Sandals at the Gate

You remember Ronald Reagan, whose first official act as president (if
you don't count negotiating with the Iranian government to keep their
American hostages until after he defeated Carter), was breaking the
strike of air traffic controllers, the first salvo in an assault on
worker's rights that follows a direct line through NAFTA to our current
abominations of pension theft and the elimination of minimum wage in
New Orleans? A real man of the people.

It was under Reagan that the whole religious 'Great Awakening' began,
which wasn't so much an embracing of religion as it was a repudiation
of the social advances of the 60's, with Donald Wildmon and James
Dobson peddling their pre-Focus on Family 'Promise Keepers,' (where men
rule the household), Phyllis Schafly screaming equal rights for women
undermines 'family values,' and Charles Schaar Murray declaring--with a
straight face--blacks do worse in America simply because they're
stupid. It was an awakening, all right.

Suddenly, the 'ostracized' religious right were 'rejoining' the national debate
under the 'revolution' of faith---spearheaded by a president who rarely
set foot in a church during his reign, lied regularly and outrageously
to the public, and illegally funded nun-killing death-squads in Central
America.

Or so the story goes, if you listen to Karl Rove, Robert Novak, Peggy
Noonan and the other shit-spinners who learned their chops at the feet
of Reagan/Bush PR wunderkind Lee Atwater, a vicious mudslinging thug
who died young of a brain tumor and renounced his scurrilous tactics on
his deathbed---tactics that have made Karl Rove a household name.

What the Reagan years really ushered in was the start of 'The Great
Hypocrisy,' the GOP's twisting of religion to create a class of
disgruntled zealots so blinded by hate they'd rush to vote into office
the very thieves, liars and torturers who would not only screw them at
every turn, but would decades later deliver George W. Bush to our
doorstep with his Faith Based Everything.

And 'the national debate'---where is it? There is no debate, just
ideologues screaming at each other to see whose one-dimensional
faith-based sound byte can 'win'--nonsense like 'God Hates Fags' and
Rick Santorum's equating homosexuality with bestiality.

It used to be that Christians were known to all by their good deeds,
but after almost four decades of the GOP's cleaving the populace into
warring sects to be manipulated at the polls, 'being Christian' is no
longer defined by doing good deeds, it's defined by an arrogant mission
to tell others how they must live---who they can marry, who they can
adopt, what they can say in public, what they must teach in
schools---all the way down to what kind of medicine they should have
access to.

It was easy to look away from inconvenient historical facts of
Christianity like the Inquisition, the Crusades, or the pedophilia of
the priesthood when you could still see true people of faith marching
for civil rights, working in soup kitchens, or bearing witness in
Nicaragua as the Reagan-funded militias gunned down families of
peasants.

But 'The Great Awakening' now brings us faith-based leaders promoting
torture and war, who lie to us on a daily basis, and violate our
constitutionally guaranteed rights. The 'national debate' about values
is reduced to quippy bumper stickers like 'It's Okay To Pray' or 'One
Man + One Woman = Marriage.' Our national conversation on ethics,
morality, and faith has become a kind of WWF 'Religious Smackdown.'

The Great Awakening has also brought us, as reported in the Boston
Globe, a president who claims the authority to disobey over 750 of our laws.
Maybe it's time to ask ourselves what exactly has really been awakened.

Is it a coincidence that our most pro-faith president is also our
biggest law-breaking president, presiding over our most scandalized
administration in history? You tell me.

Is it coincidence that our pro-faith vice president has a gay daughter
he'd prevent from adopting a child or marrying her lover, a great
Christian whose wife converts from writing lesbian romance novels to
ethics primers for kids in the blink of a presidential campaign, a
soldier of Christ who tells a senator on the Senate floor to go fuck
himself? You tell me.

We have two million people incarcerated in federal prisons. If we're to
believe the polls the Pat Robertsons and Bill O'Reillys constantly
throw at us that 89% of our country are practicing Christians, that
means our federal prisons are stuffed to the breaking point with about
1.8 million Bible-thumpers. Hmmm.

How come when we talk about religion in the great national debate, it's
never fact s like these we discuss, instead of arguing over posting the
Ten Commandments in City Hall?

What about Lynddie England, described as rarely leaving her barracks in
Iraq except to go to church--and of course torture naked Iraqis by
forcing them to simulate anal sex for snapshots taken by the father of
her illegitimate child. If that 89% is correct, wouldn't that mean that
the majority of Lynddie's co-torturers were, you know, Christians? When
are we having that faith-based discussion?

