Dwindling Christian Right Turns Into Cornered Animal, Lashes Out at Civil Rights and Democracy

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/why-christian-right-behaving-cornered-animal-lashing-out-civil-rights-and-our

Like a cornered animal, which turns instinctively to confront pursuing predators, the Christian Right, knowing it represents the views of an ever shrinking number of Americans, is engaged in an existential fight to the death. Veto or no veto, Arizona’s anti-gay bill is just another of its many efforts to transform America’s secular democracy into a tyrannical theocracy.

The Christian Right’s dirty little secret is they are acutely aware that changing demographics are running against them. While they may believe the earth is a mere few thousand years old, they’re not complete idiots. They can read polls, and the data tells them this: millennials are abandoning religious belief. According to a recent Pew survey, one in four Americans born after 1981 hold no religious belief, which is nearly double the national rate of atheism. Other studies confirm this trend, including a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute showing more than half of non-religious Millennials have abandoned their childhood faith.

With this in mind, the nation’s radical religious fundamentalists see an ever-shrinking window to impose their Bronze Age worldview on the gay, atheist, liberal, immigrant, heathen, and science book-reading masses. The American Taliban is as deeply troubled by the thoughts of a gay man “sneaking a peak” of a heterosexual man in an NFL locker room as much as they’re freaked out over seeing Cam and Mitchell, the gay couple on "Modern Family," adopt an Asian child. For the intellectual infants of the American species, progressive culture is nothing more than a 24/7 infomercial for gay sex and abortion. That frightens our unfriendly theocrats because biblical fundamentalists are more concerned with the goings on in the bedrooms of others than they are within the guilt-ridden, sexless confines of their own.

Salon columnist Brian Beutler writes that measures like Arizona’s SB1062 bill have emerged in a number of states out of “a wellspring of conservative panic about the country’s abrupt legal and cultural evolution into a society that’s broadly tolerant of gay people.” He adds, “Rather than deny the shift, or stop at trying to reverse it in legislatures, the courts and at ballot boxes, conservatives are instead attempting to erect a legal architecture that will wall them off from the growing portion of American society that supports equal rights for gay people.”

[KG]

1. they know they're the losing the US on gay rights, they've fled to africa to find people to oppress

[Swede Atlanta]

27. Given their successes in Africa I suggest

they self-deport there. I'm sure they will be happier sitting in the African Coliseum watching the games as the gays are killed in the arena. That comports with their view of Jesus' teaching to love one another as thyself.

[malaise]

2. To be kind

Fugg 'em

[xchrom]

3. !

[riqster]

4. And anyone like 'em.

[malaise]

6. You know the worst thing about these Fundie lunatics is that all now they don't realize

that ReTHUGs also think they are nuts, but they use them for votes.
When they wake up they'll crawl back into their mega-church basements and continue selling snake oil to the gullible. They too were gullible but that makes sense. They're as stupid as their followers - dumb ignorant assholes who have never read the Constitution.

[get the red out]

7. Absolutely!

I remember when Karl Rove basically said that, and they are still in denial.

[hobbit709]

8. No one is easier to con than another con.

[malaise]

10. Freaking perfect

Snake oil salesmen of the world (Fundies and ReTHUGs) UNITE!

[DonViejo]

19. "dumb ignorant assholes who have never read the Constitution."...

Even if they've read it, they don't understand what they've read!

[malaise]

23. Because they are dumb

[DonViejo]

24. Of course they are!...

Their reading comprehension skills have never advanced beyond, "See Dick and Jane run. See Spot run."

[Dirty Socialist]

5. The Religious Nutjob Right Is Losing The Culture War

ROFLMAO!

[sendero]

9. "more than half of non-religious Millennials have abandoned their childhood faith"

... ironically, I'm pretty sure the fundie's treatment of women and gays is largely responsible for their losing the Millennials.

So they double down on the stupid. It's kind of funny.

