Christian Right Has A Serious Problem With Ethics/Morality

Right-wing christians want you to believe they occupy the moral and ethical high ground. That's not reality. Here's an op-ed by Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com:

The conservative, Christian movement is better positioned to impose its will on American politics today than at any other time in recent memory, thanks to right-wing judges ex-President Donald Trump put on the federal bench and Supreme Court. 

On everything from abortion to education, courts have sided with Christian ideology across the land. Meanwhile, the facade of Christian moral superiority continues to crumble.

A couple of incidents come to mind. First, there’s the scandal still unfolding at Agapè Boarding School, a Christian facility for young men in Missouri that's facing a slew of child abuse allegations. Agapè pitches guardians on its ability to “biblically teach your child the importance of submission to authority and the joys of being an obedient law-abiding citizen.”

It’s unclear what that means, but if you believe allegations from several students who attended the school, it translates too frequently into assault. The Missouri State Highway Patrol has been investigating Agapè for systemic child abuse for more than a year now. On Monday, The Daily Beast reported new details about several students who have filed lawsuits alleging they were sexually abused and beaten by workers at the school. (Agapè denied the allegations in a statement to The Daily Beast.)

That alleged culture of abuse sounds similar to the one victims say was fostered by the Southern Baptist Convention, an ultraconservative denomination of Christian nationalists. In May, church leaders released a report showing hundreds of pastors and church workers have been accused of sexual abuse. The SBC, which is in ideological lockstep with the conservative movement, has since released the names of pastors it says were accused between 2000 and 2019. When the news dropped, SBC President Ed Litton said in a statement there “are not adequate words to express my sorrow at the things revealed in this report,” and that Southern Baptists “must resolve to change our culture and implement desperately needed reforms.”

These revelations are quite damning for the conservative, Christian movement and its members. For months, we've seen members of the Christian right framing themselves as protectors of children and ethical stewards of our world. But it's an impossible sell when the worlds they operate appear even more broken than the one they want to “fix.”

NOTE - They are also big supporters of Trump's coup attempt, and seem to have a disdain for our democracy.

Religious Right Is Shrinking - & It's Making Them Dangerous

For too long in this country, the religious right (evangelical christians) was the most powerful political force in the United States. That is no longer absolutely true. Their numbers are shrinking. That is both a good and bad thing. It's good because they can no longer force their weird view of religion on all Americans. It's bad because it has made them more dangerous (as we saw on January 6th).

The following is part of a column in The New York Times by Michael Goldberg:

The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.”. . .

Activists imagined a glorious future. “Home-schoolers will be inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation,” Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter, said at a 2005 Christian home-schooling convention. Ryun was the director of a group called Generation Joshua, which worked to get home-schooled kids into politics. The name came from the Old Testament. Moses had led the chosen people out of exile, but it was his successor, Joshua, who conquered the Holy Land.

But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment. On Thursday, P.R.R.I. released startling new polling data showing just how much ground the religious right has lost. P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. (As a category, “white evangelicals” isn’t a perfect proxy for the religious right, but the overlap is substantial.) In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.

One of P.R.R.I.’s most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more white mainline Protestants than white evangelicals. This doesn’t necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations — the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism.

In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56. “It’s not just that they are dying off, but it is that they’re losing younger members,” Jones told me. As the group has become older and smaller, Jones said, “a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance” has set in.

White evangelicals once saw themselves “as the owners of mainstream American culture and morality and values,” said Jones. Now they are just another subculture.

From this fact derives much of our country’s cultural conflict. It helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,” said Jones. “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles.” The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia. . . .

“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”

The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.

Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement. . . .

Then again, white evangelicals probably aren’t wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. As their numbers have shrunk and as they’ve grown more at odds with younger Americans, said Jones, “that has led to this bigger sense of being under attack, a kind of visceral defensive posture, that we saw President Trump really leveraging.”

I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.

Historical White American Christianity Is Not Biblical

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am an open atheist, and I have been for more than four decades. But it was not always so. I was raised in a fundamentalist christian church, and actually want to a religious college to become a minister. But the more I studied that religion, the less I could believe it, and making things worse was the fact that many (if not most) christians did not follow biblical teachings. Instead they perverted them to justify their own bigotry and beliefs.

And since the election of Donald Trump, it has become even worse. Christians, especially fundamentalists, praise Trump -- a man who has broken nearly every christian value and teaching. The church has been taken over by right-wing politics, and values those politics over biblical values.

Sadly though, as I learned as a young man, this is not new. While it may have become worse with Trump, too many American christians (especially whites) have used their religion to justify their bigotry.

