I wrote the following as a comment on another diary here at Daily Kos, where Kossack "sunspark says" waxed eloquently about her responses to her two conservative brothers and her father when they urge her to "vote conservative." There was a great deal in her diary that described my path from conservatism, especially when you turn off the sound bites and start thinking about issues, answers, and the people affected by them. This journey from conservatism to becoming a progressive is a part of my larger recovery from fundamentalism and bigotry; the work in process continues.
I was encouraged by several Kossacks to share a little of my story with the community, and this diary is the result. Perhaps you can find some tidbits here that will help you as you confront the conservatives, fundamentalists, and weak thinkers in your own lives.
I turned on the Republican Party when Bush stole his first election.
I wasn't as much of a political junkie then, but even I could see through the "Brooks Brothers Riot" and the rest of the fraud. The next eight years were no surprise to me: they seemed the natural outcome of such a vile man, and his henchmen, occupying the Executive Branch.
Like many others who have posted on DKos about their deliverance from the childishness of conservatism (a friend sums it up this way: "It's mine! For Me! Mine! Mine! Mine!"), I thought at the time he would be just about as bad/good as Gore, so I voted for him. I was a registered Republican, then, and unfortunately I was one of the votes who enabled Bush to remain close enough to steal the election.
I was wrong, and I apologize to my (now) fellow progressives, my country, my world, and my God.
In 2001, I registered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as an "Undecided Voter," what "Independents" are called here. In 2006, I became a Democrat.
I remain a devout (not-born-again) Christian, one who reads the Scriptures and prays daily. My Greek is stronger than my Hebrew, but I continue to work on both.
This devotion is the last (and only valuable) vestige of my upbringing in a fundamentalist sect, one I broke from 14 years ago. DKos is part of my catharsis, helping me rediscover my commitment to social justice, fairness, and processing the impropriety of the "Christian" Right (which is, of course, neither).
It was that devotion so the Scriptures and prayer that turned me against conservatism entirely, by degrees, from 2001–2004, as I embarked on a long, strange trip of becoming very poor myself. With all the free, unemployed time, I embarked on a lengthy, focused study on Biblical expectations for treatment of the poor, especially by those who claim to know.
There are nearly 1,500 verses in the Hebrew and Greek Testaments on treatment of the poor, against fraud, against bad business dealings, against economic inequality, against hording by the rich, against criminal justice bias against the disenfranchised (I'm looking at you, Arizona) ...basically, all the inequities our once great country is suffering from right now. (I won't list all the passages here, now, but perhaps I can in the comments that will follow.)
In fact, if people in this country, such as Bible Spice the Half-Termer, want to claim it as "Christian," they will have to answer the charges of Matthew 25:31-46. The simplicity of that passage couldn't be clearer, and is summed up quite well by the Storyteller: "I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me."
There are more of these verses in the Scriptures than any that are alleged (most often incorrectly) to be about abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, or any of the other fixations of the "Christian" Right. (Note that, at least on the basis of sheer volume of verses, God seems far more concerned with human injustices than with our sex lives. It's a curious fixation the "Christian" Right has, but it doesn't appear to be shared by the God they claim to know.)
Yet, they ignore these verses in the "Word" they (selectively) quote, spit on the poor, hate the "other," and denigrate the weak, the disenfranchised, the helpless...something I chose to overlook until I became poor, weak, disenfranchised, and, for a time, completely helpless. The Republican Party, which they've taken over, with their "purity tests," now does the same, and, more dangerously, fights daily to enshrine these inequities in law.
That's why I will never again vote for one of their candidates, even at the local level: Like Barry Goldwater, who was no sane politician himself, I cannot stand what these warped, frustrated kooks have done to politics, the church, and society.
As "sunspark says" wrote, I have a lot of conservative relatives, some claiming to be Christians, and they're always asking me to "vote against Obama," or "vote Republican, or "help bring our country back." Unlike her fine diary, or my (probably too-long) diary here, I do have an answer, and it's quite succinct:
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways." I Corinthians 13:11