The Emotional Damage Done by Passive Bigotry and Rejection

I've looked at the issue of parental rejection many times on this blog and also discussed how fortunate I was that when I came out now over a decade ago my parents accepted me without reservation. Moreover, they accepted my former partner and, although my father never met him, my mother seemed to love and treasure the boyfriend. So many in the LGBT community are not as lucky. But rejection can take many forms ranging from throwing the LGBT child out of the house to refusing to see him/her again to demands that the LGBT child say nothing about who they really are and/or who they love. This soft bigotry among other things takes the form of refusing to meet one's partner to saying hurtful things in the LGBT child's presence. What is most disappointing, in my opinion, is that this rejection arises from a selfishness on the part of the parents of the LGBT child. They are more worried about what others might think, their own sensibilities and inability to understand a different sexual orientation, or the writings of ignorant goat herders from 2000 years ago to quote Bob Felton at Civil Commotion. A piece in The Bilerico Project looks at the damage done by passive bigotry and rejection. Here are some excerpts:

Over on his blog, Lance Brister has a moving, and at its core, heart wrenching account of his inspired attempt to help his mother see his life as a gay man as one of love and joy.

Like many LGBT people, Brister has to edit out his sexuality, and all the attendant life experiences that comes along with it, in order to have a shadow of a relationship with his mother, who has made it clear that she doesn't want to hear anything about the gay side of her gay son's life. This has left their interactions so wooden and empty that the repetitive ritual of talking without communicating has become something of a bitter shared joke between them.

This is what the bigots who tell us to "keep it in the bedroom" will never understand. It isn't impossible to hide one's sexuality or gender identity, nearly eighteen years of DATD showed us that. And of course trans* service people still have to conceal their deepest selves even today.

What is impossible is having whole and meaningful connections with the world outside your closet doors. Being LGBT is about far more than how and with whom we have sex, it's about who we love, and who we see in the mirror. It's all the bits and pieces that build and shape our lives, from soaring joy to crushing heartbreak, and the minutia in between that make up the ebbs and waters of who we are and how we move through the world.

People like Lance Brister's mother don't understand this fundamental truth about our lives. They want to know and love us, but only within their concept of the world. It is the height of hetero and cis privilege to believe that the only place LGBT life experience differs is in the bedroom.

I honestly don't know what is better, outright rejection, with a scorched earth and cries of "you are not my child," or the slow bleeding away of the love and affection that Lance has experienced through his mother's passive rejection of who he is. Even now, I find myself conflicted, as to whether his desire for a deeper and more real bond with his mother is noble or tragic, an expression of love or of masochism. The reality may very well lie in the grey area in between.

What I am sure of is that this is the direction that anti-LGBT sentiment in our country is going over the next few years. As societal shifts make the overt homo & trans* phobia of the bigots like Rick Santorum less publicly acceptable, I believe we'll see a renewed vigor from the Right when it comes to encouraging passive rejection of LGBT children and community members.

As a parent myself, I know full well how hard it is to step back and allow one's children to leader their lives in a manner that is meaningful to them. Having spent years living my life to please others, I know how selfish it would be for me to try to insist that my children conform their lives to make only me happy. Sadly, too many parents of LGBT children don't get this message.

The GOP’s Panic Over Rick Santorum

Personally, I find Michael Medved to be a conservative extremist much of the time. All too often he's in total agreement with the far right Christianist of the Republican Party base for whom moderation - not to mention respecting the views and beliefs of others - is an unknown concept. Thus, it's telling to see him describe the panic that is gripping the GOP now that uber-Catholic, freedom of religion denying, bedroom policing Rick Santorum continues to be at the top of polling in the 2012 GOP presidential contest. In many ways Santorum's polling make perfect sense: all the moderates and just about all of the sane people have left the Republican Party, so only the Christianists and Tea Party crowd remain. As I have noted many times before, the GOP leadership brought this situation on themselves. Here are highlights from Medved's analysis in The Daily Beast:

For more than six months, worried conservative chieftains talked up the need to unite behind a single rightist candidate in order to block the potential victory of the “mushy moderate” from Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. Now, on the eve of crucial primaries in Michigan and Arizona, and with Super Tuesday looming just one week later, some of those same leaders speak privately of the need to unite behind that same, once-dreaded Romney in order to avert an even more dire disaster: the nomination of Rick Santorum.

