silent or actually supported Charlottesville goose steppers because they protect their white privilege with the doublespeak of preserving heritage, leading them to equate opponents of fascist movements with the purveyors of hatred.

You might wonder if my condemnation is too harsh. It is not, for the Spirit of the Lord has convicted me to shout from the mountaintop how God’s precious children are being devoured by the hatred and bigotry of those who have positioned themselves as the voice of God in America.

Like many women and men of good will who still struggle to believe, but not in the evangelical political agenda, I too no longer want or wish to be associated with an ideology responsible for tearing humanity apart. But if you, dear reader, still cling to a hate-mongering ideology, may I humbly suggest you get saved.

Wow!  And, yes, the author is correct.

As the gay haters of the American evangelical Christian and professional Christian crowd (and their political whores in the GOP) continue to rant and rail against gays and work to obstruct anti-bullying initiatives, it is comforting to realize that they are losing the war.  Especially among the younger generations.  At a recent anti-bullying event in the United Kingdom, Prince William joined the growing throng of those who condemn homophobia and religious based bullying.  The Daily Mail looks at the event which will no doubt cause wailing fromt he dying far right Christofascists in the UK.  Here are highlights:  

William took part in a training session at Hammersmith Academy in West London focusing on cyber-bullying and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual bullying. 

During an hour-long training session William vowed that if he saw anyone bullying a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender‎ person he would step in and confront the abuser after comforting the victim.

'I would try to confront, to tackle the person. I usually find myself right in in the middle of problems so that's pretty much where I'd be,' he said during an LGBT session where participants were asked to stand on one side if they would comfort the victim, on another if they would confront the perpetrator, or at the back if they would adopt another strategy.

‎His support for confronting the homophobic bully was hailed as the 'embodiment' of Princess Diana's legacy and a landmark moment by Tom Broughton, 17, who had told the Duke of Cambridge how an anonymous online stalker had urged him to kill himself after he came out as gay when he was in his final year of secondary school.

This is about bringing bullying into the open and creating a network of communication, which allows people to speak up and speak out.  'It's a real honour and privilege to have Prince William here recognising the issue and highlighting awareness of it.'

Alex Holmes, the head of the Diana Award's Anti-Bullying Campaign, said: 'The very fact that William is adding his weight to quite complex issues such as LGBT bullying and cyberbullying has already made a difference. 'We've seen calls to the charity this morning because the duke is standing up to bullying people are coming forward.

1 in 3 American Young Adults Identify as Bisexual

Brace yourself for spittle flecked rants that "the gay agenda" is turning America's youth gay or at least bisexual.  A study (which can be found here) that followed on the heels of one in the UK looked surveyed Americans an just shy of a third of young Americans said that they aren’t “100% heterosexual."  Bryan Fischer, Maggie Gallagher and Victoria Cobb will be no doubt apoplectic.  Older Americans claim to be much less bisexual, although the older generations are much more experienced in denial - both to themselves and the rest of society.  The Advocate looks at the study findings.  Here are story excerpts: 

[H]alf of the U.K.’s young adults aren’t “100% heterosexual,” new research indicates one-third of American young adults feel the same way.  [R]esearchers for YouGov used a modified Kinsey scale to measure sexuality by asking participants to place themselves on a range between "exclusively heterosexual" and "exclusively homosexual."

According to the study, “Overall 78% of Americans say that they are completely heterosexual while 4% say that they are completely homosexual. 16% of American adults say that they fall somewhere in between. In this group, the bulk of the respondents (10%) said that they are more heterosexual than homosexual, while 3% put themselves in the middle, and another 3% say that they are predominantly homosexual.”

Yet a percentage of those who classified themselves as heterosexual admitted to having same-sex experiences. “A large number of Americans who classify themselves as heterosexual still admit to having had same sex experiences. 12% of heterosexual American adults say that they have had a sexual experience with someone of the same sex. “

Notably, the study found that the older someone is, the less likely they are to say their sexuality is on the bisexual spectrum. According to the researchers, “24% of people aged 30 to 44 say that they're somewhere on the scale of bisexuality, compared to 8% or less of over-45s.”

Click image to enlarge

How ISIS Drives Muslims From Islam

There is yet another parallel it seems between Christian fundamentalists and ISIS: both are driving younger generations away from their respective religious because of their hate and bigotry and, in the case of ISIS, grotesque brutality.  As noted before, the basic mindset of both groups is the same: force hate-filled, ignorance beliefs onto all rather than face the fact that fundamentalist belief is based on lies and myths.  Both religious movements depend on ignorant and/or psychologically disturbed believers to survive.  A column in the New York Times looks at how ISIS is creating atheists out of former Muslims.  Here are excerpts:

THE Islamic State has visibly attracted young Muslims from all over the world to its violent movement to build a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. But here’s what’s less visible — the online backlash against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, by young Muslims declaring their opposition to rule by Islamic law, or Shariah, and even proudly avowing their atheism. Nadia Oweidat, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who tracks how Arab youths use the Internet, says the phenomenon “is mushrooming — the brutality of the Islamic State is exacerbating the issue and even pushing some young Muslims away from Islam.”