The following is an excellent examination of the failure of white American christians. It was written by Stephen Mattson at Sojourner. It's worth reading.

Following Jesus is political by nature, but maybe no religious group has been more influenced — and co-opted — by political power than white, conservative Christians in America. It’s no surprise that a ruling government set up by and for white Christians retains much of the religion that helped put it into power, but the extremes to which the “Christianity” of white Americans has transformed into a political mouthpiece is alarming.

Although Christians across the political spectrum have all committed wrongdoings, much of conservative white American Christianity has reached a point where the pastors, theologians, and leaders are mercilessly opposed to helping refugees, immigrants, Muslims, women, children, the sick, the poor, LGBTQ individuals, and those suffering in other countries — all for the sake of political control. The apathy, opposition, and even aggressive attacks are an abandonment of Jesus’s commands.

This is not entirely new. During the brutal colonization of this land, most white people who claimed Christianity ruthlessly enforced their power using violence and dehumanization, politically and spiritually rationalizing everything as part of “manifest destiny.”

Later, slave owners would manipulate the Bible to mandate subservience, and white Christendom would continue to apply a mixture of scripture and theology — heavily reinforced with brutality — to maintain control of their financial, political, and social rule.

We don’t need more evidence that shows white conservative Christendom — especially the kind that is built on nationalistic and patriarchal structures — is oppressive. It attacks, silences, and diminishes opposing opinions while simultaneously promoting a nationalistic type of Christianity. White conservative Christianity selfishly prioritizes partisan platforms that favor an oppressive agenda over following Jesus. They forget that Christianity isn’t meant to be exclusively white, male, or American.

“Christian America” was established by those who were almost exclusively white, male, and Christian. It was simultaneously used as a tool to eliminate and subjugate people of color and those who were not white, male, American, or Christian.

Although there were a few exceptions, this kind of Christianity was used as a weapon to maintain dominance over anyone who attempted to upset the status quo. In this way, their Christianity maintained a white supremacist view of humanity where white people were set up to rule.

Hate and racism were so embedded within this religion that the KKK was marketed as a Christian institution, and segregation was endorsed by countless white pastors and their congregations. It’s still so prevalent within white Christianity today that many still refuse to acknowledge systemic racism as a problem. They happily support a president who continually spews racist and xenophobic vitriol, and support policies that continue to be racist and evil.

This false and idolatrous narrative of “American Christianity” is still prevalent today. But the good news is that American white males don’t own Christianity and never will. The message of Jesus — an ethnic minority who was unfairly arrested, incarcerated, and murdered by a ruling empire — is that the love and power of Christ is meant for everyone.

This is why throughout history, despite the horrors committed in Christ’s name, people of every race, gender, and creed have emulated the life of Jesus by loving those around them, freeing them from bondage, righting injustice, empowering the downtrodden, and loving their neighbor as themselves. This is the very essence of Christianity that Westernized Christendom has utterly failed at: loving your neighbor.

The Religious Right Has Become Sociopathic

(Cartoon image is by Mike Peters at grimmy.com.)

The following is much of a thought-provoking article by Tim Rymel in The Huffington Post:

Since Evangelical Christianity began infiltrating politics, officially in the late 1970s, there has been a disturbing trend to limit or remove rights from those who don’t meet the conservative idea of an American. Many of these initiatives come in the form of “religious freedom” laws, which empower discrimination, while other legislation targets immigrants who believe differently. The result has been a sharp division in American culture, and the redefinition of Christian theology. 

Evangelical speaker, author, and university professor, Tony Campolo, said Christianity was redefined in the mid-70s by positions of “pro-life” and opposing gay marriage. “Suddenly theology fell to the background,” he said. And somewhere in the middle of all the change, Evangelical Christianity crossed the line of faith and belief to hatred and abuse. Those who cruelly implement the actions of their faith are oblivious to the destruction they cause to their religion, or the people their beliefs impact. Is it fair to call it sociopathic?

Psychology Today listed sixteen characteristics of sociopathic behaviors, which include: Untruthfulness and insincerity, superficial charm and good intelligence, lack of remorse or shame, poor judgment and failure to learn by experience, pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love, unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations, specific loss of insight, and general poverty in major affective reactions (in other words, appropriate emotional responses).

We see examples of these kinds of behaviors in church leaders and followers. . . .

It’s common for us to avoid cognitive dissonance, when our beliefs dictate one thing, but our experiences show us something else is true. We call this living in denial, and we all do it on one level or another. But when we choose our “truth” while coldly watching a fellow human being suffer, we’ve crossed a line of mental health. 

