Fake Christians And Their Cruel Values
by Keith Shirey
6/8/06


The U.S. Senate couldn't muster enough votes to pass Bush's call for a Constitutional Amendment barring gay marriages.  Of course this shriek of alarm about gays was just red meat for the Christian Right.  It's what Republicans call a "values issue." It's an action to be undertaken in the name of morality, in particular, the sanctity of marriage. Yes these religious right folk are a moral bunch all right.  Sort of like Attila The Hun and Torquemada.  One of their "values issues" is that women forcibly subjected to sexual intercourse - rape victims - and who go to hospitals in pain, sorrow and desperation should be denied medicine preventing pregnancy.

Another Bush-Religious Right-Republican "values issue" is stem cell research.  Alzheimer's, Diabetes, Cancer, Parkinson's, Heart Disease are just a few of the many medical conditions that scientists believe stem cell research could treat or even cure.  The religious right opposes this life saving research.  And they are holding our health hostage.  Despite overwhelming public support, Majority Leader Bill Frist refuses to hold a vote in the Senate.

Another "moral" policy inspired by the legalistic Christian Right is Bush's promoting the policy of A for Abstinence before marriage, including "virginity pledges," and B for "Be faithful within your marriage" - this policy has restricted funding for fighting AIDS in any other manner, such as C, "the use of Condoms." This has hampered institutions from using realistic approaches in fighting AIDS and has significantly contributed to the spread of STD's among teenagers in the United States.  The virginity pledges don't work and lead to unwanted pregnancy.

The Republican-Religious Rights values are operational in Africa, where - as we all know - there is an Aids epidemic.  The Bush Administration's emphasis on Abstinence Only, and the cost of this program, impacts the ability of Aids fighters to buy and distribute condoms, the most effective instrument in fighting against Aids.

Too, when one goes to the web sites of the religious right we see them promoting such Christian Values as torture, pre-emptive war, government spying on U.S.  Citizens, homophobia, superstition above science, and hatred of foreigners.

Bush and the religious right are thus responsible for misery and death at home and abroad.  The attitude of Bush and his Christian Right base is so immoral and morbid that it takes one's breath away.  We are familiar with the Nazi medical atrocities.  Most of them involved the medical community purposely carrying out atrocious experiments.  The world, of course, condemned this.  But what are we to say about policies that condemn people to unnecessary death and suffering?  Is there really a difference between evil carried out in the name of "scientific research" and that which is done in the "name of God?" It seems to me that evil is evil.  Both exemplify a necrophilic mentality.  They both march in a funeral procession.

Just as the religious fervor of the Crusades led to pogroms in western Europe, abominations have been initiated and defended in modern times.  And, as always, defended in the name of Divinely Inspired Morality!

All of this his may sound strange to a reader steeped in American popular culture, where morality and religion are equated.  Indeed, Christianity is often held to be the source of morality.  Anything that calls itself "Christianity" places itself above criticism in the American mainstream media.  That legalistic, fundamentalist Christianity could be considered a moral entity is to disgrace the word morality.  (Let us remember that, before World War II, Germany and Italy were highly religious.  And let us also remember that Hitler used Christianity for his own purposes and most German clergy went along with it.)

Just how could a supposed follower of Jesus, who preached compassion, countenance the kind of purposive cruelty involved in allowing people to die from preventable deaths associated with Aids.  I think the answer lies in a dark part is in most of us human beings, urges to sadistic cruelty. Right wing legalistic Christianity, with it's emphasis on punishment for sin, provides a outlet for people's sadism and cloaks it in a garment of respectability and virtue.  Jesus is used as a kind of front man to justify the most barbaric impulses.  Rev.  Pat Robertson, for example, views the attack on the twin towers on 9/11 as God's punishment for homosexuality and other American vices.  Robertson's notion of God as one would punish thousands of innocents for the sins of others, and thereby make their relatives widows, widowers, and orphans shows that this Man Of God is a fanatical, cruel, Fake Christian.

Really, what does it mean that the legalistic, fundamentalist religious right opposes medical marijuana and euthanasia?  Why, in the name of humanity, would anyone take such a position?

For example, why should a victim of cancer have to accept months of unnecessary agony unless, of course, their medical attendants are willing to risk charges of murder Do these religious whack jobs really believe that God gets pleasure viewing such tortures?  Obviously these people are motivated by wanton cruelty.

One wonders if the mainstream media will ever take off the gloves and expose these right wing religious extremists for what they are: Selfish, self-righteous, ignorant, bigoted, intolerant to education and science, and wantonly cruel.  Like their leader, Bush, they are Fake Christians who foist fake "values issues" upon the American public.  Bush has said that he is guided by God in his undertakings, like the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  In his view this is a "moral mission." Indeed The killing of up to 100,000 Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S.  troops killed and maimed in an avoidable, unjustified, hopeless, and illegal war is a matter of morality!

Finally, my understanding is that far right Christians approve of American troops torturing Iraqis, in places like Abu Gahrib, as long as the torturers are not gay, do not carry condoms in their wallets if unmarried, and are opposed to Darwin and stem cell research.