BBC.com published a piece on what was trending on Twitter. It began: “A growing social media conversation in Arabic is calling for the implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, to be abandoned. Discussing religious law is a sensitive topic in many Muslim countries. But on Twitter, a hashtag which translates as ‘why we reject implementing Shariah’ has been used 5,000 times in 24 hours. The conversation is mainly taking place in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The debate is about whether religious law is suitable for the needs of Arab countries and modern legal systems.

. . . . there’s not a single positive example of it bringing justice and equality,’ one man tweeted. ... A Saudi woman commented: ‘By adhering to Shariah we are adhering to inhumane laws. Saudi Arabia is saturated with the blood of those executed by Sharia.’ ”

In this recent segment on YouTube, which has been viewed 500,000 times, Brother Rachid addressed President Obama:

“Dear Mr. President, I must tell you that you are wrong about ISIL. You said ISIL speaks for no religion. I am a former Muslim. My dad is an imam. I have spent more than 20 years studying Islam. ... I can tell you with confidence that ISIL speaks for Islam.

He continued: “I ask you, Mr. President, to stop being politically correct — to call things by their names. ISIL, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabab in Somalia, the Taliban, and their sister brand names, are all made in Islam. Unless the Muslim world deals with Islam and separates religion from state, we will never end this cycle. . . . . Mr. President, if you really want to fight terrorism, then fight it at the roots.

ISIS, by claiming to speak for all Muslims — and by promoting a puritanical form of Islam that takes present-day, Saudi-funded, madrassa indoctrination to its logical political conclusion — has blown the lid off some long simmering frustrations in the Arab Muslim world.

[S]ome seem to be quietly detaching from religion entirely — fed up with being patronized by politically correct Westerners telling them what Islam is not and with being tyrannized by self-appointed Islamist authoritarians telling them what Islam is. Now that the Internet has created free, safe, alternative spaces and platforms to discuss these issues, outside the mosques and government-owned media, this war of ideas is on.

Let's hope the trend continues and that more and more will quietly abandon Islam.  The sooner fundamentalist religion of all faith - or perhaps religion, period - disappears, the better the world will be. 

The Church of England - A Glimpse at Christianity's Future in America?

Survey after survey show that younger Americans - especially those under age 30 - are leaving organized religion, principally Christianity, in droves.  A large part of this exodus is the result of (i) the extreme anti-modernity/anti-science position of many denominations and (ii) the hypocrisy and homophobia of most Christian denominations (even within the ELCA every issue of the Lutheran has some Neanderthal ranting against the ELCA's acceptance of gays).  As bad as thing are now, it is likely that the exodus of the younger generations will only accelerate as the numbers of the "Nones" increase exponentially.  If one wants a  glimpse of where Christianity may be in America in the future, a look at the Church of England and its reactionary morality may be most informative.  Here are excerpts from a piece in Religion Dispatches:

At last. The Church of England’s General Synod has voted to allow women bishops. A disastrous failure to do so in 2012 preceded Rowan Williams’s departure as Archbishop, and led to huge public and political pressure to secure the “Yes” vote this time. It’s taken so long to get here (women were first ordained priests in 1994), and created such bad feeling, that the “victory” feels a bit hollow. The whole tale reveals a lot about the Church of England’s problems, and the position of religion in a liberal society.

The CofE remains the largest religious constituency in Britain, with a third of the population still calling themselves Anglican. But whether we look at church attendance, adherence, or baptism and funerals, decline is sharp. For those aged over-60 Anglican is the majority identity; for each younger generation it’s increasingly a minority identity. Only about five percent of young people now call themselves Anglican.

There are many reasons for this, but one is a church hierarchy which has fallen out of step with the moral convictions of its members. Since the 1980s the latter have been getting more liberal on moral matters, and more committed to freedom and equality, while the former have been travelling in the opposite direction. 

My surveys of Anglican beliefs and values show just how much the “values gap” between leaders and people has widened with every generation. Only 1% of Anglican churchgoers now say they rely on their religious leaders when seeking guidance and making decisions. When it comes to the two most controversial contemporary moral debates—on same-sex marriage and assisted dying—a majority of Anglicans are now in favour, whereas their leaders are united in opposition.

A similar gap has long been evident between the Church’s official teachings and its members’ views about women clergy. A mere 11% of Anglicans and 8% of the general population say that they approve of their church’s policies on women.

[C]hurch leaders have stalled on the ordination of women because of their deference to two small but vocal minority parties within the CofE: Anglo-Catholics at one end of the ecclesiological spectrum, and the conservative evangelicals at the other. Together they represent less than 15% of Anglicans.

When I ask young people who have a negative attitude to the CofE why they hold that opinion the most common reason is that the Church is sexist and homophobic.

There’s a popular argument that illiberal forms of religion do better than liberal forms, even in liberal societies. I don’t believe it’s that clear-cut. It’s true that religious authorities have taken a “post-liberal” turn since the 1970s, but the growing rise of “no religion,” first in Europe and then the USA, is in part a reaction against this. The idea that your average Anglican in Britain yearns for “stricter” religion is demonstrably false. They would, however, have preferred a church which was more responsive to their moral convictions, and better able to accommodate the diversity of their views.

To date, the Catholic Church in America and the Southern Baptist Convention to name just two denominations seemingly are Hell bent to follow the Church of England's downward spiral.  Becoming denominations of the elderly and experiencing growth only in backward, uneducated regions of the world such as Africa don't hold out promises of long term denominational survival.

