Religious Right Watch

the tyranny of the christian right

Read, "The Tyranny of the Christian Right." It's an excerpt from Michelle Goldberg's new book, Kingdom Coming.

-isefire

Catholic Gay Rights Activists Hurt Cause

Members of the Rainbow Sash Movement, an activist group of Catholics who seek to change their Church's homophobic policies, crossed a line that does the movement more harm than good. The Washington Post reports

:

In an act that some witnesses called a "sacrilege" and others called a sign of "solidarity," a man who was not wearing a sash received a Communion wafer from a priest, broke it into pieces and handed it to some of the sash wearers, who consumed it on the spot.

Ushers threatened to call the police, and a church employee burst into tears when the unidentified man re-distributed the consecrated wafer, which Catholics consider the body of Christ. But the Mass was not interrupted, and the incident ended peacefully, said Dennis McGrath, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis [where the incident occurred]

The Rainbow Sash Movement's members are primarily Catholics who want to change their Church because they love their Church. Although conservative Christianity predominates the Church, the movement has been effective in raising awareness among - and presumably changing the minds of - some laypeople. By demonstrating their love for the Church, Rainbow Sash activists cultivate an ethos that makes other Catholics more receptive to their arguments.

Disrespecting a Holy Sacrament, on the other hand, hurts the cause by allowing other Catholics to dismiss gays and lesbians as not religious. Although it is easy to understand the frustration with such slow progress that would drive an activist to behave like this, everyone must remember to keep a cool head and change, not enrage, people.

from The League: Reassembled

The short-term and long-term threats

On May 25, DefCon (now 60,000-members strong) hosted a web-based audio chat with Michelle Goldberg, author of Kingdom Coming. A record number of listeners participated in, DefCon's third web-based event. I submitted a question that Michelle answered. I asked what the most dangerous short-term and long-term threats to the republic are among the myriad projects and campaigns of the Christian Right.

Michelle's assessment:

Worst SHORT-TERM THREAT: The war on an independent judiciary. (More discussion here.)

Worst LONG-TERM THREATS: The demonization of gay Americans. (More discussion here.)
and:
The undermining of reality. (A relevant excerpt here.)

Michelle spoke of the anti-gay movement likely paralleling the anti-abortion movement. The anti-abortion movement escalated from demonization and eliminationist rhetoric into murderous violence against physicians, as well as massive legal and public opinion campaigns against reproductive rights and well-coordinated harassment of clinics. So the anti-gay movement's ever-escalating hate-based activities and propaganda--including onerous anti-gay conspiracy theories and pseudo-science--could easily turn into violent. (The speech and behavior even of Democratic Party leaders reveals an inherent devaluation, a dehumanization, of gay Americans.)

Elaborating on the undermining of reality, Goldberg cited the red-herring of "balance" in news coverage and within government-funded institutions. Increasingly, under pressure from Christianist groups and Bush Administration officials, governmental organizations and news organizations cave into conservative Christians' cry for "fair and balanced" coverage or discussion of a topic, by which they really mean the introduction of their propaganda--even certifiable falsehoods--into news coverage, panel discussions, and official reports.

An excellent recent example is how under pressure from American Christian Right politicians citing "balance," a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention symposium panel was renamed from "Are Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs a Threat to Public Health" to "Public Health Strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth." Slate.com's coverage noted that the symposium's

papers and panelists had gone through the customary vetting of peer review. But now the symposium has been abruptly retooled to include two proponents of abstinence programs—and to exclude a well-respected detractor. This is bad news, not only because abstinence-only work is scientifically unfounded but also because the switch represents a new level of government intrusion into the peer-review process of a major scientific meeting.

-IseFire

Christ wore goggles

Teach 'em young. PromisedLand.com.

Teach what exactly, I'm not 100% sure. But, if you have a Kerry/Edwards '04 bumper sticker on your car, carry any visible contributor appreciation gift from your local Public Televsion station, wear a turban (easily mistaken as "Muslim head dress"), or speak Spanish as your first language, I'd stay away from the Promised Land just in case.

-IseFire