Sunday, July 3, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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The very first line of the very first amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The Founding Fathers were so concerned with religious liberty that the first line of the first proposal that they passed after creating the country was to prevent even themselves from taking action that would limit religious freedom or establish a single religion that everyone must follow.
The Founders wrote extensively about the meaning of those words, with Thomas Jefferson offering the most famous example in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. In it, Jefferson declared that the establishment clause built a “wall of separation between the church and state.”
Yet today, on the eve of Independence Day, the first line of the First Amendment is grievously threatened. We are now dangerously close to transforming our country from a liberal democracy into a violent religious theocracy operating under the conservative Christian theocratic equivalent of Sharia Law.
The world should take heed. Powerful forces in our nation hunger to transform America into a repressive theocracy.
Think we’re exaggerating?
Here in the U.S., a majority of the Supreme Court was so concerned about American’s lack of belief in a specific set of Christian values and a specific perspective on the immorality of abortion that they took the unprecedented step of revoking a right they had previously granted. In doing so, they made it clear that when it comes to personal religious, moral and philosophical beliefs such as when life begins, what level of risk or sacrifice we must assume for the well-being of others, and how we treat our own bodies and minds, disagreement and disbelief are not allowed. We must all follow the cult of very specific sects of conservative Christianity and believe that life begins at conception, no exceptions.
In his concurring opinion in the case, Justice Clarence Thomas went even further. He called on the court to review other issues of faith such as the right to use contraceptives and birth control, the right to choose to engage in oral or anal sex with a consenting adult partner, and the right to marry the consenting adult partner of your choice — all of which, apparently, are personal affronts to him and his faith.
The court also tackled secularism and atheism this session, ruling in two separate cases that government must allow public tax dollars to be used to fund private religious education; and that a public high school coach, employed by a public school at taxpayer expense, may use his influence to pressure students to attend team prayers on public property, paid for with public tax dollars.
And the Supreme Court is not the only place where members of America’s violent extremist theocracy can be found.
Government officials in Texas, Tennessee and several other states have already joined Thomas’ chorus calling for same sex-marriage to be overturned.
Last week, the Arizona legislature overrode the will of two-thirds of the state’s population and passed the largest school voucher program in the country. The plan provides taxpayer dollars for children attending private religious schools even though Arizona voters overwhelmingly voted against a referendum on a similar proposal just four years ago.
And current governors, members of Congress and high-ranking government officials and advisers to disgraced former President Donald Trump have spent decades publicly blaming economic recessions on same-sex marriage, blaming a lack of funding for Social Security on abortion, and even blaming hurricanes and other natural disasters on everything from drag queens to Pride parades to ungodly Mardi Gras debauchery.
They have justified violence against Muslims, Jews and other less represented religions; immigrants, Indigenous people, Black people, Latinos, Asians and other minority races and ethnicities; the LGBT community; and even children — stating that the elementary-school children massacred at Sandy Hook and Robb elementary schools were being punished because God was not allowed in the classroom.
Despite the fact that these societal “leaders” share the company of white supremacist Holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes, who said the court’s decision on Roe shows why Jews and other people who “don’t serve Jesus” should not be allowed to hold public office, these are not fringe beliefs or fringe statements. Rachel Campos Duffy, the wife of former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy and a host for Fox News, blamed the massacre of children in Uvalde, Texas, on secularism, saying “We took God out of schools, and we wonder how this evil comes in.”
And as if all that wasn’t enough, earlier last week, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., publicly stated that she is exhausted by the separation of church and state “junk,” that “the church is supposed to direct the government” and that the Founding Fathers never intended for church and state to be kept separate.
Take note of that. Boebert is not proposing the country be run by people of faith generally. She is proposing it be run by “the church” — presumably her church, her faith, her religion, her beliefs, to the exclusion of all others. Even if you agree with her about abortion or same-sex marriage, there is nothing stopping her, and her allies on the U.S. Supreme Court, from coming for your community’s beliefs next.
Gays, Jews, Blacks, Mormons, Asians, Latinos, Indigenous Americans, Catholics and even smaller sects of protestant Christianity may not share many of the same beliefs or cultural customs, but they do share a history of being the victims of powerful forces of violence and oppression perpetrated in the name of faith.
Six years ago, Republicans were outraged that Hillary Clinton, then a candidate for president, would have the audacity to refer to members of the American public as “deplorable.” Today, six years later, with the exception of Rep. Adam Kitzinger of Illinois, most Republicans are eerily silent as a member of their own congressional delegation just called for a theocracy of a single dominant faith and referred to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as “junk.”
Worst of all, she may well be predicting the future. Because if we, the American people, don’t find a way to get violent religious extremists like Boebert out of office in November, the First Amendment will remain at risk of being junk because Boebert and her ilk want to crush any beliefs contrary to their own. They want to reduce the First Amendment to symbolic language with no purpose, no teeth, no enforcement, tossed aside as easily as a bag of trash.
We must stand firm and defend the country against this gang of zealots. Not because of our beliefs on abortion or same-sex marriage, but because of our belief in the Constitution and our belief in the promise of the First Amendment that all people should have the right to practice their religion free of interference from the government.
They’ve made their goal of a conservative Christian theocracy plain for all to see. It’s on us to respond.