Five Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Winning

The Christofascists like to attribute advances in gay rights in America to wealthy gays and their activism, the nebulous "gay agenda," and to "unelected judges" among other things.  The truth, of course, is something very different.  Moreover, as an analysis piece in Religion News Service points out, some of the advances in gay rights have been spurred by the Christofascists own hate-filled and bigoted behavior.  This is especially true with younger voters who increasingly, thanks to the Christofascists, want nothing to do with institutional religion whatsoever.  Note too the power of coming out in changing hearts and minds.  Here are some excerpts:

So what changed? The issue is far from settled — and some conservatives insist that it never will be — but pro-gay groups clearly have the momentum. Here’s why:

1. Rapid cultural shifts

The culture changed faster than conservatives thought possible. Led by the popular gay characters on “Will & Grace” and “Glee,” gays and lesbians are more visible in public life, and Americans are growing increasingly comfortable with that. A generation ago, coming out as gay was a career-killer; now it’s almost trendy.

America now has innumerable friends, co-workers, celebrities, siblings and children that are the new face of the gay movement. And that, says Evan Wolfson of New York-based Freedom to Marry, carries more weight than any court ruling or legislative vote.

2. An ally in the White House

It’s hard to overestimate the power of a bully pulpit, and there’s no bigger microphone than the chief executive’s. While President Obama may be the country’s first black president, he will also be remembered as the most pro-gay occupant of the Oval Office — even if it took him time to get there.

3. A problem of overreach

Starting with the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, conservative activists concluded that the only solution to stopping gay marriage was a nationwide ban.

In addition, conservative groups resisted moves to compromise on a half-measure like civil unions; [Tony] Perkins’ organization calls civil unions nothing more than “a slow-motion surrender.” And that, said veteran gay marriage proponent Jonathan Rauch, was a critical mistake.

4. Religious influence rises — and falls

Americans have concluded that while marriage may well be a sacred institution, couples tying the knot have to seek a marriage license at the courthouse, not the altar. With the moral influence of organized religion on the wane, more Americans have decided that there’s a difference between marriage rights — and all the legal and financial benefits that go with them — and matrimonial rites.

5. ‘Hateful and bigoted’

Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing proponents of traditional marriage was a negative image that they were never able to overcome. While chafing at comparisons to racism and Jim Crow laws, the matriarch of the traditional marriage movement, Maggie Gallagher, concedes that her side has been labeled as “hateful and bigoted.”

Some conservative activists say they brought it on themselves.  “There was the evangelical belligerence, often, in the last generation that spoke, for instance, about the gay agenda, in which there was this picture, almost as though there is a group of super villains in a lair, plotting somewhere the downfall of the family,” Moore told a gathering of journalists in March.

“They showed no compassion for gay people, they didn’t offer any substitutes like protecting gay families or gay kids,” Rauch said. “That lack of compassion came through. It took a little while to register, but the American public does not like lack of compassion.”

Oregon Republicans Support Same Sex Marriage

Admittedly, Oregon is not representative of most rank and file Republicans, but it is nonetheless, notable that the Oregon Republicans voted 233 -162 over the weekend and passed an endorsement of marriage equality.  Perhaps it was merely a case of accepting the inevitable now that the Ninth Circuit standard of review on anti-gay laws and amendments has pretty much rendered Oregon's same sex marriage bans unconstitutional in all but a formal ruling.  Or perhaps it is a case where some in the GOP have finally realized that changing demographics and the dying off of angry elderly Christofascists has put the handwriting on the wall.  Whatever the reason, one can imagine that there will be shrieks and flying spittle at NOM and FRC among other anti-gay hate groups.  Here are excerpts from Towleroad:

Republicans at the 50th Annual Dorchester Conference in Seaside, Oregon voted 233 -162 over the weekend in a first-ever endorsement of marriage equality by a GOP-dominated gathering of Oregon political activists, according to a press release from Freedom Oregon.

Freedom Oregon, a coalition of Republican leaders, formed earlier this year to rally Republican support for a proposed ballot initiative that would overturn Oregon’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

“There are a large number of young Republicans who are finding their voice in the party,” said Alexis Wolf, a Republican active in Freedom Oregon. “We don’t believe the freedom to express love and commitment should be limited by government.”

Said Chairman of LCR Oregon and Co-Director of Freedom Oregon James Owens, in a statement:

“The Dorchester Conference sets the tone for the GOP in Oregon for the coming year, and I’m proud to have led Log Cabin Republicans members on the floor of the convention today as we made history and moved one step closer to making marriage equality a reality for committed same-sex couples in this state. This wasn’t a vote against an anti-gay resolution, it was a vote in favor of freedom for all Oregonians — and a message to those fringe members of the Oregon Republican Party obsessed with pushing discriminatory measures similar to Arizona’s SB-1062 on the ballot in November. Today wasn’t just great — it was the absolute best outcome for Log Cabin Republicans, and a statement that Oregon Republicans are becoming more mainstream, less divided, and ready to win on issues like economic freedom, personal responsibility, lower taxes and a less intrusive government.”

Oregon's marriage equality battle is headed to a climax in 2014. Not only are there efforts toward a ballot measure underway which must qualify by July 3, two couples filed suit against the state's gay marriage ban in October.