The 2016 election demonstrated an especially high level of insincerity, shamelessness, poor judgment and pathological egocentricity among Christian evangelicals. James Dobson, who once said of Bill Clinton, “Character does matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world,” and then said of Donald Trump, “I’m not under any illusions that he is an outstanding moral example. “It’s a cliché but true: We are electing a commander-in-chief, not a theologian-in-chief.” 

The evangelical Christian message is loud and clear. They care for no one but themselves. Their devotion is to the version of Christianity they have created, which calls for ruthless abandonment of immigrants, women, children – even their own – and anyone else who doesn’t fall inline with their message. Social justice, which is mentioned in Bible verses over two thousand times, has been replaced with hardline political ideology. Principle over people. Indifference over involvement. Judgment over generosity. 

Every generation redefines what it means to be, or belong to a religious group. Religious ideologies, interpretations, and doctrines are fluid. But whatever it is, or whatever it becomes, is made by the people who belong to the religion and what they collectively decide to make it.

Religious Right Abandons Their Values To Support Trump

Poll after poll has shown the American people don't support the job Donald Trump is doing -- but that is different for those who claim to be religious. According to the Gallup Poll, 51% of the religious say Trump is doing a good job (although that figure is likely skewed by the large support for Trump by the fundamentalist right).

This amazes me. These are the people who claim to have a corner on moral values. And yet, they support a person who is a religious bigot, a racist, a misogynist, an admitted sex abuser, a serial adulterer, an admitted fraud (Trump U.), and an unadulterated liar. What happened to the values they claim to believe in? Haven't they abandoned the moral high ground by supporting Trump -- a man who represents the very antithesis of christian values?

All I can figure is that they like Trump's promise to put their own bigotry into law. These religious people, especially the fundamentalist right, seem to believe that their "right" to discriminate against their fellow citizens is more important than the values they claim to believe in. Do they even have any values -- other than bigotry and hate?

Those In The Religious Right Have Trashed Their Moral Authority By Supporting Donald Trump

(The image above is from inthesetimes.com.)

The following article is a few months old, but still very relevant (especially considering the policies Trump is pushing). It was written by Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. He writes:

IT WILL TAKE a long time to assess the full extent of the damage wrought by Donald Trump on the Republican Party and American conservatism. But this much is already clear: Buried under the post-election wreckage will be the moral credibility of the religious right.

Hypocrisy and politics have gone hand in hand since time immemorial. But the embrace of Trump by influential religious conservatives — who have always insisted that they, like Hebrew National, answer to a higher authority — is orders of magnitude worse than the customary flip-flopping and sail-trimming of a presidential campaign.

For decades, Christian (and some Jewish) conservative spokesmen portrayed their involvement in partisan battles as an aspect of their faith’s witness. Judeo-Christian ethics and the inculcation of moral standards in public life were not just talking points to the organized religious right; they were the reason the movement existed in the first place. Jerry Falwell, who launched the Moral Majority in 1979, explained that its purpose was “to turn back the flood tide of moral permissiveness, family breakdown, and general capitulation to evil” that he feared was inundating American life.

You didn’t have to sympathize with the Christian right’s political platform to understand why so many evangelical leaders were appalled by the sexual scandals that trailed Bill Clinton into the White House. It was no mystery, for example, why Ralph Reed, an early leader of the Christian Coalition, would insist vehemently, in 1998, as pressure was growing for Clinton’s impeachment, that “we care about the conduct of our leaders, and we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character.” Or why the formidable televangelist Pat Robertson would blast Clinton as a “debauched, debased, and defamed” politician who turned the Oval Office into a “playpen for the sexual freedom of . . . the 1960s.”

That isn’t how they talk about Trump.

Far from leading the opposition to the GOP’s grotesque nominee, Reed chairs his religious advisory board. Nothing in Trump’s long record of lecherous and disreputable behavior has shaken Reed’s support — not even the video in which he boasts explicitly of groping women. “People of faith” have more important concerns, Reed told CNN on Monday. “I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of concerns.”

Robertson, who has said that Trump “inspire[s] us all,” isn’t backing away either. The Donald’s talk of grabbing women by the crotch, Robertson indulgently explained to his TV audience, was just his way of “trying to look like he’s macho.”

Falwell died in 2007, but his son — Jerry Falwell Jr., the current president of Liberty University — fulsomely endorsed Trump in January. “Donald Trump lives a life of loving and helping others as Jesus taught,” Falwell the Younger gushed. He, too, sees no reason to walk back his blessing.

“We’re all sinners, every one of us,” Falwell says now. “I don’t think the American people want this country to go down the toilet because Donald Trump made some dumb comments on a videotape 11 years ago.”

