Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It (16 page)

Winner: The Anti-Anti-Christian Award

Congresswoman Renee Ellmers (R-NC)
: Reporter Anderson Cooper asked then-candidate Ellmers about her ad in which she condemned the construction of “victory mosques” in lands conquered by Muslims centuries ago and made an analogy between those mosques and the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. Cooper noted that Christians built churches in places they conquered, including Rome. Her reply? “I guess what I could ask you is, are you antireligion, are you anti-Christian in your thinking?”

Winner: The No-Buddha-Doorstop Award

Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY)
: With Senators DeMint and Vitter, Senator Enzi authored a bill to mandate that the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center always prominently display the words “Under God” and “In God We Trust,” and that Capitol staff must allow and leave on display any other “Judeo-Christian” symbols prepared or produced for the visitor center. So, crosses and Torahs would be welcome, but Buddha doorstops? A no go. Senator Enzi also participates in The Family, the group whose prime organizer in Uganda was the politician who proposed legislation calling for the death penalty for homosexual conduct.

Winner: The Voice-of-God Award

Congressman Phil Gingry (R-GA)
:Congressman Gingry said in support of a federal constitutional ban on gay marriage: “I think God has spoken very clearly on this issue.” It’s so convenient when you hear directly from the boss.

Winner: The Congressman-Pearce-Wacky-Reasoning Award

Congressman Louis Gohmert (R-TX), Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Committee Chair
: Congressman Gohmert has likened homosexuality
to bestiality, pedophilia, and necrophilia. He opposes gay people serving openly in the military because gays “cannot control their hormones to the point that they are a distraction to the good order and discipline of the military.” Speaking against hate-crime legislation, Gohmert asked, “You think a pregnant mother does not deserve the protection of a homosexual? You think a military member doesn’t deserve the protection of a transvestite?” Huh? But “huh” can often come to mind with Congressman Gohmert. Consider this reasoning (I’ll get back to religion, I promise, but indulge me because this one’s so bizarre): Congressman Gohmert actually claimed that “terrorist cells overseas” were planning to bring pregnant women “into the United States to have a baby” so the babies could become citizens. “And then they would turn back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists,” Gohmert explained, “and then one day, twenty, thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life.” What a great movie pitch! The Manchurian fetus.

Winner: The Antiscience Award

Congressman Ralph Hall (R-TX), Science and Technology Committee Chair
: Using deceptive procedural tactics, Congressman Hall sabotaged a bill intended to boost science jobs and education by attaching an irrelevant amendment about pornography. Astronomer and writer Phil Plait called Hall’s move a “deplorable stunt” and “blatant partisan ploy.” Hall has a top rating with Christian fundamentalists.

Winner: The Michele-Bachmann-Is-Moderate Award

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler (R-MO)
: Congresswoman Hartzler supported legislation that “would have allowed for prosecutors to charge women who obtained late-term abortions with murder” and permit “second-degree murder charges to be filed against doctors who performed such procedures.” Women who have late-term abortions usually do so because of a very serious health issue. She wrote a book for fundamentalist activists called
Running God’s Way
. It discusses “Christian” ways to run for office and how to run a campaign “using events and stories in the Bible as a guide.” Hartzler said her book provides candidates with “the tools and inspiration they need to bring God’s light in a darkening world.” She led the fight to stop Missouri from ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment for women.

Winner: The God-Bless-You Award

Congressman Wally Herger (R-CA)
:In 2009 Congressman Herger, a powerful ways and means committee member, attended a town hall meeting
where an audience member referred to himself as a “proud right-wing terrorist.” Herger responded with, “Amen. God bless you. There goes a great American.” Huh?

Winner: The Spreading-the-“Political-Philosophy-of-Jesus” Award

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
: Senator Inhofe first campaigned for his seat touting the slogan “God, Guns, and Gays.” As Jeff Sharlet reported, Inhofe spent at least $187,000 of taxpayer money—not counting his military transportation cost—to meet with foreign leaders on behalf of The Family, the organization behind C Street. Inhofe’s mission, he declared, was to use his status as a U.S. senator—and a Family brother—to spread the “political philosophy of Jesus, something put together by Doug.” “Doug” is Doug Coe, long-time leader of The Family, who, according to Sharlet, has praised the leadership skills of Hitler. Inhofe claimed that, because the Bible says God gave the West Bank to Abraham, America is violating God’s law with any policy other than one directed at eliminating Palestinians from all territory Abraham could have seen from Hebron 4,000 years ago.

Winner: The Being-“Profamily”-Means-Stealing-Cars-and-Lying-about-Your-Military-Record-Are-OK-so-Long-as-You-Are-Antichoice-and-Antigay Award

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chair
: Congressman Issa received a 100 percent “profamily” rating from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. And why not? Haven’t people in your family been brought up on gun charges (more than once)? And car theft charges (more than once)? Surely the fact that charges were brought more than once is simply evidence of a conspiracy born of antifamily nonbelievers. What of the allegations that Issa exaggerated his military record and falsely claimed service on presidential protection duty? Surely, lies from Wiccans and Satanists. After all, when someone has the Eagle Forum endorsement, one knows that one’s “family values” remain absolute and one has the moral authority to lecture others.