For Republicans, the key question is no longer whether they’ll overcome their reluctance and skepticism to accept Romney for the nomination. The bigger dilemma now is whether they can overcome their panic and outright dread and embrace Righteous Rick as their standard bearer. Despite his lead in Gallup’s preference poll, less than a third (32 percent) of GOP voters see Santorum as the strongest challenger to Obama; a big majority (58 percent) agrees that Mitt has the best shot.

Why, then, Santorum’s continued strength in national surveys and his strongly competitive numbers in Michigan and Arizona? In part, this willingness to support Santorum while still viewing Romney as vastly more electable relates to the spreading gloom over Republican prospects in general. With an apparently improving economy and rising approval ratings for the president, a plurality of Americans now believes that Obama will “definitely” win the race. For some conservatives, the mounting sense that any champion they select will inevitably lose in November encourages the idea that the Republicans might as well send a passionate, politically incorrect, in-your-face message with bomb-thrower Santorum rather than making a safe, dull, practical choice for Romney.

Political insiders, however, must worry about more than electoral disappointment at the presidential level: for those who hold elective office, their own careers are at stake if a polarizing, unpopular candidate drags down the entire Republican cause.

The overwhelming preference for Romney among elected officials didn’t come through some conspiratorial establishment anointing: like all questions concerning the motivations of politicians, it’s easiest to explain these endorsements in terms of self-interest.

With Democrats promising to spend hundreds of millions in a determined bid to recapture the House, and with Republicans mounting a supreme effort to win the four Democratic seats they need to win control of the Senate, the members of Congress naturally want a candidate at the top of the ticket who will make their own races easier, not harder.

Moreover, some strategists and activists worry that a Santorum nomination could damage the GOP brand in a way that would continue to harm the GOP cause for a generation. The former senator appears appallingly eager to entangle himself with a cluster of controversies that would make him especially unpalatable to younger voters. His enthusiastic insistence on condemning contraception (even while saying he’ll do nothing to restrict it), as well as making disapproving (and utterly unnecessary) comments about prenatal testing, women in combat, premarital sex, and the satanic takeover of Hollywood and the NBA, leave him with few supporters among the millions of Americans between 18 and 25 who may be voting for the first time in 2012.

Those votes count as especially important because once a young person identifies with a political party it shapes a habit that influences future choices. . . . . Even for Republicans who assume that any nominee would lose to Obama, it therefore makes sense to fear a Santorum catastrophe (like Goldwater’s devastating, across-the-board wipeout in ’64) more than a more conventional defeat for Romney (perhaps in the style of Bob Dole in ’96, when the GOP retained both houses of Congress).

Though many Republicans feel resigned at the moment to likely defeat in the presidential race, the way that they lose (and the extent of their losses in down-ticket races) will exert a profound influence on the long-term future of the party.

Meanwhile, here in Virginia the Virginia GOP seems Hell bent to alienate younger voters and women and to severely damage the GOP brand - and Bob McDonnell's chances on the national stage. Allowing the patients to take over the asylum can be dangerous and the GOP leadership should have taught more about this problem years ago.

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Santorum: Separation Of Church And State "Makes Me Want To Throw Up"

I keep trying to write about topics other than Rick Santorum and his religious extremism, but the man is making the task very difficult. He keeps on coming out with one insane and frightening statement after another. His latest batshitry is that the concept of the separation of Church and state makes him want to throw up. And this man wants to hold office where he is supposed to uphold the U. S. Constitution? Earlier last week I posted a cartoon comparing Santorum to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After today's statement, the cartoon comparison is all too applicable. Here are highlights from Huffington Post followed by a video clip:

Rick Santorum on Sunday took on of separation of church and state.

"I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state are absolute," he told 'This Week' host George Stephanopoulos. "The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country...to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up."

The GOP candidate was responding to comments he made last October. He had said that he "almost threw up" after reading JFK's 1960 speech in which he declared his commitment to the separation of church and state.

Santorum also on Sunday told Meet The Press host David Gregory that separation of church and state was "not the founders' vision."

This man is down right frightening!

