Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It (15 page)

The death of the OTA symbolizes the loss of scientific reasoning in American policy generally. We are no longer the America that challenges itself to go to the moon. We have not been inspired by great leaders who call us to sacrifice—and innovate—for the greater good.

I kidded earlier about the C Street group and its tax-subsidized housing and sexual shenanigans, but the history of The Family runs deep and dark. The Family’s secretive leader, Doug Coe, positively compared Jesus’s teachings to the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution: “I’ve seen pictures of young men in the Red Guard of China. . . . they would bring in this young man’s mother and father, lay her on the table with a basket on the end. . . . He would take an axe and cut her head off. . . . They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of the mother-father-brother-sister—their own life! That was a covenant. A pledge. That was what Jesus said.”

Jeff Sharlet, author of
The Family
, documents Coe’s positive comparison of the special privilege of The Family with the powers of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. The powerful inner circle of The Family, it seems, is anointed by God to do far more than merely commit adultery; according to the ministry’s very theology, its elite has god-given license to do what would be immoral for others.

America can clog its intellectual arteries with the greasy words of religious hucksters out to pick vulnerable pockets, so as to enrich their privileged, tax-subsidized lives—or it can inspire people to work together in the best interests of our country and fellow citizens. We may have reason, science, and youth on our side, but people of a secular bent make a mistake in underestimating the theocrats and hucksters. Religious extremists are diligent and, as we shall see in the next chapter, after many years of hard work, their ranks in the highest corridors of power are greater than at any time in U.S. history. Yet we still have the power to “imagine” a better world, then work for it.

The first job we have as Americans is to reach out to everybody in the country who is not yet saved, and to help them understand the spiritual basis of a creator-endowed society
.

—Newt Gingrich

I don’t have any respect for the Religious Right
.

—Barry Goldwater

Do we have a theocracy in America? Not yet. But at no other time in American history have we had such a high percentage of theocratic members of Congress—people who expressly endorse religious bias in American law. Just as ominously, at no other time have religious fundamentalists effectively had veto power over one of the country’s two major political parties. The religious bias in numerous laws described in this book is not the result of a constitutional requirement. Far from it. These biased laws have been enacted
despite
our Constitution.

There are only 535 members of Congress, and they make laws for the other 300 million of us. By definition, then, any single member of Congress holds huge power. To understand the scope of the overall threat posed by modern theocrats to the values of our Founders and our Constitution, let us look at the record and statements of the theocrats themselves.

Many—indeed, most—of the 535 sitting members of Congress who vote consistently for theocratic policies will not be discussed in the pages that follow. Doing so would take a whole book in itself. Rather, the fifty members of Congress listed in this chapter are merely a representative sampling of those politicians who wear their theocratic bias on their sleeve—ones worthy of an award for their commitment to theocratic values. 91

The separation of church and state is an issue that should transcend party—and it did in the past. Today we rarely find elected Republicans—politicians—who unequivocally support the separation of church and state. This was not the case forty years ago. The reality has changed. Most elected Republicans today would categorically reject the pungently stated sentiments of Barry Goldwater that introduce this chapter. For decades, Mr. Conservative embodied not merely Republican values but right-wing Republican values. The fact that Goldwater’s views would make him persona non grata in the Republican Party today can be interpreted in only one way: it marks a seismic shift toward theocracy within the Republican Party.

Don’t believe me? Enjoy sampling these heroes of twenty-first-century American theocracy. We must make our fellow citizens aware of the extremism of these high-ranking elected officials. Some statements quoted here (if they weren’t coming from members of Congress) would be humorously loony. I think the Tinfoil Hat Award should go to Congressman Steve Pearce. But you may disagree. The competition is fierce, as you shall see. Many of the comments below relate to gay people, but this is because the issue of gay rights has gotten so much media attention that politicians are forced to reveal their attitudes toward the gay community—but their theocratic voting record extends far beyond any one issue.

The theocratic award winners listed here are listed alphabetically. Enjoy dipping your toe in the pool of theocracy, the water’s warm, what with all the fire and brimstone underneath. Without further ado, I present the Fundamentalist Fifty Awards.

Winner: The Michigan-Is-Very-Scary Award

Congresswoman Sandy Adams (R-FL)
: Congresswoman Adams voted to enact burdensome waiting periods and tough parental notice laws for young women seeking abortions and voted to force women to have ultrasound tests before terminating a pregnancy. Congresswoman Adams opposes stem cell research and is proud that she “fought against this type of research funding in the Florida House of Representatives.” She opposes teaching evolution and has voted for teachers to “teach theories that contradict the theory of evolution.” She says that Christians should reject evolution in favor of “the biblical terms of how we came about.” When asked whether she believed in evolution, Adams replied, “I’m Christian. What else do you want to know?” Adams supports Florida’s unsuccessful private school vouchers program, including for religious schools, and wants to display the Ten Commandments in public schools. Congresswoman Adams claims, with no basis, that Islamic law (sharia) thrives in some towns in
Michigan and may spread: “The Muslim extremist project is to create pockets and to grow their Muslim extreme philosophies, and if you look at some of our towns within our own borders, like Michigan, Michigan has cities that have a lot of Muslim influence and even so much as I would say some extremist Muslim influence because they are trying to operate under sharia law, not American law.”

Winner: The Mamma-Grizzly Award

Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
: Sarah Palin endorsed Ayotte, who agrees with Palin on women’s rights and gay rights. Senator Ayotte says same-sex couples shouldn’t be able to adopt.

