Adam asks after the election, “So what’s on your mind?”
What’s on my mind is the amount of hateful and negative comments I see from “Christian Conservatives” who say America is lost now that Obama was elected President by a clear majority. They point to the war, to the economy, etc. and say “see, look how bad things are because of the liberals; in four years Mitt will be back”.
The lack of reason or sense in these people is shocking. Today I was called a “poor insider” simply because I refused to agree that fixing polls and lying to voters would have been a good way to get McCain elected. I thought my position was reasonable. Now I am an insider? Apparently the word has achieved a new and very confusing meaning, as though to be an insider of any kind is an insult on its own.
I also was accused of being a liberal. This was because I live in California. I also have been saddened to find people advocating in online comments that there should be a “return” to Natural Law or even Biblical Law as a “progressive” way to govern America. The irony seems lost to them.
Remember how embarrassing Kansas was to America when the School Board banned teaching evolution? The best response to them, aside from voting them all out of public office, was the Venganza movement.
It is important to put the lack of enlightened thinking into a global context. Last week’s shocking news from Somalia was that a 13 year old girl was accused of adultery when she reported to police that she had been raped. The girl, already a victim of a heinous crime, was then sentenced to be stoned to death in a stadium full of onlookers. Stoned to death. The story is disgusting.
Yet, this is exactly the sort of thing I worry about when I look in the eyes and writings of the apparently bloodthirsty Americans who speak of using government to legislate sins and who want everyone to honor some weird interpretation of Biblical law.
Ahmanson’s most controversial episode related to his funding of the religious empire of Rousas John Rushdoony, a radical evangelical theologian who advocated placing the United States under the control of a Christian theocracy that would mandate the stoning to death of homosexuals.
Who is Ahmanson? He is a reclusive and rich son of the man who founded Washington Mutual and just one of the most powerful US-based religious extremists (#2 on Time’s 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America). He poured nearly a million dollars into the Proposition 8 debate in California, on the side that generated extreme lies and bogus campaign material. Their argument was basically if you vote against Proposition 8, you personally will suffer an awful fate.
In fact, their argument seems to be that everyone will suffer an awful fate no matter what they do…and yet, the vituperative comments and dishonesty only fooled some of the people. Although the latest news is that Proposition 8 passed, it was a very slim margin.
Many millions of voters resisted the insurgents’ bait and instead helped create a deep shade of purple for California. A similar marriage ban in California was passed by a margin of 61 to 39 percent in 2000, whereas this time the vote is split 50/50. It is heartening to see that many dismissed evangelical scare tactics and put their vote towards enlightenment and the preservation of individual liberty.
P.S. I also just want to point out that I resisted the urge to make puns about people being stoned to death in California. In times like this what would the FSM do?