It’s said that politics makes strange bedfellows, and that seems to be true when it comes to the Religious Right and the Republican Party.
Of course, we can’t really say bedfellows because we all know that two fellows in the same bed is something Christians just can’t abide by. There’re a lot of things they can abide by, some of them pretty bad, but not that.
If you have any sense of religious teachings you realize the incongruity of Evangelicals’ embrace of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But when you factor in the lines that these Christians won’t cross it becomes clearer.
Those would be abortion and the LGBT community.
And you may, like I have, come to the sad conclusion that nobody hates like a Christian. Because in their minds when they hate they’re not only hating for themselves, they’re also hating on behalf of God.
Of course, this isn’t all Christians, but it’s certainly quite a few of them who seem to push aside a lot of God’s teachings in their fist-clenching hatred of gays and lesbians and their support of a pro-life agenda that seems to stop when a baby leaves the womb.
Our country is changing, and more and more people are moving away from the Evangelical positions on abortion and LGBT rights. Hard-line Christians think this is the worst thing that could happen, so there’re willing to support a pro-rich, anti-poor party and a president who time after time has demonstrated one of the most anti-Christian attitudes and lifestyles that we’ve seen in the Oval Office in my lifetime.
The Value Voter Summit was recently held in Washington D.C. This is an annual political conference for American social conservative activists and elected officials from across the United States. It’s hosted by the Family Research Council.
This organization welcomed such well-known “Christian” speakers as Trump himself, Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka.
Bannon at one point told the crowd that Trump pulling the cost-sharing reduction payments for the Affordable Care Act will “blow those exchanges up” and some of those God-fearing folks cheered and clapped.
They cheered and clapped that people are going to lose health insurance. Pro-life my ass.
Look, I understand the fervor over the abortion issue. I don’t understand why Christians have such unabashed hatred for the LGBT community, or their willingness to sell out their other beliefs in pursuit of victory in these two areas.
There’s nothing wrong with being pro-life. There is something wrong when you try to convince others that it’s the only thing they should consider when voting for people running for public office.
In fact, that’s a very dangerous cult-like viewpoint. Governing is a complicated and all-encompassing thing, and the repercussions of bad government on the lives of people and our plant itself can be too grave to vote based on just one issue.
Pro-life doesn’t mean pro-abortion, it just means you believe a woman should make these decisions regarding their own bodies. If you believe God will punish those who perform and receive abortions or those in the LGBT community, you can believe that, and then you leave that judging and punishing to God and not take it upon yourself to do so.
In a recent piece on The Guardian website, Bernie Sanders made these points on the proposed Republican budget, based on calculations by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center:
*By the end of the decade, nearly 80 percent of the tax benefits of the Republican plan would go to the top one percent and 40 percent would go to the top one-tenth of one percent.
*The proposal gives a $1.9 trillion tax break to the top one percent and calls for massive cuts in programs that working class Americans desperately need.
*This budget cuts Medicaid by more than $1trillion over 10 years – which would throw some 15 million Americans off the health insurance they currently have. It also calls for a $473 billion cut to Medicare.
*The richest family in America, The Walton family of Walmart, would get a $52 billion tax cut by repealing the estate tax, but there would be a $4 billion cut to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps about 700,000 families pay to heat their homes in the winter.
*The second-wealthiest family in America, the Koch Brothers, would get a tax break of up to $33 billion, while $100 billion would be cut from Pell Grants and other student financial assistance programs that currently help 8 million students.
*Members of Trump’s family would get a tax cut of up to $4 billion, while $6.5 billion would be cut from the Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) program that helps over 1.2 million new mothers, babies and toddlers.
In case you’re wondering, there’s absolutely nothing Christian about any of those developments, or the other harm that Trump and the Republicans would gleefully do to the poor, minorities and immigrants in this country to aid their rich donors and themselves.
And we haven’t even talked about the race-baiting, division and hatred the GOP is based on.
But the Religious Right is okay with this because the folks who will suffer and die and the harm to our planet by ignoring climate change are just collateral damage in their pursuit of what they think is right and in furtherance of what they believe in. Because in their minds, their beliefs are the only ones that matter and the “nonbelievers” don’t count because they’re just going to burn in hell anyway.
So they’ve rationalized that it’s okay to ignore some of God’s teachings in pursuit of their own limited agenda. That’s why having conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court who they hope will get rid of Roe v Wade and crush the rights of people whose sexual orientations offend them is more important than avoiding nuclear war, having a corrupt and incompetent White House, and upholding the principals this country was founded on.
That’s why upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people in the DACA program; taking health care away from millions, some of whom will die; seeing our country abdicate its position of leadership in the world; turning our back on refugees in foreign countries facing life-or-death situations, including countless numbers of children; denying climate change and its consequences on our planet and future generations; cutting off vital health care services to women provided by Planned Parenthood even though federal money that agency receives can’t be used for abortions (which are legal in this country, by the way); and pursuing the evil discrimination-justifying lie of “religious freedom” are okay in their (good) book.
We’re all entitled to our own beliefs and to express them and peacefully pursue them, but when that pursuit leads to suffering by others that’s a bridge too far. And it’s a bridge many Christians are happy to cross when they enter the voting booth.
That’s sad, because when people who call themselves children of God lower themselves to that level they do a disservice to the whole concept of religion and Christianity. And in their words and deeds they bring legitimate questions and doubts about God and religion to the minds of those who refuse to share their hatred.
It’s sad for another reason. They don’t realize how pathetic they look when they claim to be persecuted when, in fact, they’re the ones doing the persecuting.
Just as importantly, they trivialize the plight of those who are really suffering in this country and need our help.
And there’s nothing Christian about that, either.
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