Winner: The Protect-Us-from-the-Evolutionist-Cult Award

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Constitutional Conservative Caucus and Tea Party Caucus Chair
: Congresswoman Bachmann says believers in evolution represent a “cult following.” In the Minnesota Senate, Bachmann supported teaching creationism in public schools. Bachmann states her work to block LGBT rights “is a very serious matter, because it’s our children who are the prize for this community, they [gay people] are specifically targeting our children.” She spearheaded a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. She referred to homosexuality as “personal enslavement.” In Washington, Bachmann cosponsored a bill to give “14th Amendment protections to an embryo or fetus.” Speaking to a fundamentalist group, she prayed God would “expand this ministry beyond anything that the originators of this ministry could begin to think or imagine.” This fundamentalist group’s leader described the execution of gays as a “moral” act since “homosexuality is an abomination,” and later suggested that Muslim Americans and Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim, are planning on “overthrowing the United States Constitution” by “bring[ing] in Sharee [sic] law through the homosexual agenda.” Huh?

Winner: The Caped-Crusader Award

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
:Congressman Bartlett carried Rev. Sung Myung Moon’s purple cape as Moon was literally crowned—yep, a religious leader crowned!—in a congressional building.

Winner: The War-on-Christmas-Concocted-Issue Award

Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO)
: Senator Blunt claimed, falsely, that the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would put people at legal risk
if they have a Bible in their work cubicle. He has also voted for government-imposed school prayer.

Winner: The William-Jennings-Bryan-Creationism-in-School Award

Congressman John Boehner (R-OH), Speaker:
In 2002, Congressman Boehner wrote the Ohio Board of Education urging the teaching of creationism in public schools. Boehner has voted to ban same-sex couples from adopting and to repeal domestic partnership laws, and supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Boehner has also voted against protecting reproductive health clinics and has backed laws compelling women and girls to go through biased “counseling” before terminating a pregnancy.

Winner: The 2012-Must-Be-the-Year-of-the-Koran Award

Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA)
:Congressman Broun took time to draft legislation calling for 2010 to be the year of the Bible. Broun “sponsored legislation to give human fertilized eggs the full legal protection afforded a person from the moment that a sperm penetrates the membrane of the egg cell.”

Winner: The Demonic-Homosexual-Sodomites Award

Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY)
: Congresswoman Buerkle denounced “demonic homosexual sodomites.” A group she led has blocked access to a gynecologist’s office, because some women dared to have abortions there. Congresswoman Buerkle once joined in an antichoice parade in which someone carried a dead fetus.

Winner: The The-First-Amendment-Isn’t-for-You-People Award

Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA), Majority Leader
: Congressman Cantor opposed the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero: “Everybody knows America’s built on the rights of free expression, the rights to practice your faith, but come on.” Theocrats, it seems, have a selective view of religious freedom. While in office, Congressman Cantor has voted against every bill to fund stem cell research, calling this research a “distraction” that would lead to “embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning.” With a 0.00 (zero) percent lifetime rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Human Rights Campaign, Cantor supported the anti–abortion rights Stupak-Pitts Amendment in the 2010 health-care debate. Cantor voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Winner: The “Right”-to-Neglect-Children Award

Senator Dan Coats (R-IN)
: Senator Coats succeeded in allowing so-called faith healers to have greater leeway to medically neglect their children. Coats argued that child neglect of this type is a constitutional right. (Pssst, it’s not.) Senator Coats is an adherent of the C Street–based Fellowship Foundation’s extreme theology of power, the group exposed in Jeff Sharlet’s book
The Family
. Coats has labeled Sharlet an enemy of Jesus.

Winner: The Crazed-Lesbians-on-the-Loose Award

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
: Senator Coburn said a campaign worker told him “lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom [at a time].” (Hearing this newsflash, teenage boys in southwest Oklahoma are driving east at top speed.) During the health-care debate, Coburn expressed his hope that a Democratic senator of the majority caucus would not be able to make the vote: “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.”

Winner: The Box-Turtles-Are-Sexy-Too Award

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)
:Consider this excerpt from an advance copy of a speech that Senator Cornyn was to give at the Heritage Foundation: “It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right. . . . Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.” The best I can say here is that Senator Cornyn removed the reference to the box turtle in the actual speech, but it did earn him a
Daily Show
mention.

Winner: The No-Hussy-Teachers Award

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)
:Senator DeMint said single mothers who live with men should be barred from teaching. He later apologized, saying his remarks were “distracting from the main issues.” DeMint has also said openly gay people shouldn’t be allowed to teach in public schools. Although he has noted that this opinion reflects his personal values, and is not necessarily the basis for legislation, he opposes gay marriage because of the “costly secondary consequences” to society from the prevalence of certain diseases among homosexuals.

Winner: The Vote-against-Gay-People-Unless-They-Happen-to-Be-My, ahem, Chief-of-Staff Award

Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), Rules Committee Chair
: Congressman Dreier voted against Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, a program offering shelter for the impoverished sick. He voted against funding for a federal program that furnishes the poor with the AIDS medications they need to live. Dreier doesn’t worry about health care for his male partner, the highest paid staffer on Capitol Hill at one point. Sweet Jesus! God apparently cares for gay people (who are well connected). Dreier voted to ban same-sex couples from adopting children and against reproductive choice.