Christian conservatives had no patience for such rationalizations when they were invoked to defend Bill Clinton. William Bennett — a serious Catholic, public intellectual, and Reagan-era Cabinet secretary — published a book in 1998 debunking the arguments made then by Clinton’s supporters, and now by Trump’s.

In “The Death of Outrage,” Bennett showed the absurdity of tolerating grossly immoral behavior on the grounds that everyone sins. 

The Gospel’s injunction to “judge not, lest ye be judged” is a warning against hypocrisy and self-righteousness, he wrote. “It is not — it cannot be — a call to withhold all judgment or never to express a critical opinion of another.” After all, both Old and New Testaments repeatedly condemn immoral behavior. Christians are not called upon to overlook sin, Bennett pointed out, but to resist it. There is nothing admirable about refusing to “make reasonable judgments based on moral principles” — particularly in weighing the actions of democratic leaders.

Equally intolerable is the willingness to ignore a candidate’s brazen moral offenses because you like his stands on public policy. Such ends-justify-the-means arguments are “Nixonian,” said Bennett. “Moral precepts are real; they are not like warm candle wax, easily shaped to fit the ends of this or that president, or this or that cause.” When Trump backers downplay their candidate’s scandalous conduct on the grounds that Supreme Court appointments matter more, they are as bad as Clinton backers who downplayed the president’s Oval Office debauchery because they liked his position on abortion rights.

Yet Bennett now exemplifies the phenomenon he excoriated. When it came to Clinton’s depravity, Bennett was unsparing. Trump’s depravity he doesn’t mind so much. In August, Bennett accusedanti-Trump conservatives of “put[ting] their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country.” 

Not everyone on the religious right has sacrificed their principles for Trump’s sake. A coalition of Liberty University students issued an eloquent statement Wednesday rebuking Falwell for endorsing the GOP nominee. “Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him,” they wrote. Albert Mohler, a deeply respected Baptist theologian, remains as steadfast in opposing Trump as he was in opposing Bill Clinton. 

But they and other honorable exceptions will not undo the damage caused by the pro-Trump leaders of the evangelical right. What started as Christian witness ended in hypocritical partisanship. Religious conservatives shed their principles, and thereby dismantled their influence.

Trump Would Let Churches Engage In Partisan Politics

(Cartoon image is by Nick Anderson in the Houston Chronicle.)

Churches and other religious organizations are considered to be charities by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That means they are tax exempt. But that tax exempt status has a requirement to be maintained -- the religious organizations cannot involve themselves in partisan politics. They can encourage political participation of their members, and they can encourage members to vote. But they cannot instruct their members to vote for a particular party or a particular candidate.

Donald Trump wants to change that. He knows that he got significant support from right-wing fundamentalist church members in the last election, and he knows that those members (and their church leaders) tend to support his Republican Party. He now wants to reward those churches and church leaders for their support, and insure that they can campaign for him and his party openly in the future. Toward that end, Trump says he wants to change the rules to allow churches to participate in partisan politics while keeping their tax exempt status.

This is just wrong. It is a huge benefit for churches and religious organization to not have to pay taxes. And the taxes they don't pay has to be made up by all individual taxpayers (even those who are not members of that organization, or any religious institution). It is bad enough that they don't have to pay taxes, but it is ridiculous to allow them to participate in partisan politics while paying no taxes.

It is also against the will of the American people. Poll after poll has shown that a significant majority of Americans don't want partisan politics preached from the pulpit. They like the rules as they are. But on this issue, just like many others, Trump doesn't seem to care what Americans want. He is going to act for the benefit of himself and his party, regardless of what the public wants.

This change to the IRS laws must be opposed.

U.S. Public Is Opposed To Discrimination Based On Religion

The religious right-wing is upset with the recent victories of the LGBT community in their fight to be treated equally in this country -- to be treated the same as all other Americans. Those religious fundamentalists feel it is their right to discriminate against anyone they disagree with. And they have been successful in passing laws in some states (like Mississippi and North Carolina) that would allow businesses to discriminate against citizens "for religious reasons" -- and other states are considering those kinds of laws.

Fortunately, most Americans don't agree with discrimination based on religion. They believe businesses (and government and other entities) should treat all citizens fairly and equally. The chart above was made from a recent Rasmussen Poll -- done between April 7th and 10th of a random national sample of 1,000 likely voters, and has a margin of error of 3 points.

It shows that 64% (nearly two-thirds of the general public) is opposed to those "religious freedom" laws that would allow discrimination based on religion. Only 29% support such odious laws.

