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All hail Christian Nation Party Monday, Dec 25, 2006 By John Brummett Right here at Christmas, if only by coincidence, I propose the creation of the American Christian Nation Party. I do so from human concern. There's simply nowhere else to go for extremely conservative religious evangelicals and fundamentalists who believe the Lord commands them to use politics to render moot the Constitution and remake the country in their Falwellian image. These "values voters" fell in about 1980 with the Republicans. Ronald Reagan, who didn't actually go to church much, let himself get maneuvered to appear to be their guy, a champion of the "family values" of a "moral majority." It helped Republicans win. That was especially so in 2004 when George W. Bush got the religious conservatives riled up worrying that gays would get to marry gays if Democrats got elected. That's unscriptural, based on Romans, these religious rightists insist. Gays are not made by God to carry on that way naturally, so their actions are by choice and amount to perversions and abominations. Or so these religious rights insist. Evangelical conservatives really believe that, I'm convinced. They do not see any contradiction in their bigoted judgment, even their hatred. They'd explain that they hate the physical intertwining of persons of the same body parts, not the gay himself or lesbian herself. The sin and not the sinner, you see. Democrats, being liberal and secular humanists, or at least tolerant, have never had a chance with these religious conservatives, who simply don't deal with the devil. But what's happened is that it has come out that Republicans don't much oppose gays either. Some Republicans are, in fact, gay themselves. For that matter, it's come out that one or of two of these religious conservatives are, too. A couple of months ago I wrote about how Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had essentially legalized gay marriage. In a public ceremony, she called a gay appointee's partner's mom the gay appointee's mother-in-law. First lady Laura Bush stood by in silent support when Condoleezza pulled that stunt. Now it has come out that not only is Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter a lesbian, which perhaps everyone knew already, but she has somehow managed to get herself pregnant. She intends that she and her lesbian partner will raise this child as if the three of them composed a natural family, which religious conservatives most decidedly believe they can never be. Now there's this kicker: Old born-again George W. himself has no problem with this. He told People magazine the other day that he's happy for Mary Cheney, Dick's lesbian daughter, and that she'll be a good mother and that the child will be blessed. Extreme religious conservatives are now given to understand that there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats except that Republicans have been pretending to be different for cynical political exploitation. Lying and hypocrisy may not be up there with gayness - since no one wants to amend the Constitution to prohibit those - but they're bad nonetheless. Still, Democrats just won't do. Being honest is fine so long as you're not being honest about doing Satan's handiwork. Right-wing religious evangelicals seeking to overtake the country politically simply have no choice but to disengage from the Republicans, stay clear of the Democrats and pursue their holy agenda with their own third party. That this American Christian Nation Party probably would just about ruin Republicans and elect Democrats might simply be the Lord's will. Not that the Almighty is a Democrat. Oh, no. But maybe he thinks the country needs to hit bottom before it can bounce back. ------- John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com. |
