Domionists on the attack

Who likes activist judges now?

The Alliance Defense Fund, which fancies itself the Christian Right’s answer to the ACLU, is a “socially conservative legal consortium” that takes up battles it views as evidence of the attack on Christianity in America. Battles like:

A 29-foot war memorial shaped like a cross should be allowed to remain on public land. A teacher should be able to emphasize references to God in the Declaration of Independence. Protesters should be permitted to approach women near the doors of an abortion clinic.

…The group successfully challenged the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses in California and Oregon, and worked on statewide ballot initiatives prohibiting such unions. Its attorneys helped the Boy Scouts win approval of a policy barring gay Scout leaders.

The group has been battling embryonic stem cell research in Missouri and won a Supreme Court stay preventing the removal of California's 29-foot Mount Soledad cross. In Florida, where saving the life of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo became a crusade, the group supported efforts to nourish her.

Its $20 million annual budget has made it “the leading player in a movement to tug the nation to the right by challenging decades of legal precedent. By stepping into the nation's most impassioned debates about religion in the public sphere, the group aims to bring law and society into alignment with conservative Christianity.”

"What we see is an overarching agenda from the left wing and the pro-homosexual groups," said [Gary S. McCaleb, director of ADF's litigation team], who perceives "clear hostility to Christian thought." He described the stakes as "the fundamental ability of Christians to speak their minds on the issues of the day."

This is, of course, total bullshit, predicated on ignoring that there are religious liberals, including gay Christians. The only way to contort oneself into the position held by the ADF is to pretend that “Christians” is defined as “social conservatives who fervently desire for every American citizen to live his or her life as they dictate” and that “speak their minds” is defined as “forcing their belief system down the rest of our throats.” Their objective is quite literally Christian domination via theocracy, and at least one prominent Christian (and ordained minister) is calling bullshit.

"They're not for some form of generic religious freedom. They're for Christian superiority, that Christians take over the courts," said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "They are living in this fantasy world where the majority religion, Christianity, is claimed to be literally under attack."

Exactly right. What else can I say about this that I haven’t already said a hundred times? This isn’t “Christianity,” and it isn’t American. It in, in fact, an attempt to turn this country into precisely the kind of religious state that our soldiers have died in Afghanistan trying to undermine. And it’s ruining our political system in all kinds of obvious and less obvious ways.

If you’ve any doubt that the GOP has become a willing conduit for delivering the Domioninsts to the promised land of D.C., look no further than likely presidential nominee and faux-maverick John McCain, who’s buddied up with Jerry Falwell, an ally of the ADF. The only conceivable entity with the ability to sever that alliance is Big Business, who love the GOP but hate the fundies and their habit of boycotting their most progressive business ventures. Business is dependent on progress; the Dominionists are bent on regression. As long as that break looks inevitable, and there’s the possibility that the GOP hangs with the fundies, forcing Big Business to drop its anchor elsewhere, the Dems are going to wait with open arms, meaning that money will continue to drive our politics for the foreseeable future. That’s bad for all of us. We shouldn’t be held in the thrall of either interest to the degree that we are, but our lazily complacent parties aren’t going to provide us with any alternative.

The Green Knight has more.