Every now and then, a poll comes out that makes me proud of my fellow citizens. This is one of them.

Bigotry With A Bible Is Still Bigotry (Even In Indiana)

(From the Facebook page of America's Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers.)

The Republican officials in Indiana have decided that their fundamentalist base was being oppressed because they could not legally discriminate against those they didn't like -- so they passed a law to allow that discrimination. Now any nut-job in that state can freely discriminate against anyone he/she wants. All they have to say is that not discriminating against that person (or group) would violate their "sincerely held" religious views.

This is a shameful law in a country like our -- a country that claims to believe in freedom, equal opportunity, and equal rights under the law. And there has been a huge backlash from decent citizens in this country against this reprehensible law.

Governor Pence and other GOP officials are now trying to play down the terrible thing they did in passing that law. They are now trying to claim that their law is no different from a federal law and laws passed in several other states. The problem with that is it's just not true. Their law goes further than the federal law or the law in most other states. Garrett Epps points out the differences in an excellent article for The Atlantic. Here is part of that article:

I don’t question the religious sincerity of anyone involved in drafting and passing this law. But sincere and faithful people, when they feel the imprimatur of both the law and the Lord, can do very ugly things.

There’s a factual dispute about the new Indiana law. It is called a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” like the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993.* Thus a number of its defenders have claimed it is really the same law. Here, for example, is the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack: “Is there any difference between Indiana's law and the federal law? Nothing significant.” I am not sure what McCormack was thinking; but even my old employer, The Washington Post, seems to believe that if a law has a similar title as another law, they must be identical. “Indiana is actually soon to be just one of 20 states with a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA,” the Post’s Hunter Schwarz wrote, linking to this mapcreated by the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

The problem with this statement is that, well, it’s false. That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes.  If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs. 

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.

What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has “free exercise” rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, in which the Court’s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees’ statutory right to contraceptive coverage. 

Second, the Indiana statute explicitly makes a business’s “free exercise” right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government. Why does this matter? Well, there’s a lot of evidence that the new wave of “religious freedom” legislation was impelled, at least in part, by a panic over a New Mexico state-court decision, Elane Photography v. Willock. In that case, a same-sex couple sued a professional photography studio that refused to photograph the couple’s wedding. New Mexico law bars discrimination in “public accommodations” on the basis of sexual orientation. The studio said that New Mexico’s RFRA nonetheless barred the suit; but the state’s Supreme Court held that the RFRA did not apply “because the government is not a party.”

Remarkably enough, soon after, language found its way into the Indiana statute to make sure that no Indiana court could ever make a similar decision.  Democrats also offered the Republican legislative majority a chance to amend the new act to say that it did not permit businesses to discriminate; they voted that amendment down. 

So, let’s review the evidence: by the Weekly Standard’s definition, there’s “nothing significant” about this law that differs from the federal one, and other state ones—except that it has been carefully written to make clear that 1) businesses can use it against 2) civil-rights suits brought by individuals. . .

The statute shows every sign of having been carefully designed to put new obstacles in the path of equality; and it has been publicly sold with deceptive claims that it is “nothing new.”

  

Being required to serve those we dislike is a painful price to pay for the privilege of running a business; but the pain exclusion inflicts on its victims, and on society, are far worse than the discomfort the faithful may suffer at having to open their businesses to all.

A Conservative Christian Talks About Climate Change

The lady pictured is Katharine Hayhoe. She is an evangelical christian -- and a climate scientist. She appeared on Bill Moyers TV show recently to discuss global climate change and why so many evangelical christians deny that it is happening. It was an excellent interview, and I urge you to read the whole thing. Below I have posted just a part of that interview:

BILL MOYERS: Why (do you get so much negative feedback)?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, caring about climate is entirely consistent with who we are as Christians. But over the last several decades, we have increasingly begun to confound our politics with our faith. To the point where instead of our faith dictating our attitudes on political and social issues, we are instead allowing our political party to dictate our attitude on issues that are clearly consistent with who we are.

BILL MOYERS: What does that tell you?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: That this issue pushes a button. It is a giant red button as big as this table, and it really makes people mad because they feel like it threatens something that they hold dear. And that's because we've been told that you can't be a Christian, or you can't be a conservative, or you can't be a person of faith or even a person of integrity and agree that climate is changing, that humans are responsible, and that there's something really important we need to do about it.

BILL MOYERS: Who's telling them that?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, if you read the social science, which is honestly my favorite reading material these days, we have found out from social science that number one, if you take conservative Protestants and you ask them what they think about climate change, but you control for age, for conservativism, and for political party affiliation, then the bias drops out. That's what is accounting for conservative Protestants thinking climate change isn't real. It's our political affiliation.

