4th
Who Will Lead The Sanctimonious, Science-Hating Busybodies Now?
James Dobson recently retired as the head of Focus on the Family, and while that sort of news makes many of my friends happy, all it does is make me nervous.
Just in case you don’t know, “Family” doesn’t actually mean “Family.” I mean, I have a family, and so do all of my friends, and none of them are even remotely interested in what Focus on the Family have to offer. That’s because in the case of Mr. Dobson and company, “Family” is a pseudonym for “Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians.”
This sort of Christianity isn’t the barco-lounger faith that you experience on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve when you go hit the easy going Presbyterian church around the corner with your mom. This is the sort that thinks evolution is crazy Satan talk. This is the sort that thinks that homosexuality is something that is chosen by its participants. This is the sort that believes that anyone who uses birth control is committing murder. This is the sort where folks actually believe that Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale, my girlfriend’s earliest descendent is my ribcage, and that Adam and Eve played rodeo with a brontosaurus back in the Garden of Eden.
Why the word “Family?” Well, why not? It’s a pretty pleasant sounding word, for the most part. And it falls squarely into the wonderful political Fundamentalist tradition of euphemisms. Like, “San Francisco” means “Gay,” and “New York” could mean either “Jewish” or “Latino” or “Black.”
They also seem to like the word “Liberty,” which is odd considering that one of their main concerns is making sure that people aren’t allowed to do whatever the hell they want. For instance, there is Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, which does not allow its students to dance or to see R-rated movies. And there is also The Liberty Counsel, which can be counted on to file lawsuit after lawsuit anytime and anywhere homosexuals get within sniffing distance of legal marriage. If anyone is interested in really helping the Liberty Counsel or Liberty University, I would recommend sending them dictionaries in lieu of donations.
You might be thinking “So what? Big deal? What do these bozos have to do with me?” And if they weren’t organized, influential and politically active, I’d agree with you completely.
Surely you have noticed how these folks kept popping up during the Bush administration. Didn’t you notice how they were having “prayer breakfasts” over at the Department of Justice? Didn’t you notice how all of a sudden sixty “attorneys” fresh from Pat Robertson’s fourth tier “Law School” were not only hired by the Department of Justice but were also put in charge of which REAL LAWYERS to hire?
Didn’t it strike you as strange that all of a sudden these “Intelligent Design” nitwits were getting a fair hearing at the Department of Education instead of being laughed out of the room?
Didn’t you notice how President Bush couldn’t be bothered to go and check on New Orleans until around four days after the levees broke, but got up out of bed at five in the morning so he could fly to Washington and sign legislation about one brain dead chick in Florida?
Didn’t you notice that all of a sudden it became okay for pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions? Didn’t you notice that “abstinence only” sex education became the law of the land?
I have no idea how the Fundamentalist Christians decided to get with the Republican Party once they decided to get politically active. From what I understand of such things, if the stories about Jesus Christ are accurate, he was about as liberal as they come. He hung out with scumbags, deplored businessmen and rampant money lenders and decided to live life among the poor. That particular brand of Jesus has somehow been transformed into Republican Jesus, who was apparently a supply side capitalist with a massive gun collection who believed that the poor just needed more gumption.
This brand of Christianity seems to be incredibly narrow in scope. If you want to see it in action, just imagine somebody stepping over a homeless guy on his way to picket a high school that’s giving out rubbers and that’s it in a nutshell.
Many Republicans that I know aren’t too thrilled with having to keep throwing bigger and bigger bones to the Jesus freaks. But they recognize a big, organized group of voters when they see one. So that’s why you have a Republican primary where three out the ten candidates don’t believe in evolution. That’s why you had a dimbulb Vice Presidential candidate who went to a freaking church like this one. That’s why you have sixty “lawyers” trained by Pat Robertson who are STILL at the Department of Justice, just gumming up the works and biding their time until its ok to try someone for blasphemy or witchcraft.
I’m sure that many of you are saying “So what? It’s Obama’s show now. These nut jobs were shown the door about three seconds after Obama took the oath of office.”
Yeah, but despite this election, I am still a firm believer that here in America, we are a nation of superstitious retards. Hell, a recent Gallup poll says that 44 percent of Americans believe that God just made us out of clay. And frankly, we just don’t hold with that fancy book learnin’. We’re fine with science as long as it sticks to building a better quality hard on, growing back our hair, or allowing us to watch the latest UFC match whenever we want. But the big questions? The idea of where we came from? The idea of where we’re going? The idea of how this big, colossal monkey party that is the universe really works? We don’t want to know. Not really. We just go with the fairy tales that are told to us every Sunday, and that’s good enough for us. And these evangelicals? They are pros at selling the fairy tale. But it’s a fairy tale with really strict rules, where THEY tell you what to do, where THEY tell you how to think, where THEY tell you who you can love, where THEY tell you what music to listen to and what books you can read and what movies you can see. And it works! It works for them like all hell. They have mega churches, universities, radio shows and television networks. They have political action committees and lawyers and lobbyists and, if you can believe it, “Think Tanks.” And they ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS come back.
Which brings me back to James Dobson, who was one hell of an organizer of fundamentalist nut jobs. So he’s gone, and that’s great, but that means that there is somebody new waiting in the wings. Maybe somebody who is younger. Maybe somebody better looking. Maybe somebody who is a little more media savvy. Maybe somebody who is really good at compressing their ideals very neatly onto a t-shirt by using witty slogans (in which case we’re REALLY done for.)
Look, it’s really simple. Unless you want to wake up one day and think that you are an extra in Children of the Corn, make as much noise as you can. Don’t let people who don’t believe in science on your school boards. Stop spending so much time worrying about where a candidate spends his Sundays and start worrying about what practical things he has done here on earth. If you are a Republican, tell these people to go form their own party, because “Small, non-intrusive government” is not compatible with “setting up headquarters in everyone’s pants”.
Understand, we are at war with a group of people who believe that everything that was written in an ancient prayer book is absolutely true. Why we would encourage people who believe essentially a slightly different version of the same thing in our own country is beyond me. We don’t need more “faith” right now. We need logic, reason, and science, and anyone who wants to lead us without providing any of those things can, as far as I’m concerned, take their snake oil back to the cornfields.