Oregon's attorney general Ellen Rosenblum said last month that she would not defend the state's gay marriage ban in court, joining several attorneys general around the country in viewing such laws as unconstitutional following the SCOTUS ruling in the Windsor DOMA case.

California - Proof That Obamacare Can Work

Last evening we entertained wealthy business owner neighbors who one would be hard put not to describe as conservative.   But, unlike the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party, this couple are not insane and not driven by religious zealotry and/or blatant racism.  During the conversation over pre-dinner cocktails, the topic eventually came around to health care and a unanimous conclusion that doing nothing is not a solution and leaving the poor and uninsured to rely on emergency room service as the GOP seemingly would suggest is idiocy.  With all of the Affordable Health Care Acts horrendous problems in its roll out, however, it is too soon to give up on the program and, instead of looking only for the negative - something the media seems only too happy to do - it's time to look at the positives.  A column in the New York Times does just that.  Here are excerpts:

I give you California.  Now, California isn’t the only place where Obamacare is looking pretty good. A number of states that are running their own online health exchanges instead of relying on HealthCare.gov are doing well. Kentucky’s Kynect is a huge success; so is Access Health CT in Connecticut. New York is doing O.K. And we shouldn’t forget that Massachusetts has had an Obamacare-like program since 2006, put into effect by a guy named Mitt Romney. 

California is, however, an especially useful test case. First of all, it’s huge: if a system can work for 38 million people, it can work for America as a whole. Also, it’s hard to argue that California has had any special advantages other than that of having a government that actually wants to help the uninsured. When Massachusetts put Romneycare into effect, it already had a relatively low number of uninsured residents. California, however, came into health reform with 22 percent of its nonelderly population uninsured, compared with a national average of 18 percent. 

Finally, the California authorities have been especially forthcoming with data tracking the progress of enrollment. And the numbers are increasingly encouraging. 

For one thing, enrollment is surging. At this point, more than 10,000 applications are being completed per day, putting the state well on track to meet its overall targets for 2014 coverage. Just imagine, by the way, how different press coverage would be right now if Obama officials had produced a comparable success, and around 100,000 people a day were signing up nationwide.

Equally important is the information on who is enrolling. To work as planned, health reform has to produce a balanced risk pool — that is, it must sign up young, healthy Americans as well as their older, less healthy compatriots. And so far, so good: in October, 22.5 percent of California enrollees were between the ages of 18 and 34, slightly above that group’s share of the population.

What we have in California, then, is a proof of concept. Yes, Obamacare is workable — in fact, done right, it works just fine. 

The bad news, of course, is that most Americans aren’t lucky enough to live in states in which Obamacare has, in fact, been done right. They’re stuck either with HealthCare.gov or with one of the state exchanges, like Oregon’s, that have similar or worse problems. Will they ever get to experience successful health reform? 

The answer is, probably yes. There won’t be a moment when the clouds suddenly lift, but the exchanges are gradually getting better — a point inadvertently illustrated a few days ago by John Boehner, the speaker of the House. Mr. Boehner staged a publicity stunt in which he tried to sign up on the D.C. health exchange, then triumphantly posted an entry on his blog declaring that he had been unsuccessful. At the bottom of his post, however, is a postscript admitting that the health exchange had called back “a few hours later,” and that he is now enrolled. 

And maybe the transaction would have proceeded faster if Mr. Boehner’s office hadn’t, according to the D.C. exchange, put its agent — who was calling to help finish the enrollment — on hold for 35 minutes, listening to “lots of patriotic hold music.” 

Again, Obamacare’s rollout was a disaster. But in California we can see what health reform will look like, beyond the glitches. And it’s going to work.

Families of Gays - My Granddaughter

The Christofascists and other opponents of LGBT equality like to pretend that gays don't have family members and that we don't have children - and grandchildren.  In reality, of course, we do have families and our families in many instances have come to know the dishonesty of the "godly Christian" crowd.  Hence the so-called Nones, the nearly 1/3 of the under 30 generations who have walked away for institutional religion.  And with each new generation, more will come to know the truth.  A case in point: my granddaughter who is turning 1 year old and who is growing up knowing that gays are normal, loving people.  I love this picture taken by a photographer friend of the family:

And yes, she does get treated like a little princess!!  She comes to work with my daughter every day.

Generation Y - What Made It so Gay Accepting

I have noted before how my three children are very gay accepting - and have been from when I first came out to then over a decade ago at this point.  But they are not unique in terms of their generation  - a fact I remind men who contact me  for advice during their coming out process.  So what explains this quantum leap from previous generations?  One reason is that more and more gays are coming out at earlier ages so that this generation knows actual gays who not surprisingly do not fit the ugly stereotype that the Christofascists like to disseminate.   But the mainstream media's depictions of gay characters has played a huge role as well.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

You know you know gay people. You realize by now that they're all around. You've been on baseball teams and in locker rooms and rushed frats together. Whatever your religious take on them, we, as the impossible to define bunch known as Gen-Y, have become increasingly cool with our gay brothers and friends. We've ditched "no homo" for "yeah, bro" when hanging with our openly gay friends, and we're civilized enough to know that the "F" word makes us look even more absurd than when your crazy uncle throws the "N" word around after three drinks at Thanksgiving.

How did we get here? The answer is one that is only going to make our high school English teachers continue to curse our love of shiny things over books: TV and movies.

