Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It by Faircloth Sean

Author:Faircloth, Sean [Faircloth, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: BookMasters
Published: 2011-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

6 The Theocrats (aka the Fundamentalist Fifty)

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.

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