Antia Bryant's Ex-Husband Dies Bitter and Resentful

It's not nice to judge the dead, but the story in the Washington Post reporting the death of Bob Green, Anita Bryant's first husband (they are pictured together at right) and co-leader in efforts to repeal pro-gay legislation in the late 1970's, might be a cautionary tale for both today's self-congratulatory professional Christian set and hubris filled GOP candidates. Extremism can backfire and denigrating the humanity of others often doesn't leave one well thought of over time and in the long view of of history. One cannot help but wonder how different both Green's and Bryant's lives would have been had they been willing to leave others free to live their lives and follow their own religious journeys. Ironically, Green blamed gays for the maladies in his life rather than looking taking a good look in the mirror. Rick Santorum, are you listening? Here are some story highlights:

Bob Green, a onetime radio DJ who married pop singer and Miss Oklahoma Anita Bryant, was found dead Jan. 26 at his home in Miami Beach. He was 80. Mr. Green managed his wife’s rise to stardom as an entertainer and Florida citrus spokeswoman, then followed her into anti-gay activism, which ultimately destroyed their careers — and marriage in 1980. For more than 30 years, Mr. Green lived quietly, alone and resentful.

In 1977, Mr. Green and Bryant led a successful effort to repeal Miami -Dade County’s newly passed gay rights ordinance, Bryant out front and the tall, handsome Green behind the scenes, as he had been when he managed her singing career.

“He would maintain publicly that he was perfectly happy being Mr. Anita Bryant and making arrangements backstage instead of being the one in the limelight,” said Robert Jr. “She was the one who was visible. And getting all the credit for something they really created as a team. Maybe there was some kind of subconscious resentment.”

The family’s pastor persuaded Bryant to launch the successful anti-gay-rights campaign, Mr. Green told the Miami Herald in 2007. Flush with victory in Miami-Dade, the couple founded Anita Bryant Ministries, which offered “deprogramming” and halfway houses for gays and a lecture series called “Design for Successful Living,” aimed at battling divorce. But Bryant’s campaign against the ordinance tanked her image. She lost her orange-juice gig, convention bookings and big-ticket income.

In 1980, she filed for divorce, a scandal in the Christian circles where she’d been revered. . . . In 2007, Mr. Green told the Miami Herald that he blamed gay people for the turmoil in his life because “their stated goal was to put [Bryant] out of business and destroy her career. And that’s what they did. It’s unfair.”

After the divorce, they sold the place for $790,000 and split the proceeds in 1982. Once millionaires, they’d lost most of their fortune. “I jog past the house and I say, ‘I wish I was back there in the good old days,’ ” Mr. Green said in the 2007 interview. “I used to jog on North Bay Road and cry all the way. I don’t have any friends.

Does such a fate await Maggie Gallagher and similar hate merchants? Only time will tell.

What Would Rick Santorum’s America Look Like?

As regular readers know, I find Rick Santorum to be an abomination - even as he applies that term to countless Americans, gays in particular. I find Santorum to be a self-congratulatory, sanctimonious ass who, given his obsession with all things sexual, strikes me as being in serious need of mental heath care intervention. And given his obsession with gays, one has to wonder how he'd score on those tests that measured the penile arousal of homophobes while watching gay porn. Indeed, he would be almost comical but for the hatred, bigotry and intolerance that he engenders at every campaign appearance. That Santorum is fairing so well in the GOP primaries and polls speaks volumes about the decline of the Republican Party as a party that once at least outwardly valued logic, intelligence and reason. The thought of Santorum actually making it to the White House is very, very scary and, in fact, might be the straw that would make me pack up and leave the USA. Sarah Posner has a piece in the Washington Post that imagines what Santorum's America might look like. Here are some excerpts:

Rick Santorum , the culture warrior who lost his Senate seat in 2006 , is polling within striking distance of Mitt Romney in Michigan and Arizona, where Republican primaries will be held Tuesday. His unabashed use of his traditionalist faith in politicking and policymaking has been gaining popularity. What if he wins the nomination — and then the White House? What would life look like in Santorum’s America? How religious would his presidency be? Here, the author imagines what President Santorum would tell his key constituency — religious conservatives — as he ran for reelection four years from now. President Rick Santorum’s speech at the Values Voter Summit, Sept. 23, 2016.