We started to see that all the crap we were fed from people older and more uptight than us was crap. Gay people aren't all pedophiles and monsters. They're real -- and often pretty damned hilarious and awesome. They're our friends, our neighbors, our teachers, our relatives. They stopped being a "them" -- and started being part of "us."


At the risk of typing the gayest sentence of my career: thank goodness for Glee. Say what you want about showtunes on prime time, but that show gives it to you how it is -- and doesn't once apologize for it. Not the singing and dancing part, but the teenage angst part that goes with trying to figure out who the hell you are. Glee, which is on Fox -- among the most uptight, ass backward networks on air -- puts a boy in a dress right next to the straight couple fighting a pregnancy scare. It may seem a bit ridiculous when they sing -- but the situations are real, and are happening in schools all over the country right now. Probably even in yours.

Our parents grew up in a time when gay actors in movies were giggled at for playing 'those guys.' But now Zach Quinto is kicking ass in outer space in Star Trek and Wentworth Miller was such the ultimate bad ass in Prison Break -- and no one cares who they're sleeping with. It's certainly not hurting their popularity. It's all because we care about content and character -- the way we should -- in both the shows we catch and the people we care about bringing into our lives.

Which takes us back to your ten best bros. Like I said, one of them is statistically gay. The thing that makes you, and the rest of Gen-Y, so damned great is that we don't care. We know there's a lot more to him to care about. So, yeah, he's gay -- he's also funny as hell, a killer Candy Crush player, your girlfriend's best friend (which probably can't hurt your sex life to know what she really wants) and he's just plain cool to be around.

If anything, they're just a little bit more awesome because you have a friend who has chosen to be completely real with you and doesn't need to keep any of the fronts up that we felt we had to for so long.

So, as one of your gay brothers who loves college football and playing Wii as much as he loves a good showtune, thanks for being awesome, my fellow Gen-Y'ers. Thanks for making "No homo" no more.

This trend, of course is terrifying to the Christofascist hate merchants.  Their anti-gay lies and screeds are falling on deaf ears.  Worse yet, many in Gneration Y have taken not only the step of being gay friendly, but they've taken the additional step of walking away from institutional religion.

Religious Progressives Will Soon Outnumber Conservatives, Yet They Remain Largely Silent

One of the things that I find maddening is the way in which the Christofascists have been allowed to define the image of Christianity in the minds of much of society even as their over all numbers shrink and the number of religious progressives and so-called "Nones" grows.  The result is that to many, especially, among the younger generations, religion is something ugly and abhorrent and best defined by hate and bigotry.  Much of the phenomenon, in my view, is the fault of two forces;(i) the Republican Party's continued prostitution of itself to the ugliest elements of the Christian Right (a similar thing is happening with racists and white supremacists in the GOP base) and (ii) the laziness of the main stream media which gives foul individuals like Tony Perkins a platform and almost never challenges their lies and dishonesty.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the rise of the numbers of progressives who maddeningly too often fail to challenge the hate filled Christofascists.  Here are excerpts:

One-in-five Americans are religious progressives, according to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. Using a religious orientation scale that “combines theological, economic, and social outlooks,” researchers argue that while the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans continues to rise, a growing coalition of young, diverse, and politically-active Americans are connecting their faith with progressive values.

“Our new research shows a complex religious landscape, with religious conservatives holding an advantage over religious progressives in terms of size and homogeneity,” Dr. Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, said in a press release. “However, the percentage of religious conservatives shrinks in each successive generation, with religious progressives outnumbering religious conservatives in the Millennial generation.” 

According to the survey, 23 percent of people aged 18 to 33 are religious progressives, while 22 percent are nonreligious and 17 percent are religious conservatives. By contrast, only 12 percent of those aged 66 to 88 are religious progressives, whereas 47 percent are said to be religious conservatives.

Religious progressives are also more ethnically diverse than religious conservatives, a fact that bodes well for the Democratic party as the country becomes more racially varied. And when it comes to economic issues, religious progressives are actually more passionate than other liberals about eradicating income inequality; the study found that 88 percent of religious progressives said that the government should do more to help the poor, more than any other group polled.


While it’s too soon to know whether the survey signals a groundswell of faith-based progressivism, the findings echo the recent rise of an increasingly vocal—and increasingly influential—”religious left.” For example, progressive religious leaders are heading up the ongoing “Moral Monday” protests in North Carolina, citing their faith as they decry the draconian policies of the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.


[T]he study found that although religious liberals are passionate about progressive causes, they aren’t interested in imposing their beliefs on others: only 29 percent of religious progressives believe a person has to believe in God to live a moral life, as compared to 74 percent of religious conservatives.

These moderates and progressives need to get off their asses and forcefully confront the Christofascists.  Otherwise the Christofascists will continue to force their beliefs on all and kill the Christian brand in the long run.   Like others I know, when I hear someone say they are "saved" or a devout Christian, my immediate assumption is that they are not nice people and probably major league liars and hypocrites.

