Beware the Christian Fanatics: Are You Their Next Target?

“RAM”: more Tacoma graffiti from the newly rediscovered work I did in 2009. Of course I cannot state with any certainty the artist's intent, but the trinity of monster, phallic serpent and human appears to be mostly an expression of anger and disgust at life itself. Leica M4, Voigtlander f/1.7 35mm Ultron, Kodak 800 color negative film, exposure not recorded. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2013.  Click on picture to view it full size.

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THE FRIGHTENING SUCCESS of the stealth campaign by Christian fanatics to abolish the reproductive and deathbed rights of Washington state citizens  shows us just how devastatingly effective such extra-legal measures can be. Now even Group Health – the Puget Sound-area health care cooperative that was formerly a national leader in the fight for women's reproductive freedom – has retreated from its hitherto uncompromising stance on access to abortion and end-of-life choices. Not only have its agreements with Catholic hospitals severely restricted its members' options (for which see the OAN essay linked above), it has also omitted abortion coverage from its Obamacare programs. 
 
Meanwhile the Roman Catholic Church has already bought or acquired policy-making control of approximately half the state's hospitals, thereby imposing de facto bans on abortion and legally assisted suicide in all the associated service areas. Never mind the bans are brazen defiance of the will of the people, the voters who legalized abortion and approved death with dignity as an alternative for those who are terminally ill. The church fathers have learned, no doubt from the One Percent, how to use the institutional structures of capitalism to make the ballot box irrelevant and reduce the Constitution to executive toilet paper
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As if that were not scary enough, two ultra-conservative legislators – one a Protestant, the other a Catholic – are sponsoring a bill that would make it legal for Christian doctors, pharmacists and business owners to persecute nonbelievers  by denying birth control to women and refusing to provide care and services to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

Sen. Adam Kline (D-Seattle), who has emerged as the chief opponent of the measure, Senate Bill 3090,  warns its passage would also enable medical professionals and merchants who belong to white-supremacist Christian sects to withhold medical care, prescription drugs and many other services from African-Americans, Hispanics, First Nations peoples and non-whites in general.  Even the Ku Klux Klan – known throughout the South as “the Saturday Night Men's Bible Study Class” (and reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be active in Kirkland and Yakima) – could claim religious protection for its bigotry.

The bill's sponsors are Sen. Mike Padden (R-Spokane) and Sen. Steve O'Ban (R-Tacoma). Padden's credentials are summarized on his state Senate web site, with additional details on Google. O'Ban's political biography is likewise available from the Senate,  with a more inclusive portrait on the left-leaning Washblog site.

Political insiders assure me SB 3090 has no chance of passage during the 2013-2014 legislative session. But the mere fact of its introduction proves again the relentless intent of the Christian fanatics, who have traded their denominational antagonisms for the solidarity of a formidable political-action cult. Instead of battling one another, its members whether Protestant or Catholic now wage war against human sexuality. Ecclesiastical attorneys are meanwhile reinterpreting “freedom of religion” to include the alleged “right” of the faithful to discriminate against non-believers, with SB 3090 one of many kindred measures nationwide. In every instance, the goal of such legislation is to further the imposition of Christian theocracy on the United States.

The associated electoral strategy and tactics are exemplified in the state of Washington by John Connelly's 2012 campaign for a Tacoma state Senate seat. Unsuccessful despite his all-time-record spending, it provides a rare glimpse of the fanatics' organizational structure,  which not only transcends denominational boundaries but encompasses both major political parties as well. Though Connelly ran as a Democrat, it should be noted that particular label is often meaningless and not infrequently a deliberate deception, a confusing reality exemplified by the president's stunning shape-shift from Obama the Orator to Barack the Betrayer. Had Connelly won, it was feared he'd side with the Republicans against marriage equality and reproductive freedom.

What else was at stake is demonstrated by how two other conservative Democrats betrayed their constituents and enabled a state Senate coup that gave the Republicans control of the entire Legislature. 