Because of our values, we never gave up, and under my administration we have finally defunded Planned Parenthood. No longer will your tax dollars support that abortion mill or any programs that indoctrinate young girls to be sexual libertines — programs that say, “Here’s a pill, go ahead, have fun, it’s all about pleasure.” We said no — the government cannot force us to use our tax dollars to support unnatural acts.

One of my first acts as president was the creation of the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty. Since its inception in early March 2013, the commission has investigated 249 instances of infringement of Americans’ religious freedom. Its quarterly public hearings, led by Chairman Maggie Gallagher and streamed live on the commission’s Web site, have served to educate Americans about the daily oppression of our faith, in the name of tolerance, by government and individuals.

We have gathered support for the Dignity of the Preborn Person Act, which, if passed, would recognize in civil law what we know to be true as a matter of God’s law: that every human life, at every stage, deserves protection. This bill ensures that each life, from the moment of conception, is entitled to the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. When that bill becomes law, unborn persons will no longer be denied their personhood, their God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We’ve reinstated funding for abstinence-education programs. We’ve broken down barriers left in place by my predecessor to faith-based organizations receiving funding under these programs. My Justice Department, unlike that of my predecessor, is dedicated to defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court, and my solicitor general will do so vigorously when the current challenge reaches the Supreme Court of the United States.

[W]e continue to push for repeal of the laws and regulations that stifle economic growth: Obamacare, Dodd-Frank financial reform, the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules. Lifting the yoke of all those regulations, along with securing our borders from illegal immigration, will both create and protect jobs for America’s workers. We’ve eliminated my predecessor’s boondoggles at the EPA and Department of Energy . . .

We fight many battles here at home, but there are other battles, too, against Islamic extremists who have their sights on America, on Israel and on Western civilization — Christendom itself. I rejected my predecessor’s dangerous appeasement policy and launched our air campaign against Iran’s nuclear sites, which will continue until we ensure that this existential threat to Israel and America is annihilated.

If you want Supreme Court justices who are constitutionalists, who believe that the abomination of same-sex “marriage” must be stopped before it destroys us, who believe that the “right to privacy” and “separation of church and state” were pulled out of thin air by activist judges, we need a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Under Santorum, America would be headed back to a Middle Ages condition where only the few would enjoy a recurrence of the Gilded Age. Meanwhile, most of the the rest of the world would move forward and embrace modernity. The USA would be a very scary place for those who are not Kool-Aid drinking far right religious zealots.

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GOP: Ghastly Out Dated Party

As the Republican Party continues to stampede back towards the 11th Century, some Americans seem to be waking up to the reality that the GOP is totally out of touch with reality. Or at least any semblance of a modern day reality. At best, the GOP seems to want to return to the 1950's with all its glory: segregation, back alley abortions, bans on interracial marriage, gays force totally into the closet and subject to rampant discrimination, and clergy sexually molesting children and youth with impunity and little likelihood of being held to accountability. Obviously, the GOP's image of a golden age wasn't so golden for many Americans. Maureen Dowd looks at the GOP in a cutting column in the New York Times. Here are some excerpts:

IT’S finally sinking in. Republicans are getting queasy at the gruesome sight of their party eating itself alive, savaging the brand in ways that will long resonate.

“Republicans being against sex is not good,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. “Sex is popular.” He said his party is “coming to grips with a weaker field than we’d all want” and going through the five stages of grief. “We’re at No. 4,” he said. (Depression.) “We’ve still got one to go.” (Acceptance.)

The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates — be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes — and try to destroy them with it.

Newt Gingrich, a war wimp in Vietnam who supported W.’s trumped-up invasion of Iraq, had the gall to tell a crowd at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., that defeating Obama — “the most dangerous president in modern American history” — was “a duty of national security” because “he is incapable of defending the United States” and because he “wants to unilaterally weaken the United States.” Who killed Osama again?

“It makes the party look like it isn’t a modern party,” Rudy Giuliani told CNN’s Erin Burnett, fretting about the candidates’ Cotton Mather attitude about women and gays. “It doesn’t understand the modern world that we live in.”

After a speech in Dallas on Thursday, Jeb Bush also recoiled: “I used to be a conservative, and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective.”