But here's the thing. In the majority of cases, if you really dig down to the bottom of people's objections to climate change, they're not based on the science. They're based on the solutions. People fundamentally object to the solutions to climate change, because climate change is a tragedy of the commons.

So by definition, one individual's actions will not be sufficient to address the problem. We have to act together. Together it means government. People are fundamentally opposed to government solutions to a problem. And so, but it's a lot easier to say it isn't a real problem, than to say it is a real problem, and it's a very serious problem. But we don't support any action to do anything about it.

BILL MOYERS: I think I hear you suggesting that conservative Christians are Republicans who, are deeply influenced more by Republican opposition to government than by global warming itself. Because if they take the science seriously, we have to do something about it. And the only way we can do something about it, is collectively through government.

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Yes, I believe actually that climate change is a casualty of much larger societal issues. Just to give you an example going back even farther, when we talk about climate change, the words we hear are things like carbon tax, and government legislation.

If you go back in history, what was the whole American Revolution, what did the whole American Revolution come from? It came from tax and government tyranny, and government imposing sanctions and taxes on people that they didn't think were fair. And so I think it's actually imbedded in the American psyche to object to big government solutions that involve taxing people's rights to do or use whatever they want.

BILL MOYERS: You've been quoted saying you feel like the conservative community, the evangelical community, and many other Christian communities have been lied to. By whom?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: So with climate change, we have people who we trust in our community. We have people who are Christians, we have people who call themselves Christians, we have conservative leaders who may not be Christian but are very respected within the community. And these are the people standing up telling us it's a hoax, it's not real. Or even maybe it's real, but it's not a big deal and we don't have to worry about it.

BILL MOYERS: Well, this is the puzzling thing. You know, why so many conservatives in leadership positions, Republicans I'm talking about, why do they dismiss the science? What do they have to gain, except the satisfaction that they're limiting the growth of government?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: That's, oh that's a great question. And honestly, trying to figure out that question is one of the main reasons why I am now in the department of political science. My background's originally in physics, and then atmospheric science. And then just a couple of years ago, I actually moved departments for multiple reasons, as all of us do. But one of the reasons is because I feel like the science is there.

We have all the information we need to take precautionary steps on this issue. It's not a scientific issue, it's not a matter of one more report will do it. One more national climate assessment, that's what will solve the problem. One more new analogy, and people will get it. Information is not the answer. The answer has much more to do with who we are as humans, and how we function politically.

BILL MOYERS: So why is it that two Christians walking down the same road of faith suddenly turn in exactly the opposite directions of belief about this issue of global warming?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: I think it relates to the fact that we often look to leaders we trust and respect to tell us what to think about it. And especially in the more evangelical parts of the Christian community, we have a leadership vacuum. I mean, aside from Billy Graham, it's hard to name a conservative Christian leader who's been around for decades. People come and go. We don't have a Pope Francis. We don't have, you know, John Paul, who has written very extensively and eloquently on the environment.

So in that leadership vacuum, especially in the more conservative parts of the church, our political leaders step in. People who share values with us. The media steps in, people who will say the things that we agree with in terms of you know, abortion, gun control, immigration, things like that. So I think it's a matter of we are being told things by people who don't like the solutions to climate change, and have decided that it's a lot better and it's a lot smarter to deny the reality of the problem than to acknowledge it exists, but say you don't want do anything about it.

IRS Promises To Enforce The Law On Churches & Politics

This country long ago decided that churches (temples, mosques, etc.) were a force for good, and therefore should not be taxed. A debate could be had on whether that is justifiable, but the fact is that these religious institutions are still not taxed. But this exemption from taxation for churches is not absolute. Like other laws, there are exceptions to this, and rules that must be followed to maintain that tax-exempt status.  And one of the things the churches must do to keep their tax-exempt status is to stay out of politics. They can organize bipartisan get out the vote efforts, but they cannot do anything to favor one candidate or political party over another. Here is the relevant sections of tax law that apply:

The Prohibition on Political Campaign Intervention

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.  The prohibition applies to all campaigns including campaigns at the federal, state and local level.  Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.  Those section 501(c)(3) organizations that are private foundations are subject to additional restrictions that are not described in this fact sheet.

What is Political Campaign Intervention?