[Bluenorthwest]

13. That 'more than half' is not just from 'the fundies' just as the opposition to equality

and reproductive choice is not just from 'fundies' but also spews forth from 'mainstream' Christianity's leaders, some of whom are praised on DU as majestic hero figures even as they attack LGBT rights and call abortion murder. Just a fact.

[sendero]

14. Anyone ..

... that believes that bullshit is a fundie in my book. Just to clarify. Because certainly not all Christians do.

[Bluenorthwest]

16. Who said all Christians do? No one. I just do not cotton to this attempt to protect

the 'mainstream' Bishops, Archbishops, Ministers and other clerics of big time, mainstream religions that engage in anti gay diatribes. It is not 'different' when Francis calls gay people a product of Satan and when Pat Robertson or Bachmann calls us that, it is the same, not different.

[sendero]

17. I'm not interested..

... in "protecting" anyone. If they talk that shit, they are fundies, regardless of what they call themselves.

[LuvNewcastle]

11. The religious right is mostly to blame for the number of people who are

turned off to religion. I don't think it's a good thing or a bad thing that people are less religious; I just think that some people need it and some don't. But if the fundies are wondering why fewer people are religious these days, it's because they're so turned off by the most vocal religious people in our society. It's not the religious people who quietly go about their business and try to do good; who would have a problem with them? It's the assholes who try to push their views on everyone else who are to blame for the growing disenchantment with religion.

[LynneSin]

12. Just please do not lump these assholes in with the rest of us Christians

I am proud to be Christian and ashamed at those people who use my faith to justify their hate and horrible behavior.

If these idiots truly read their bible and understood the message of Jesus they would realize that Jesus was about love. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandments where he didn't spew out anything from Leviticus but instead he said to 'Love one another'

Shame on these people!

[xchrom]

15. indeed. a very happy Episcopalian here. nt

[riqster]

22. Indeed.

A lifelong Presbo here.

[raven mad]

25. LynneSin, these Fundies -

would burn Jesus at the stake were he to return.

I admire your Christianity - because you live the truth of it.

They don't. I know. I have one as a neighbor, and have lost 3 LGBT flags so far........in dead winter, middle of the night. I thought the Bible was against theft? Oh, well.......... they can't read and can barely write, so maybe have been told by their nutjob preacher that it's ok. They believe everything he spouts, anyway.

In place of my flags, I get tracts/literature etc. It goes into the shredder for kitty litter.

[TBF]

18. Sadly I think this is true -

though on an individual level I've met so many folks (even here in Texas!) who are all that you would want religious folks to be - kind, considerate, very giving to their communities.

There are even *gasp* religious folks who are democrats.

(Just saw your post above xchrom. I am Methodist. There are others on DU - we are sometimes quiet about this aspect of our lives).

[xchrom]

21. ...

[DemoTex]

20. May the karma of Christ be with them ..

They just don't get it.

[Dawson Leery]

26. The "christian" fundamentalists have inoculated millions of enlightened people

against religion.

Logic and reason are winning out in the developed world. You are seeing changes occurring in South America too.

[jwirr]

29. I wonder if they have ever thought of themselves as anti-christs? They are certainly pushing people

and not just young people away from Christ. Once I was a very active Christian but I now belong pretty much in name only to one of the few liberal churches left. At the age of 73, if I have come to such a conclusion then there are many like me. I predict that their mega-churches will soon be empty. My own small church in Iowa is now almost empty because they cannot pay their bills. Either the once full church lost its members to more liberal churches or moving to other communities or just plain rejection of the teachings. And I am not talking here about a rw fundamentalist church.

[jwirr]

28. It is not just Arizona's SB1062 that is the result of this disappearing act from the desparate

rw. The voter's rights bills are also part of this. If they cannot indoctrinate the country then they are going to try to hold on to their political control as long as possible.

I for one cannot wait until we (I'm a white woman) can get the majority and kick ass.