In all probability the Republican takeover was scripted well before the 2012 election. And Connelly's record-breaking expenditures suggest he desperately wanted to be part of it. But even without the Tacoman's participation, the coup has paralyzed state government. (“Coup” is the label I correctly affixed to this cunning overthrow of representative democracy weeks before any of the state's other journalists dared so much as whisper the word, for which scroll down to the linked story's comment thread.)

Predictably, the paralysis has had dire consequences, especially for women and mass-transit users. The former were treated as if their demands for guaranteed inclusion of birth control in employer-provided health insurance marked them as sluts; the latter – myself included – are routinely damned as parasites who are dependent on the “welfare” provided by minimal bus service and pathetically undersized rail operations. 

If the situation in Washington state seems familiar, that's because an eerily similar affliction paralyzes the federal government. The result is unbreakable gridlock save when congressional Democrats and Republicans join hands in unanimous or near-unanimous votes to (further) nullify the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. It's no longer Democrats versus Republicans. It's now the One Party of Two Names versus the entire 99 Percent. And that One Party is methodically imposing the new paradigm of USian governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us. 

But why has Washington, of all the allegedly “progressive” coastal states, been singled out for theocratic transformation? Wouldn't the forces of Christian fanaticism be more successful if they continued their efforts in openly theocratic jurisdictions like Texas  or North Dakatoa?

 

Obviously, locale alone is not the answer. Wherever one might be in the United States, the imposition of despotism via the marketplace is actually quite easy. This is because there is no economic democracy anywhere in the nation. Big Business – which generously finances the drive toward theocracy as its favored means of guaranteeing a maximally submissive workforce – has nearly absolute power. Its lawyers have manipulated the laws to deny anyone who is on business property – particularly in workplaces and shopping malls – the liberties theoretically guaranteed by the Constitution. And private property rights generally trump all others, particularly when the property owner is an all-powerful corporation. Though abortion is at present a constitutional right, business enterprises (including non-profits) cannot be forced to provide it. 

Also, as proven by Washington's oft-demonstrated 45-year hostility to mass transit,  the state's voters hide a decidedly hypocritical preference for the savagery of Ayn Rand economics beneath their claims of “progressive” political sensibilities. Perhaps – recognizing how quickly one sort of bigotry can be morphed into another – the Christian fanatics believe they can gradually expand Washington's hatred of transit users into a more general hatefulness. That vindictive hope would surely explain the misogyny, homophobia and racism now evident in SB 3090. In any case, it's clear the state is again functioning as a test-lab for the One Percent's strategies and tactics of oppression.

Meanwhile the magnitude of the fanatical Christian threat to health care throughout the United States is revealed in the coverage given it on 12 May by The New York Times and by the website Think Progress the next day.  (These stories appeared less than three weeks after the Outside Agitator's Notebook report published on 25 April and linked in this essay's lead paragraph. It was not the first time OAN with its small but international readership has seemingly influenced coverage of U.S. domestic conflicts.) Nevertheless, the USian mainstream media refuses to acknowledge the theocratic threat as such. It's as if the editors and reporters believe they can eliminate the fanatical Christian onslaught merely by tabooing any mention of its long-range intent. The taboo is apparent whether in Ruling Class publications like NYT or pseudo-leftist Internet journals like TP. Meanwhile the anti-theocratic warnings by Chris Hedges, Jeff Sharlet and several other notably credible authors go unheeded, putting all humanity at risk.

For those who foolishly continue to doubt we are in deadly peril, I can only suggest they remember the direction taken by Rome after Constantine decreed Christianity its state religion. In its day, Rome ruled the greatest empire of the ongoing patriarchal age, just as the United States rules that age's greatest empire ever.  Now imagine the USian empire becoming the modern counterpart of post-Constantine Rome, like Romani imperii post Constantinum, a fanatical Christian theocracy maintained by the most powerful military machine of its time and, again like that Rome, believing itself divinely tasked to impose a new world order, commanding its subjects to bow down to the cross of Jesus or die. I can already hear the One-President-Under-God declaring his fulfillment of biblical prophecy: “brethren in Christ, it is with heavy heart I come before you to announce we have to nuke this planet to save our souls from the Devil.”

LB/15 September 2013

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