Winner: The Way-Scarier-than-Stephen-King Award

Congressman Steve King (R-IA), Immigration Committee Chair
: Congressman King has called Joe McCarthy “a hero for America.” When asked at a rally in support of Arizona’s immigration law if Obama was bringing “small quantities of Muslims into this country,” King said he “wouldn’t be surprised that that is the real factual basis.” King said Democrats were like Pontius Pilate and would have supported the
pharaohs over Israelite slaves. On Glenn Beck’s show, King said Democrats were trying to “take away the liberty that we have right from God” because Congress was voting on the health-care reform bill on a Sunday. King voted against allowing U.S. citizens and legal residents to petition for their permanent partners (including same-sex partners) to obtain U.S. residency or citizenship. King told the Family Research Council that gay Americans should stay in the closet if they wanted to avoid discrimination and equated gay rights with the rights of “unicorns and leprechauns.” King has analogized homosexuality with incest and labeled marriage equality as “a purely socialist concept.” King voted against a plaque commemorating slaves who helped build our nation’s Capitol, labeling it part of a plot “by liberals in Congress to scrub references to America’s Christian heritage from our nation’s Capitol.”

Winner: The Theocrat’s Pharmacist Award

Congressman Raul Labrador (R-ID)
:Congressman Labrador has voted to legally authorize medical professionals to shirk their professional duties and refuse to fill valid prescriptions for contraceptives. He opposes abortion in all cases including rape and incest. Labrador voted to make the federal government “provide for the presence of God in the public domain.” He wants to ban openly gay and lesbian soldiers from the military and opposes same-sex marriage.

Winner: The Other-51-Weeks-Must-Be-Muslim-Heritage-Weeks Award

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)
: Thanksgiving Week was proclaimed Christian Heritage Week in West Virginia by Manchin when he was governor.

Winner: The Domestic-Violence-Sensitivity Award

Congressman Alan Nunnelee (R-MS)
: Congressman Nunnelee voted to allow for fundamentalist-advocated covenant marriage, a marriage agreement that makes divorce very difficult (a brilliant idea in domestic violence situations). Nunnelee led a successful push making the DMV print “Choose Life” license plates, with the money going to antichoice groups. (I’m sure he’d be fine with a flying spaghetti monster license plate with proceeds going to a secular group. I’m serious, Mississippi friends. Ooh, or maybe a Wiccan license plate! If government says yes to one religious symbol, it must say yes to another.) Nunnelee “led the efforts to place our national motto, In God We Trust, on the wall of every school classroom in the state.” He also is “proud to have pushed the statutory
language prohibiting same sex couples from adopting as well as the Constitutional Amendment prohibiting same sex marriage in [the Mississippi legislature].”

Winner: The Jim-DeMint-Isn’t-Theocratic-Enough Award

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)
: Senator Paul keynoted a Minnesota Constitution Party event. The Constitution Party’s Web site proclaimed, “The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations. . . . The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law.” Paul says he would “strongly support” court-stripping legislation “restricting federal courts from hearing cases like
Roe v. Wade
” and would back a “Sanctity of Life Amendment” that would define in law that life begins at conception. Paul thinks politicians should decide minority rights instead of the Constitution and says “you could have prayer in public schools.” Paul declined to answer a question about the age of the earth. Rand Paul has said, “My goal is to make DeMint look like a moderate.”

Winner: The Great “Libertarian” Award

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)
:Congressman Paul said, “The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers.” He said our Founders envisioned an America with “churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance.” Many young people are attracted to the libertarian veneer of Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns. Let’s examine his record: Paul introduced the Sanctity of Life Act, which would define human life as beginning at conception and remove challenges to prohibitions on abortion from federal court jurisdiction. In 2005 Paul introduced the We the People Act to disallow any claim based upon the right of privacy, including “any such claim related to any issue of . . . reproduction.” Such a law would allow states to outlaw contraception. Talk about big government.

The perennial presidential candidate now says he was unaware of the bigoted rhetoric about African-Americans and gays appearing in his newsletters from the 1970s through the 1990s, though he claimed authorship at the time. One newsletter comment related to the Los Angeles riots: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks”—a statement he now repudiates. Paul’s newsletter opposed the Martin Luther King federal holiday. (“What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!” one newsletter complained. “We can thank
him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.”) A 1990s newsletter attacked the “X-Rated Martin Luther King” as a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours,” “seduced underage girls and boys,” and “made a pass at” fellow civil-rights leader Ralph Abernathy. (Martin Luther King slept with various adult women, but all the other allegations are vicious lies against one of our greatest Americans.) One Ron Paul newsletter stated that “opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions” and that “if you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” Many perceive Ron Paul as a great libertarian. Maybe God told him racism and theocracy are libertarian values.

Winner: The Tinfoil-Hat-Award

Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM)
: Congressman Pearce says there are “serious downstream effects” to gay marriage: “They might think to themselves, ‘I’m going to marry everyone in California with AIDS, then suddenly they’ve got access to maybe the benefit program, the health insurance.” Yeah, he says that, um, stay with him here, gay marriage would lead to . . . polygamy . . . then, once there’s polygamy, see, then some heathen would marry everybody in California with AIDS . . . and then—hold the phone!—then the unthinkable might result, people might actually have health-care benefits! OH, THE HUMANITY!! It’s simple math: lickety-split you’ve got yer gay marriage then you’ve got yer polygamy then yer health coverage for people with AIDS. Luckily, the good congressman supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Phew! Disaster averted. JE-sus! That was close.

Winner: The Let’s-Not-Protect-against-HIV/AIDS-in-Africa Award

Congressman Joe Pitts (R-PA), Health Subcommittee Chair
:Congressman Pitts, a leader of The Family of C Street fame, crafted a 2003 amendment to an HIV/AIDS funding bill, mostly directed toward Africa, that required 33 percent of the funding be used only for abstinence-until-marriage programming. Pitts also worked against condom distribution in Uganda. Jeff Sharlet, in his book,
The Family
, states that Congressman Pitts has contributed more to the increasing AIDS rate in Uganda than any other single person, reversing what had been a real success story in fighting HIV in the 1990s.