The storm of patently ridiculous Christianist predictions has begun with Kim Davis’ jailing for contempt.
Mike Huckabee, continuing his tireless crusade to demonstrate just how little he understands about American civics and history (or how much he likes to pander to those who don’t understand those topics), has declared that Thomas Jefferson warned “us” about “judicial tyranny” like this–while ignoring that the man he idolizes so much was about as far from a fundagelical theocrat as someone could possibly ever get. He’s also forgetting that the judge who sentenced her is not only a Christian but a Bush Senior appointee who doesn’t actually agree with equal marriage himself on a personal level–which means that the judge is decidedly one of the “us” that Mike Huckabee is whining about. It’s kinda funny that he doesn’t realize that she’s basically taking government money while refusing to do her job–if she were a welfare recipient, how would he react to that? Don’t answer, it’s depressing enough already to think that this dipshit is a sort-of Presidential contender.*
Joshua Feuerstein, known as the numnuts screaming “pastor” with the backwards-worn cap who offered a patently ridiculous “PROVE CHRISTIANITY IS FALSE” monetary challenge some time ago, has decided to make a video (with him screaming and wearing his cap backwards cuz his sense of kewliosity grounded in 1998) declaring that the Christian apocalypse is here because Kim Davis got jailed for not doing her job. He was wrong about his dumb “Challenge,” and he’s wrong about the Christian Apocalypse he is hoping desperately will come as a result of Kim Davis’ jailing.
This is a pretty good overview of what Feuerstein’s challenge was about.
And various other Christians are gleefully, giddily predicting their own impending martyrs’ deaths, imprisonments, and various other horrific punishments. One must say that the general feeling here is that they are masturbating furiously with their free hands off-camera while typing and shrieking these predictions; it’s uncomfortable to see people so glittering-eyed, bugfuck crazy talking in such hypersexualized ways about shit that is only possible in the kind of theocratic society they want to impose on the rest of us–stuff that cannot possibly happen in the kind of secular society that we actually have (or at least that our laws actually create, protect, and prescribe–an ideal that we don’t always meet, thanks to theocratic fanatics like Kim Davis).
Really, the only redeeming feature of these numerous and increasingly-disturbed-sounding predictions is that not only are they not going to happen, but that the people making them are going to have to come to grips with the fact that they made them–because their flocks may be very good indeed at forgetting false predictions, having had lots of practice by now, but the internet never forgets. We’re going to remember these wild-eyed, finger-pointing, spittle-flecked false predictions for a long time to come.
We’re certainly not going to let up mocking, either, their constant tendency to mischaracterize what these cases are about, or to disingenuously pretend that their liberties are seriously at stake when we know that what they’re asking is actually the dead opposite of liberty (sort of like how the movie God’s Not Dead did with its long list of court cases supposedly illustrating how at-risk Religious Liberty is–when every single one of the cases on their list was completely mischaracterized or misrepresented–or flat-out not about freedom of religion at all).
And we’re going to be amused to realize something else:
In a way, the Kim Davis case may well mean the end of “Religious Liberty.”
By that term I mean, of course, Christians’ wide-eyed innocent act about what they’re really trying to accomplish with all of their claims that their “religious liberties” are being somehow violated by allowing others to believe and live in ways that they don’t happen to like.
“Religious Liberty” is a lie. It is a foul, pernicious, disgusting, repellent lie. It was concocted by Dominionist-minded Christians who don’t understand why theocracies are evil and monstrous, and it was foisted onto Americans with ginned-up terror alerts about imaginary “persecution” of Americans. Lie after lie after lie after lie is told to right-wing Christians–from the constant litany of nonsense about “The War on Christmas” that starts up around August every year on Fox News to the email forwards about imaginary situations where Christians were supposedly told they weren’t allowed to pray or worship on their own time.
Not content with freedom of worship, these hypocritical Christians want to force everyone else to live the way they can’t even live themselves. Not content with the robust protections offered by our Constitution and Bill of Rights, they seek to water down that language and create a way to sneak and slide in their nonsensical and non-credible beliefs in classrooms, government offices, and–yes–elected offices like those of county clerks, and it’s happening all across our country. Not content with believing nonsense themselves, they seek to force others to listen to their nonsense, engage with their nonsense, care about their nonsense, and concede to their nonsense.
Freedom of Religion is a grand and noble concept. Many people–including atheists–consider it worth risking everything over protecting.