Political campaign intervention includes any and all activities that favor or oppose one or more candidates for public office.  The prohibition extends beyond candidate endorsements.  Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made by or on behalf of an organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition on political campaign intervention.   Distributing statements prepared by others that favor or oppose any candidate for public office will also violate the prohibition.   Allowing a candidate to use an organization’s assets or facilities will also violate the prohibition if other candidates are not given an equivalent opportunity.   Although section 501(c)(3) organizations may engage in some activities to promote voter registration, encourage voter participation, and provide voter education, they will violate the prohibition on political campaign intervention if they engage in an activity that favors or opposes any candidate for public office.  Certain activities will require an evaluation of all the facts and circumstances to determine whether they result in political campaign intervention.   

Unfortunately, many churches and ministers (usually right-wing fundamentalists) think churches are special and should be above any laws. And in the last election, many of them intentionally violated the law -- even to the point of having a special Sunday nationwide where hundreds of ministers preached a partisan political sermon from the pulpit.

This blatant disregard for the law should have resulted in an investigation of each of those churches by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the revoking of the tax-exempt status for those churches. But the IRS did nothing -- probably out of a fear of being branded as anti-religious (since the fundamentalists love to claim they are victims).

This IRS inaction was inexcusable -- since the government is required to enforce the law (even when it might not be popular to do so), and besides, several polls have shown that most Americans don't want politics being preached from the pulpit (including most christians). After seeing this failure of the IRS to act on behalf of the citizens of this country, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed a lawsuit against the IRS.

We now have some good news. On July 17th that lawsuit was settled, and the IRS has promised to investigate any church breaking this law. The IRS is currently being forced to not hold any investigations of any kind while the House Committee chaired by Rep. Issa investigates the bogus charge that the IRS targeted conservative groups. The investigations will start as soon as that committee finishes its work (although you can bet the Republicans will try to draw out that process as long as they can).

That committee must end someday, and then we can expect the IRS to diligently go after the churches who violate the law. And of course, we'll probably hear a lot of whining then about being "victims" from the fundamentalist right. Personally, I don't have a problem with churches engaging in partisan political activity -- as long as they are willing to pay taxes like everyone else. No one, even ministers and churches, should be above the law.

The "Red State" South Has Half Of All Uninsured Americans

This is a rather staggering statistic -- that nearly half of all Americans without health insurance live in one region of the country (the South). In September of 2013, before Obamacare was fully implemented, the South had 41.5% of uninsured Americans, but in June of 2014 that has risen to 48.9%.

While enough states in the three other regions of the country covered many of their poorer residents by expanding Medicaid, the solidly red states of the South did not -- and when you combine that with the fact that the South has a higher percentage of people living in poverty (or working for a very low wage), it means the South now has millions of people living without health insurance (or any chance of getting it anytime soon).

This should not surprise us. The Republican officials in the South, like the national GOP officials, run their GOP-controlled governments for the benefit of the rich and the corporations. They don't care about the poor (or even the middle class). They oppose the minimum wage (and refuse to raise it), believing employers should be able to pay as little as possible to workers (even if that is a poverty wage). They also believe health care is a product to be sold to those who can afford it, instead of a right of all citizens.

This prompts a question -- why do the people of the South (many of whom are poorly paid or in poverty, and have no health insurance) continue to elect Republicans to political office? Why do they keep voting against their own economic and health interests? There are two facets to the answer -- race and religion.

Regardless of what you may have been told (or just want to believe), there are still a lot of racists in the South. They abandoned the Democratic Party when President Johnson got the civil rights laws passed in the 1960s -- and the Republican Party welcomed them with open arms. And since that time the Republican Party in the South has championed policies that are anti-immigrant and anti-minority, giving those racist voters (who have morphed into the teabaggers) the illusion that a white-dominated America is still a possibility.

But the racists alone cannot control the Republican Party. They need the help of the religious fundamentalists, who control religion in the South. These fundamentalists are upset that their religious views are not elevated above those of other Americans. And the Republican Party has been effective in convincing them that they are the party of christianity, and fooled them into believing they can re-introduce teacher or administrator-led school prayers and force the teaching of creationism as science.

The teabaggers and the evangelicals together dream of replacing out democracy with a white fundamentalist christian theocracy -- and the Republican Party has convinced them that they can make that happen. The crazy part is that they could elect Republicans from now until doomsday, and that still would not happen. The First Amendment protects all religions (and those without religion) equally, and would prevent the establishment of any religion above all others. And the Fourteenth Amendment, along with the demographic population changes happening in the U.S., insures that the future of this country will be a multi-racial and multi-ethnic democracy -- and dominance by whites (even where it still exists) is going to be eliminated.

In other words, a majority in the South votes against its own economic and health interests for a pipe-dream -- an illusion kept alive by Republican propaganda. There is hope for the South though. Just like in other parts of this nation, each new generation in the South is less racist and less religious than the one that preceded it -- and someday the racism and religious bigotry that currently triumphs, will no longer make Southerners vote against their own best interests.