Church of England to Launch Campaign Against Anti-Gay Bullying

In a move that will likely cause the anti-gay elements in the Anglican Communion to go berserk - especially in the corrupt, lunatic churches in Africa - the Church of England is launching a campaign to oppose anti-gay bullying.   I can just imagine the flying spittle and convulsions racking the church hierarchy in Uganda and Nigeria.  Interestingly, one of the justifications for the campaign cited by the Archbishop of Canterbury is the change in societal attitudes towards homosexuality.  In short, society has changed and the Church of England needs to face this reality.  It's obviously, not the type of enlightened views one can expect from the Christofascists and GOP base in America.  Here are some story excerpts from the New York Times:

The archbishop of Canterbury has announced a campaign to stamp out antigay bullying in Church of England schools, acknowledging that attitudes toward sexuality have changed. The archbishop, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglican Communion, stressed that the Church of England was not changing its teaching on gay relationships, but that it would be “absurd and impossible” to ignore shifting cultural attitudes. He told the opening of the General Synod of the Church of England that “the majority of the population rightly detests homophobic behavior.” 

A BBC News commentator described the move as follows:

Justin Welby's speech was partly exhortation, partly stark warning, to a Church floundering in a society undergoing rapid social and cultural change. 

He spelt out the Church's predicament in dealing with sexuality as the clearest example. He cited the debate over gay marriage in the House of Lords and the way his own opposition to the legislation had been "utterly overwhelmed".

The implication was that Anglicans must be ready to take risks and reimagine how the Church's teaching could be applied to a radically different world.

In some ways it was a bleak assessment - Anglicans had lost trust in each other, they sometimes faced "noticeable hostility", and lived in a society where fewer people, particularly young people, thought of themselves as Christian. 

Archbishop Welby was preparing the Church to take the sort of journey it instinctively wants to spread over decades or centuries, in a few years. To ignore the need, he insisted, would be both "impossible and absurd".

The perception take Christians are anti-gay and filled with hypocrisy and hate are leading factors in the younger generations decision to walk away from institutional religion.  Welby seems to recognize this reality and want to move to address it.  It is a stark contrast from the Roman Catholic Church which seem set to continue its anti-gay jihad.

 

Younger Republicans "Evolve" On Gay Marriage

A recent poll shows nearly 40 percent of Republicans ages 18-24 support same-sex marriage. | Reuters

Regardless of how the U. S. Supreme Court rules in the pending gay marriage cases, the Christofascists and "family values" organizations will continue to face a growing menace: younger Republicans who are increasingly supportive of gay marriage.  And as the GOP's base ages and as the elderly component (perhaps) thankfully dies off, this menace will only increase.  At some point, no matter how much folks like Mike Huckabee and Tony Perkins threaten the GOP, it will become untenable for the GOP to maintain its anti-gay positions and policies.  Here are highlights a Politico article that looks at the Christofascists' growing problem:

As the Supreme Court takes up same-sex marriage on Tuesday, a growing number of young Republicans are waving the white flag in the culture war over gay weddings — with many opting to focus on economic issues instead.

That shift is evident among conservative youth from GOP college activists to young right-leaning Beltway pundits to heartland churchgoers under 30, political and religious leaders say.

Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told POLITICO that young members of his community are no longer interested in vocalizing opposition to same-sex marriage.  .  .  .  . “[They say,] ‘It feels intolerant. We believe what we believe, they have a right to what they want to believe. Marriage should be a church thing, not a legal thing.’”

"There’s a ton of momentum right now,” said Tyler Deaton, the campaign manager for Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry, the GOP-friendly branch of the broader Freedom to Marry coalition, which supports gay marriage. The group counts among its members the Huntsman daughters, Meghan McCain and MSNBC talk show host S.E. Cupp.

“For young people … it really is a generational [issue],” said Hamilton, a Leawood, Kan.-based pastor who delivered the sermon at President Barack Obama’s inaugural National Prayer Service. “For the church as a whole, it used to be that people who were raising up gay rights, wanting to change the denomination’s position, were people on the left. Today, it’s not about left and right. It’s about older and younger generations.”

Let's hope that this trend accelerates and that it leaves the Christofascists increasingly in the political wilderness.

New CNN Poll: 57% of Americans Know Someone Gay

A new CNN poll helps under score how living out of the closet makes a huge impact on LGBT acceptance and may, in fact, be one of the biggest reasons for the rapid change in attitudes towards gay marriage.  Outside of Christofascists circles, if one knows someone gay or has a gay family member, the chances are high that one will also support gay marriage.  It's more bad news for the professional Christian crowd and those who have been enriching themselves by peddling anti-gay animus.  Here are highlights on the poll findings:

One day before the Supreme Court hears a high profile case on same-sex marriage, a new national poll indicates that the percentage of Americans who say they have a family member or close friend who is gay or lesbian is on the rise. And that increase matches a jump in the percent of the public who support legal same-sex marriages. According to a CNN/ORC International survey, 57% say they have a family member or close friend who is gay or lesbian, up 12 points from 2007.

"The number of Americans who support same-sex marriage has risen by almost the same amount in that time - from 40% in 2007 to 53% today - strongly suggesting that the rise in support for gay marriage is due in part to the rising number of Americans who have become aware that someone close to them is gay," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

According to the poll, people who say they know someone who is gay or lesbian are more likely to be younger and more likely to have attended college, with women more likely to say that than men. And not surprisingly, support for gay marriage is highest among women, college educated Americans, and the young. 