And poor Clay Aiken, touting his Christianity to the blind, er, I mean,
fans of American Idol, rumored to be caught in a gay relationship and
seeking the love that dare not speak it's name on the Web, all the
while recording an album of ---you guessed it---Christian songs. His
fans are so mad they want to sue RCA for false advertising. Why aren't
we hearing any talk about the gullibility of a Christian audience in
our national debate? Why is this kind of intelligent discussion avoided
in favor of finger pointing and sneering? If Aiken was gay, his claim
of devout Christianity gave him the power to fool--or at least
encourage denial in--millions. Shouldn't we look into that power?

And what about the Duke lacrosse team? The entire debate is whether or
not a rape occurred, not what were a room full of Christian boys from
'good homes' (two of them educated by Jesuits) doing ordering strippers
to entertain them while threatening sodomy with a broomstick and
taunting black women with racist jibes about their cotton-picking slave
grandparents? Why don't we discuss Christianity in that context?

And of course there's Tom Delay, the great born-again purveyor of moral
rectitude, the man with his hand in so many tills even Texas
republicans had to cut him loose. The President salutes him as a great
patriot who 'served his country well' and the Rove-minions repeat ad
nauseum, 'the Dems don't have their poster-boy for corruption to kick
around anymore.' What does that mean, exactly? Did he do it, or not? If
he's innocent, then how could he possibly be a poster-boy for
corruption? And if he's guilty, why is the president saluting his
patriotism? And if he's a thief and a liar, what are we to think of his
relentless touting of Christian values? Doesn't that mean he's a
hypocrite, and that Christian values, in a political sense, are
meaningless?

What all this tells us is claiming to be Christian, on it's own,
signifies nothing. In fact, given the religious makeup of our populace,
pedophiles, thieves, liars, hypocrites and torturers in America are
more likely to be Christians than Jews, Buddhists, Muslims--or
atheists. It's simple math.

This is why the Founding Fathers--God-fearing men all--were smart
enough to keep religion out of government. They knew the power
appealing to a people's spirituality could have, that faith could be
invoked while hiding great violations of it's very tenets, encouraging
otherwise docile people to do and say despicable things, to hate each
other, to threaten the very fabric of a progressive, democratic,
rational society.

Ironically, what Bush, Rove and the rest of the Fourth Reich have shown
us is that putting more religion into government doesn't make it more
moral; what it does is allow every cut-rate thief, liar and hypocrite
to hide behind the cloak of morality while committing immoral acts
around the globe and at home that would shame any real person of faith.

It's not a coincidence that the most 'faith-based' government we've had
in over a century is also the most corrupt, secretive, murderous,
lying, and law breaking in history. In the name of 'reawakening'
Christianity in government, Bush, et al, have shown us why it should be
locked out. As soon as a politician starts quoting the Bible and going
on about his faith, we should run him out of town.

What the GOP has in fact done is mock and destroy Christianity, and
that's a shame. Like Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism,
Christianity and God are some of our greatest creations. By appealing
to an ignorant fringe of assholes who codify their hatred behind a
misuse of spirituality, the GOP is an embarrassment to not only truly
devout Christians, but to the rational world at large.

But they've done us an odd--if unintentional---service by showing us in
practice exactly what the Founding Fathers feared and tried to prevent;
that religion strikes so deep and renders people who want to be 'good'
so gullible to manipulation, that any absurdity can be pushed through,
including nonsense like dinosaurs walked the earth only two thousand
years ago, praying can stop cancer, and somebody else's marriage can
threaten your own.

So if you're against abortion, don't have one. If you're against gay
marriage, don't marry one. And if you're against illegal immigrants,
don't hire one. Clean your own damn house and pick your own damn
broccoli, and when you're unmarried daughter breaks her pledge and gets
pregnant, face your own moral dilemma and search your own spirituality
for answers--just don't force me to apply those answers to my daughter.
I'll handle her, and my grandchild, on my own.

But if you want me to see the beauty and the power of your faith, lead
by example, not by cramming it down my throat or voting for politicians
who want to screw all of us so the rich can get richer. Christian
values are feeding the hungry, helping the poor and aiding the
sick---not cutting Medicare, veteran's benefits, environmental
protections, school lunch programs or health care. Period.

Values are something you adhere to, not something you force someone else to adhere to; that's called fascism.

And don't stand there and tell me a smiling president who reserves the
right to violate a Congressional ban on torture is a man of faith.

That's called stupidity.

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