The Ridiculous Teabagger War On Common Core Standards

The state of Louisiana had joined most other states last year in agreeing to federal common core standards in education. As most states have, they recognized that the federal standards would improve education in the United States by making sure all states met a minimum standard, and by raising those standards so U.S. students could compete with students from other developed nations. Education is more important than ever in this modern world, and the United States simply cannot afford to let states set inadequate standards.

But a few days ago, Governor Bobby Jindal did a 180 degree turn and signed an executive order that would stop Louisiana from adopting the same standards, the common core standards, that most other states have adopted. It is not known whether Jindal actually had the authority to do this, and those who value education in the state are going to fight him on this (even if they have to go to court to uphold current law).

Why did Jindal do this? He did it because he wanted to protect his own political future. He spouted some tripe about the federal government taking over the state's schools, but he knows that is a lie. Agreeing to adopt higher standards doesn't give the federal government control over Louisiana's (or any other state's) schools. The schools would remain firmly in the control of state and local school boards.

Jindal still thinks he has a chance to become the GOP's presidential nominee in 2016, just like Perry in Texas and some other Republican governors. And those Republican governors know they cannot win the GOP nomination without the support of teabaggers and evangelicals (who together make up a majority of the party's base). And as Jindal, Perry, and others realize, the teabagger/evangelicals don't like the common core standards for education.

Note in the chart above, made from info in a recent NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll, the teabaggers oppose the new stricter standards for education by a significant margin (53% to 38% -- a 15 point margin). The question is why do they oppose the common core standards. Do they really think that allowing their states to adopt lower standards than the federal standards is the way to help their own students get a good education? Do they really think the simple adoption of higher education standards enumerated by the federal government to assure consistency across the country is a "federal takeover" of their schools?

The truth is that this goes back to an argument that's been held in this country for many years -- about the teaching of religion in public schools. These teabagger/evangelicals know that the common core standards don't allow for the teaching of creationism instead of science in science classes, and doesn't allow the teaching of right-wing fundamentalist propaganda in history and government classes. And they are willing to sacrifice an adequate education for the children of this country to be able to teach their creationism and right-wing propaganda.

Fortunately, as the chart shows, most Americans disagree with the teabaggers and support adoption of the common core standards -- by 59% to 31%, a huge 28 point margin. Unfortunately, that doesn't help the students who live in Louisiana, Texas, and other teabagger-controlled states.

Can Jeb Bush Win The 2016 GOP Nomination ?

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is what passes for a moderate in today's Republican Party -- and for that reason the establishment wing of the party would like to see him become the party's nominee in 2016. That wing of the party (composed mainly of Wall Street bankers and Corporate heads) still think they would benefit more from a Republican presidency, and they know that the more extreme candidates would have an almost impossible time getting elected.

But does Jeb Bush have a chance to get nominated. Can he convince enough of the party's base to vote for him to win that nomination? I have serious doubts that is possible. And I believe there are three things working against a Bush nomination. Those three things are:

1. The party was stung by the failed administration of Jeb's older brother (George Bush), and they don't want to give Democrats the advantage of campaigning against a Bush.

2. Bush has come out solidly in favor of immigration reform.

3. Bush has now come out in favor of the "common core" education standards.

Now numbers 2 and 3 might seem reasonable to most Americans, and they are. A majority of Americans know our immigration system is badly broken, and they want it reformed. And setting an adequate national standard for schools nationwide simply makes sense -- and it would help this nation to once again establish itself as a leader in education of its students.

But the Republican Party nomination is not decided by most Americans. It is decided by the base voters of the Republican Party -- a base that has moved far to the right in recent years. About 54% of the party's base nationally in made up of teabaggers and evangelicals -- two groups that vote in lock-step. And in the South, and many Western and Midwestern states, the percentage of the party's base made up of those two groups is much higher  -- high enough to give them complete control of the party in those states.

And immigration reform and "common core" standards are two issues vociferously opposed by the teabaggers/evangelicals. Even if those voters could forgive Jeb Bush for being George's brother, they could never accept his stand on those two issues. The teabaggers/evangelicals are not going to vote for a moderate right-winger (like Bush, or even Christie). And that means an extremist candidate (Cruz, Paul, Huckabee, etc.) has a much better chance to be nominated.

Bush would probably be more palatable to most Americans (although I still think Hillary would beat him), and it is just that palatability that makes him unelectable in Republican primaries. The Republican Party is currently an extremist party -- and right now they have no desire to change.

(The caricature of Jeb Bush above is by DonkeyHotey.)