Senator John Kerry (D-MA) (4/20/05):

“I am sick and tired of a bunch of people trying to tell me that God wants a bunch of conservative judges on the court and that’s why we have to change the rules of the United States Senate…I am sick and tired of (them saying) they somehow have a better understanding of Christianity, of the Judeo-Christian ethic, of values. We’re talking about values? You show me where in the New Testament Jesus ever talked about the value of having taxes and taking money from poor people to give to the rich people in this country.”

Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) (4/20/05):

“I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party. I think it’s using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way.”

Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) (4/20/05):

Their tactics threaten “to make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special-interest group,” Pryor said in a conference call with Arkansas reporters. “It is presumptuous of them to think that they represent all Christians in America, even to say they represent all evangelical Christians,” added Pryor, 42, a first-term Democrat who has considered himself an evangelical Christian for 25 years.

Virtually every day from September 12th through the November 2004 elections, a Bush administration official, a Congressional Republican or a member of the right wing noise machine has used a simple but persuasive argument against issues ranging from tax cuts to elective war to pathological secrecy to gay marriage. That argument was “national security.”

Now that the President has had his “accountability moment” and the jockeying for the 2008 nomination is in effect, “national security” has been replaced by something infinitely less important and even more divisive: religion.

Just as all manner of Republicans smeared war protesters and anyone else who refused to go along with their extremist agenda as anti-American and a threat to national security, those who oppose radical judges and boutique legislation designed to reverse local law are painted with the “godless heathen” brush.

Religion may be the “opiate of the masses”, but of course there is nothing wrong with looking for a larger meaning of life. Church sexual abuse scandals and the reluctance of the church to stand up to Hitler prove that human nature can’t be overcome by ancient writings (ask Tom Delay.) The fact that religion has no monopoly on morality and no shortage of sin has not prevented the media from issuing a standing directive to treat politicians and other public figures who cloak themselves in the vernacular of faith as more credible than those who wish to maintain the separation of church and state. What else would explain the disconnected coverage of the Terri Schiavo fiasco, in which — despite overwhelming polling data to the contrary — the cable news channels spoke of public opinion as if it was evenly split and booked Christian conservative guests almost exclusively? After not achieving their desired result in the Schiavo case, the Christian warriors have chosen another battlefield. Now the media has moved on to allowing thinly-veiled threats on judges from the likes of DeLay, John Cornyn, James Dobson and others to pass across airways with little comment save a “well, they’re just expressing their beliefs.”

The First Amendment may be the most misunderstood run-on sentence ever. It certainly does prevent the government from choosing an official religion, but it doesn’t prevent members of the government from speaking about religion. This is where the problem starts: Just as the President pushed for the USA Patriot Act, which treads dangerously on personal liberties in order to make it “easier to protect the homeland,” evangelical Christians want to push the boundaries of the First Amendment to make it easier for them to carry their message to the not-yet-born-again. And so a symbiotic relationship is formed, with Republicans using the religious right to stay in office and the religious right using the Republican-controlled government to tacitly recognize their beliefs as the first among supposed equals.

IOKIYAR (it’s OK if you’re a Republican) has been extended to IOKIYAC ((it’s OK if you’re a Christian). There are literally countless lawsuits pending about school prayer, public displays of affection to god, and many more religious issues that couldn’t be less vital to the needs of this country. Is there anything more frivolous than using the courts to protect the role of religion in a government where it has no place? Want your kids to pray in school? Send them to parochial schools. I can see how that might not be fully satisfying to your determined evangelical; in my three years of Catholic high school, there was less proselytizing than the average press conference or interview given by DeLay, Frist or even the President. Want to be reminded of the word of god with every step you take? Carry a bible or a copy of the 10 commandments in your pocket. You don’t need government property to flaunt your piousness.

I could go on forever, but it would obscure the fact that these bible-thumpers prattle on as if they represent some kind of reconstituted moral majority, yet have relatively small constituencies. They spout the term Judeo-Christian, but would heave the Judeo part overboard in two seconds if it wasn’t needed to appear more diverse. Their culture wars are framed with selective quotes from the bible, but are nothing more than an attempt to legislate intolerance. Their positions on every single issue amount to one group of people telling another (larger group) to accept their beliefs and alter their lives accordingly. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently stripped it to the essence:

“We are not calling for people to be moral, we want them to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This is different in no way from the Taliban we deposed in Afghanistan and the radical Islam we say we are fighting in Iraq today.

Now that they realize that they can’t get all they want from Congress, they have focused their ire on the courts. DeLay has chastised sitting judges, including Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, for using foreign law to help determine what the framers of the Constitution intended — a practice that is neither new nor radical. Yet the judges his allies wish to ram through the Senate by obliterating the filibuster (a rule which has stood for over 130 years) have shown the willingness and desire to use another source for interpreting the Constitution that didn’t originate in this country: the bible. The hypocrisy certainly doesn’t end there, not when the the rallying cry “activist judges” is thrown around regarding a judiciary seated by 22 years of Republican administrations (including Anthony Kennedy, the target of DeLay’s tirade) and 12 years of Democratic administrations. There are judges who cater to the religious right and those who don’t.

To soften the ground for the coming fight over judicial nominations, the oppressed majority decided to tap the power of television with their “Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster Against People of Faith broadcast. It would be folly to attempt to explain to these people that their persecution complex has detached them from reality. They don’t want to hear that these judges are being opposed because they place their faith before their duty to all the people of this country, not just those who are Christian. Heaven (or nirvana?) help the non-Christian defendant who appears before one of these judges and is forced to endure a lecture about the bible or some other article of faith. Dobson and company are so used to being surrounded by other zealots that they simply can’t imagine that other Americans don’t share their fanaticism. On Sunday, Dobson demonstrated his distance from reality:

And in 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court labored forth and came to us with the abortion decision that all abortion is protected by the Constitution. And that has now resulted in 44 million deaths. The biggest holocaust in world history that came out of the Supreme Court.

Those who don’t have facts on their side too often go over the top with bombast and misinformation. Framing judicial confirmations in religious war terminology and smearing those on the other side as anti-religion evokes another unpopular idea that used the smear-and-fear tactic: the Iraq war.

Pre-marketing strategy Iraq polling:

Pre-Justice Sunday filibuster polling:

It’s time to make Republicans pay for their idiotic ideas rather than allowing them the opportunity to use despicable sales pitches to con the public. This and this from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid are a good start. Reid is a religious man, as are the three Democratic Senators quoted above. People whose faith is important to them must not let it be hijacked by political extremists.