FUNDAMENTALISTS SHREDDING FIRST AMENDMENT

From KMOV TV courtesy of Eschaton:

State bill proposes Christianity be Missouri’s official religion

The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.

The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."

Click here for the rest (you may have to register to read).

And from the Louisville Courier-Journal courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Survey questions politicians on Jesus

Stein, who is Jewish, called the survey an "intimidating, bullying letter."

"This is doing what the constitution prohibits, and that is offering a religious test for public officials," she said. "That's the long and short of it."

Sharp disagreed.

"Anybody can vote for whoever they want to," he said. "You can't restrict us from participating."

He said he was "shocked that all this is going on over a simple little survey."

Sharp said he sent out the survey Saturday and used his own time and money. He said he has two goals -- to get people thinking about whether to accept Jesus, and to let candidates know "we're watching them and watching their votes on things."

Click here for the rest.

Whether it's an end-run around it, like the attempt to impose a popular religious test on Kentucky politicians, or a direct attack on the Constitution, like the attempt to create a state religion in Missouri, Christian fundamentalists appear to have nothing but comtempt for the first amendment's "wall of separation between church and state." That is, the Constitution clearly states that the government shall make no law establishing a state religion, the so-called "establishment clause." This is a mandate deeply embedded in both US law and American philosophy and culture; to so flagrantly and openly defy it is to be either anti-American or so hopelessly deluded so as to disqualify one from serious discourse about our government's functioning. That these people are taken seriously is a sad testament to the state of the nation.

Don't get me wrong. I don't really think either of these initiatives, the bill in Missouri or the born-again survey in Kentucky, by themselves, will threaten the Constitution in the long run. After all, the survey is sponsored by private individuals, who have the right to do such a thing, and the state religion bill, if passed, will be struck down as soon as it makes its way into a Federal court. What bothers me, however, besides the proud and willful ignorance of these religious weirdos, I mean, is that these two separate events are playing out in an overall context of incremental fundamentalist social engineering. From school board stealth candidates who push abstinence-based sex ed, creationism, and school prayer, to anti-abortion activists who have successfully run many abortion providers out of business, the religious right has been chipping away at the secular society for at least a couple of decades now, and, over the years, they have been startlingly successful. Many social concepts that were unthinkable back in the 80s are now common, mainstream ideas: organized fundamentalism has pushed America toward a more religious existence, whether we want to admit it or not.

That's why what appear to be isolated instances of Christian lunacy are, in fact, not that at all. The President's approval ratings are almost as low as Nixon's were six months before he resigned, but that matters little to American fundamentalists. They've got their man in the White House, which emboldens them, and now they're pushing harder than ever. They really do want to remake this country in their own image. And if sane people don't start pushing back harder, America as we know it may not exist by mid-century.

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