"Attitudes toward homosexuality are the result of many complex, interrelated factors. Past polling, for example, has also shown that support for gay marriage has risen during a time when a growing number of Americans believe that homosexuality is something a person is born with. But years of polling suggests that the growing number of Americans who know someone who is gay has contributed to an environment in which gay marriage now receives support from a majority of Americans," says Holland.

Whatever the Supreme Court may decide to do in the gay marriage cases, the Christiofascists have seemingly lost this part of the culture war.  Sooner or later gay marriage will be nationwide.

The GOP’s Looming Gay Crisis

As the trend of growing support for gay marriage and gay rights in general accelerates, it is interesting to watch the Christofascists double down on their increasingly hysterical anti-gay rhetoric.  This week the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed gay marriage and the hate merchants at Focus on the Family were apoplectic.  Glenn Stanton, one of the top anti-gay extremists at FOTF penned a diatribe on FOTF's faux news site, CitizenLink trying to stem the tide against FOTF's religious based bigotry:

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued what appears to be a politically motivated statement suggesting that children raised by same-sex parents do just fine. In fact, the AAP goes so far as to suggest that children are more affected by the health of the relationship between the people raising them than by whether they are being raised by their own mother and father.  Sadly, the report is not rooted in social science but instead in a spirit of radical social activism, causing the authors to come to a fantastical and wishful conclusion. 

To be clear, this recent announcement is not science, but propaganda rooted in social activism regarding the family, which is the foundational unit of humanity. That such a credentialed and well-known organization would play politics with this issue should grieve all of those who are committed to the integrity of science when it comes to the future of our children.

It is laughable to see FOTF worrying about science and legitimate medical and mental health knowledge when it regular promotes quacks and charlatans (e.g., Stanton himself) as legitimate experts.   How does this tie in with the GOP?  Here in Virginia the leading puppeteer for the  Virginia GOP is The Family Foundation, FOTF's viciously anti-gay affiliate.  No Republican candidate can hold even moderate positions on gay rights without earning the wrath of TFF.  The same holds true at the national level where Christofascists still control the GOP's positions on so-called social issues.  The nation - and even Virginia - is changing on gay rights and gay marriage, but the Christofascists refuse to allow any change in the GOP.  The result will be that just as the Christofascists are driving younger generations from Christianity, so too they are driving voters from the GOP.  Andrew Sullivan looks at the phenomenon:

In the latest polling, 81 percent of those under 30 favored marriage equality. I was shocked by the number, but shouldn’t have been. What we can all forget is that this is the first generation who went through their childhood and teens knowing that civil marriage was an option for gay couples. That generation included gay kids and teens who, for the first time, could see an integrated future for themselves in their own families and society. I have no doubt this has made that generation the least fucked-up, sanest gay generation in history – seeing from the get-go a real and equal and dignified future for themsleves. And their greater self-confidence and self-esteem has been infectious. Their straight peers know them and their orientation and simply find it baffling that they would be denied what every heterosexual has always accepted as a given in their own lives.

That can only mean that, for the young generation, and all those who follow it in the future, the GOP’s aggressive stance and brutal rhetoric against marriage equality simply identifies them as bigots. Some may not be. But that is what they will be seen to be. The report does not advocate changing policy on marriage equality. But I think the premise that it [the GOP] can win the next generation simply by ignoring the question is untenable.

The over-60, predominantly white, Fox News watching, fundamentalist base cannot budge an inch on gays. Because it’s a religious and not a political position. And so it may soon be a truly fateful day for the GOP: drop the anti-gay policies or become the even angrier old white man party.

If I were Karl Rove, I’d be praying for Anthony Kennedy to write the gay Loving vs Virginia. It would take the issue off the political table for good, and leave them a nice juicy judicial tyranny argument instead. But a mixed verdict  . . .  would keep the issue alive, violate no federalist principles, and leave the GOP’s fundamentalist intransigence in place – as a dead weight around their necks as they try to stay afloat.

Watching ideologues confront reality is always entertaining for a real conservative. But it’s going to be excruciating for today’s Republicans.

I would love to see  a gay  marriage equivalent to Loving v. Virginia.  If that doesn't happen, I hope the GOP's continued prostitution of itself to the Christofascists hastens the party's death as a national party.

Future of the GOP: Change, Expand or Die

Increasingly, the Republican Party has become the party of "No" and obstruction.  Worse yet, the mind set has become that if one isn't an angry white evangelical Christian or a greedy Wall Street fat cat, then you're not welcome and there is no place in the GOP for you.   And many voters have heard that message loud and clear and have walked away from the GOP.  Ideological purity may be satisfying to the shrinking lunatic core of the GOP, but it is not the prescription for long term party survival.  A column in the Washington Post reads the riot act to  those unwilling to realize that the party is facing a change or die moment.  Here are highlights:

The fatalism of some on the right extends to the conviction that certain segments of the electorate are unwinnable (e.g. Hispanics, gays, women) and that trying to win them will destroy the fragile coalition of the GOP base. (This is of course another rationale for not doing what they don’t like, namely immigration reform.) Well, if modern conservatism can’t gain adherents from different segments of society (the ones growing the fastest, to boot) they might as well close up shop.