Republicans have a growing panic at the thought of going down the drain with a loser, missing their chance at capturing the Senate and giving back all those House seats won in 2010. More and more, they openly yearn for a fresh candidate, including Jeb Bush, who does, after all, have experience at shoplifting presidential victories at the last minute.

Santorum, whose name aptly comes from the same Latin root as sanctimonious, went on Glenn Beck’s Web-based show with his family and offered this lunacy: “I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college,” because colleges are “indoctrination mills” that “harm” the country.

The barking-mad Republicans of Virginia are helping to make the party look foolish and creepy. A video went viral on Friday in which Delegate Dave Albo comically regaled his fellow lawmakers on the floor of the Statehouse with his own Old Dominion version of “Lysistrata”: he suggested that he was denied sex with his wife because of a Republican-sponsored bill that would have made ultrasounds, often with a vaginal probe, mandatory for women seeking abortions.

The Republicans, with their crazed Reagan fixation, are a last-gasp party, living posthumously, fighting battles on sex, race, immigration and public education long ago won by the other side. They’re trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by.

I'm glad Maureen gave the Virginia GOP its due recognition for being a leader in utter insanity and backwardness.

Has Bob McDonnell's Image Been Permanently Damaged?

Running for the office of Governor of Virginia back in 2009, Bob McDonnell - "Taliban Bob" to those of us in Virginia who have followed his career - worked very hard to deny that he still supported much of the batshit crazy things he wrote in his thesis at Pat Robertson's CBN Law School (now Regent University). And Taliban Bob largely succeeded in duping the general public into believing that he still did not take his marching orders from the far right Christofascists at The Family Foundation, Robertson's Regent University and the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Truth be told, however, McDonnell and his agenda had never really changed even though this truth did not become fully clear until this year when the Virginia GOP gained control of the Virginia General Assembly. Without the restraining hand of the formerly Democrat controlled Virginia Senate, McDonnell and the religious extremists who dominate the Virginia GOP were finally free to push forward their Christianist agenda.

Taliban Bob went right along with this far right batshitery and bigotry until something happened: constant national coverage and ridicule that threw much more than cold water on McDonnell's national ambitions. People came to see that Taliban Bob has not converted from his views of years ago in the halls of Pat Robertson's Christianist madrassa. The Richmond Times-Dispatch looks at the fallout and the fact that some political observers believe that McDonnell will not quickly recover from the damage he's done to himself - which is probably a good thing for America. Here are some highlights:

Enjoying high approval ratings in a state with low unemployment, Gov. Bob McDonnell's national profile was on the rise in recent weeks as he traveled the country advocating for his presidential pick, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Last week, however, the 2012 vice presidential prospect's jobs-and-economy message was co-opted by a sudden national focus on a deeply divisive social issue at home.

As Virginia lawmakers waded through a stream of contentious measures, one in particular struck a chord: legislation to mandate that women undergo ultrasounds before an abortion, which in many instances would require a vaginal probe.

Once the details of the measure emerged, they fast became fodder for late-night satire and drew hundreds to protests on the Capitol grounds. Left-leaning MSNBC host Rachel Maddow even touted commemorative vaginal probes that read: "I can see the White House from here!"

McDonnell, who had backed the concept of the legislation, found himself the subject of much of the rancor surrounding the issue.

He's been hurt by it," said University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato. "I'm of the theory that most things don't matter, but every now and then, something happens that changes people's perceptions for a lengthy period. We just had it."

Sabato said that dozens of Republican-sponsored bills relating to abortion, guns, gay couples, immigrants and drug testing of welfare recipients have fundamentally changed the way that many people inside — and more importantly for McDonnell, outside — the commonwealth will see him.


"When a presidential nominee is looking for a VP candidate, the very first hurdle is, 'Will this candidate do any harm?' " Sabato said. "Let's say the nominee is Romney, as it almost certainly will be. He's going to say, 'Let's see, do I want to have two weeks of discussion about abortion, gays and other social issues?"

The prudent answer, Sabato suggested, would be no, adding that McDonnell's 1989 master's thesis from Regent University, which raised eyebrows during the 2009 campaign for his views on working women, gays and divorce, would again become a liability.