But “Religious Liberty” is nothing but a convenient lie that Christians tell, hoping to fool enough people and judges to push their religious viewpoints and grasping hands onto those who have demonstrated time and again that we don’t want any part of their twaddle–or their control-lust. “Religious Liberty” is a codeword for their desire to control us: to discriminate against those they don’t like, to humiliate those they can no longer hurt legally, to punish those who have laughed off their attempts to grasp at our liberties.
Here’s the difference.
Freedom of Religion says, “I get to express my religion’s dictates whenever I want in any setting I choose, as long as I’m not forcing anybody else to deal with it or hurting anybody else.”
“Religious Liberty” says, “I get to make you deal with my religion’s dictates whenever I want in any setting I choose, and it doesn’t matter if you feel forced to participate or you’re being hurt by it.”
Freedom of Religion says, “I get to wear a head-covering if I want as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s rights and it doesn’t pose a safety problem.”
“Religious Liberty” says, “I get to force you to wear a head-covering if I want.”
Freedom of Religion says, “I can decide to go without contraception if I think my religion demands that I not use it.”
“Religious Liberty” says, “I can decide to force you to go without contraception if I think my religion demands that people not use it.”
Freedom of Religion says, “I can decide not to embark on a particular relationship if my religion thinks it’s wrong to have that kind of relationship–or I can embark on a particular one for religious reasons of my own, as long as everyone’s of-age and consenting.”
“Religious Liberty” says, “I can decide to deny others the right to embark on a particular relationship, or demand that they have a particular kind of relationship, if I think my religion condemns or demands it.”
Do they know this thing is on?
And the worst part? Let one of these hypocrites talk long enough, and they’ll admit what the real game is to them. Kim Davis herself has admitted that she chose to run for the office she holds for evangelistic purposes–that if she were to resign from the position, she’d “have no voice for God’s word”–meaning she wouldn’t be able to try to force her religious ideas onto others anymore. She sees herself as a holy warrior for Jesus, one that “God has chosen for this time and place.” She is a martyr already in her own mind, and thanks to her opportunistic superiors and handlers, she is one as well to the legions of Christians on a powderkeg tipping-point already to see every denial of their grabbiness as a sign of impending religious genocide. She doesn’t care about freedom of religion; she cares about forcing her religious views onto others and pushing herself back into dominance in a world where her religion’s lost quite a lot of dominance.
There is not one single thing about “Religious Liberty” that is good for humanity, but there’s a lot about it that’s really bad, and I think we’re getting kind of sick of these theocrats’ shit and unwilling to humor them in their pretenses anymore.
It’s not like people didn’t tell these people right away that we knew that it was a lie–simply a codeword for their theocratic leanings and desires to force themselves back into control and power now that they’ve realized they can’t do it the honest way anymore, but nobody can expect them to care what anybody else says. Their entire position of dominance is at stake here, and abusers and oppressors get really twitchy when they realize they’re losing once and for all.
So now a judge has finally slapped one of their professional hypocrites–and that hypocrite’s irresponsible and vulpine handlers, Liberty Counsel, down hard. Unfortunately, Liberty Counsel probably won’t mind that their client has lost in what is an avalanche of similar losses. They have a long, long history of similar losses–but it’s not about winning or losing the court cases they take; it’s about terrifying right-wing Christians by hook or by crook into believing, against all available evidence, that they are going to be frog-marched into gas chambers just for being Christian. That’s why they’re doing their damndest to paint Kim Davis not as a hypocritical liar-for-Jesus but as Rosa Parks–when in actuality she is not Rosa Parks, but rather she is the bus driver who gave Rosa Parks all that shit for demanding her rights as an American. More than a few folks are wondering just what kind of long-con Liberty Counsel is pushing here–especially in light of the fact that their cases always, always, always seem to lose–and in light of their leader’s constant and increasingly weird mischaracterizations of everything his group touches.
So yeah, I strongly suspect that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of right-wing Christianity’s big lie about “Religious Liberty.” We can only hope that our judicial system will continue to bat them down in these test cases.
And I couldn’t be happier.
Really, it’s to their advantage to drop it and find some other dishonest and un-American way to foist themselves on others and try to control other people’s lives:
Every single time one of them drills down on this lie, another Christian begins to wonder why his or her religion seems to rely so hard on these shady, sketchy tactics–and thus begins another trip down the rabbit hole.
Even if they did win anything (which I’m guessing becomes more and more remote of a possibility with every single court case they lose), all it means is that they’re going to bleed followers–and ultimately money–even faster than they already are.
* Dear Mike: FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Aww, did that break your hothouse-flower fee-fees? Love, Cas, a woman.