Figuring out what to save and what to discard is at the heart of the conservative challenge. Peter Berkowitz has called it the tension between liberty and tradition. What conservatives can’t do is be at odds with the American experience of greater inclusion and social tolerance. Railing at women in the military (as opposed to making sure standards are upheld so only the most capable of both genders are in strenuous, front-line positions) or making opposition to gay marriage a plank of a national party is not going to get the GOP anywhere. Conservatives don’t need to cheerlead for positions with which they disagree but flailing at long-term social trends and popular referenda in state after state isn’t recommended.

The question for the GOP, and for conservatism more generally, is if it can defy the stereotype of an intolerant, unsympathetic party of whites. Conservatives shouldn’t be part of efforts to cement those stereotypes by writing off blocks of voters or saying their own voters are resistant to experience and reason. Instead, they should be out rallying like-minded individuals and making their views the new normal for the party.

Whether it is tax policy or health care or education, the GOP has to take what is central to its message (freedom) and demonstrate that it is a relevant value with policy applications for Americans. And really, the whole crotchety routine (Forget Hispanics! Kick gays out!) has to go. It is a turn-off and is, at its core, morally wrong.

 Will the GOP base get the message?  Not likely.

 

Wing Nuts Goe Berserk Over Tebow Cancellation of Appearance at Anti-Gay Church

In the grand scheme of things, Tim Tebow and where he decides to make appearances doesn't add up to a hill of beans.  At least not among rational, sentient individuals in touch with objective reality.  But among the Christofascists, Tebow's cancellation of his April appearance at the opening of Robert Jeffress’ $115 million First Baptist Church in Dallas has launched all kinds of spittle spraying batshitery.  And of course, the hate merchants of the "family values" organizations and the professional Christian crowd are blaming the gays - and Satan - on Tebow's decision to avoid appearing at a church best defined by who its senior pastor hates, namely most everyone. And even more bizarrely, Tebow's decision is claimed to reflect an attack on Christianity.  It truly doesn't get any crazier than among the "godly Christian" folk.  Box Turtle Bulletin looks at the insanity.  Here are some excerpts:

Quarterback Tim Tebow recently cancelled an appearance at the opening of Robert Jeffress’ $115 million church after finding out about Jeffress’ controversial reputation.  The good pastor has spoken out against:

• Mormonism (“a heresy from the pit of hell”)

• Judaism (“you can’t be saved being a Jew”)

• Catholicism (“the genius of Satan”)

and, of course,

• Gays (“homosexuality is perverse, it represents a degradation of a person’s mind and if a person will sink that low and there are no restraints from God’s law, then there is no telling to whatever sins he will commit as well”)

Of course, while Jeffress is merely exercising his religious freedom, any attempt to disagree with him is an attack on that freedom:

Denny Burk, a cultural commentator and professor at Boyce College in Louisville, Ken., said Tebow’s decision is a significant event for the nation’s Christian community and could serve as a troubling bellwether.

“This moment will appear to many as another marker of Christianity’s cultural marginalization,” he wrote on his website. “In the broad tolerance of views in our public discourse, who’s in and who’s out? What voices are allowed in the cacophony that is American democracy? Which voices should be excluded? Christian voices have long been a part of the din but moments like these make it seem like those days are coming to an end.”

Pass the smelling salts! I’ll need them when I stop laughing. Apparently disagreeing with Jeffress, deciding not to associate with him, suggesting that others rethink their association with him, is an assault on Jeffress’ liberty — wait, no, that’s not right — is an assault on Christianity itself and American democracy along with it.

See, it’s fine to call someone a Satanic, heretical pervert from the pit of Hell, but if your target calls you a bigot in reply then you get to be all, OMG, Can you believe what he just said??

Over at Civil Commotion, Bob Felton reports on the hissy fit thrown by Baptist Press over Tebow's cancellation and has a few on point comments on why society needs to reject the Christofascist agenda:

Baptist Press is on the case, and affirms that America sure is hard on the godly.

The pastor at First Baptist Dallas, Robert Jeffress, has been nationally prominent in stating his biblical views regarding marriage, homosexuality, and during the presidential campaign last year, Mormonism, according to the Southern Baptist Texan newspaper.

In a statement to the Florida Baptist Witness, Brunson [Tebow's pastor at FBC-Jacksonville] said the media attacks on Jeffress, the church and Tebow are without merit. “Clearly there is a bias in this country when it comes to evangelical Christianity,” he said.

Further, Tebow’s home church and First Baptist Dallas share the same beliefs, Brunson said.

Yeah, yeah — ho-hum. Gay rights have been before the public for more than a decade, endlessly debated — and common sense has prevailed: There just isn’t any reason why gays should not enjoy full marriage equality. Reason. Freeborn adults believe you should have a reason if you’re going to constrict other people’s lives — and “My invisible friend says so” doesn’t pass muster.

Let’s be clear about something: The evangelicals are right about this much — there is a moral issue at stake. But their insistence that we must be guided by a nonsensical old book of unknown provenance instead of our minds puts them on the wrong side of the moral issue. Blind obedience is not morality, but an abdication of morality; it is choosing to live as a dumb farm animal.

What I find most ironic is that it is the hate-filled, ignorance embracing racists and bigots of the Christianist  crowd who are accelerating the decline of Christianity in the developed world.  The more they scream and howl and direct hate and bigotry towards other citizens, the more the younger generations and educated people walk away.  Yet these fanatics cannot see that it is they themselves, not gays, liberals or the media that are the real problem.