By week's end, both the Senate and House versions of the bill had been amended to make the invasive ultrasound optional and not mandatory.

While supporting the altered version of the bill may save McDonnell a degree of conservative credibility, Sabato said the damage has been done. And it could have been avoided.

"He should have anticipated this. This is not rocket science," Sabato said. "Do you mean that his legislative staff and other people could not have analyzed in advance that this avalanche of social legislation might blow up in his face? It's obvious."

Personally, I hope Sabato's assessment is correct and that McDonnell has been permanently damaged. Just maybe McDonnell will learn from this fiasco that he needs to start listening to people outside of The Family Foundation and the most extreme elements of the Virginia GOP who want nothing less than a Christianist theocracy. Bob, I could have told you that you were walking onto quicksand. But sadly, you only seem to listen to people inside the Christianist echo chamber at The Family Foundation.

Rick Santorum's Views on the Separation of Church and State Were Discredited 350 Years Ago

Sometimes I feel as if I discuss religion more than any topic on this blog, but the reasons are fairly obvious. First it's because religion is the driving force behind the persecution of and discrimination against LGBT individuals. Second, it's because today's Republican Party has become basically a religious party which is obsessed with forcing its members' religious beliefs on the entire country. Unfortunately, in their quest to impose their religious beliefs on all members of society, the Christianists and their minions in the Republican Party have turned the principles of the Founding Fathers upside down and have seek to instead impose the rigid theocracy mindset brought to North America by the Puritans in the Massachusetts colony. A column in the New York Times looks at this phenomenon and reminds us of the concept of freedom of religion championed by Roger Williams - founder of Rhode Island - that was adopted by the Founders. Here are some highlights:

“Rick Santorum is John Winthrop,” the historian and author John M. Barry was saying the other day. Barry is in a unique position to make such a judgment. His most recent book, published last month, is entitled “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul.” To call it a biography sells it short. What it is, really, is the history of an idea — an idea that Williams articulated before anyone else — about the critical importance of separating church from state.

So revolutionary was this idea that it caused Williams to be banished from Massachusetts and to seek refuge in nearby Rhode Island, which he founded. In doing so, Williams created the first place in the Western world where people could believe in any God they wished — or no God at all — without fear of retribution.

In opposition to that idea, always, were Winthrop and the other Puritans who first came to Massachusetts. Puritans fled to America in the 1600s because they were being persecuted in England for their hard-edged, Calvinist beliefs . . .

Winthrop and the other Puritans did not arrive on the shores of Massachusetts hungering for religious freedom. Rather, Winthrop’s “city on a hill” was meant to be, in Barry’s words, “an authoritative and theocentric state,” no less tolerant of any deviation of Puritan theology than England had been toward the Puritans. Even before Williams’s views about church and state were fully formed, he became an outcast in Massachusetts

In recent decades, the separation of church and state has been more scrupulously followed, thanks to lawsuits and court decisions, many of them controversial. That, in turn, has brought a backlash from social conservatives, who believe that the country has strayed too far from God’s law. Though the separation of church and state may be one of the country’s foundational doctrines, it is, nonetheless, one that many Americans do not readily accept. In the current presidential campaign, Rick Santorum is clearly their standard-bearer.

I don’t doubt that if Winthrop could see America today, he would be horrified — just as, in many ways, Santorum is. Americans are free to do things that Santorum — and Winthrop — would view as deeply sinful. Individuals can believe what they want and act as they wish, without caring about what Rick Santorum — or John Winthrop — thinks.

Unlike Winthrop, if Williams could see the America his central idea gave us, he would likely be pleased. We should all be.

Somehow through their hijacking of the Thanksgiving story - the first was actually at Berkley Plantation here in Virginia - the fact that the Puritans were religious extremists and in many ways not very nice people has been lost to modern generations. They left England to flee persecution but then began to freely persecute others. In many ways, they were the Pharisees of their time. Now, Rick Santorum and the Christianists have replaced the Puritans as the modern day Pharisees of out time. And like the Puritans, Santorum and today's GOP preach directly against the principle of religious freedom written into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. Indeed, by trying to subvert the U.S. Constitution, one could even argue that it is they, not liberals, who are guilty of treason and seeking to undermine the nation.