Gateways
Meanwhile, in another part of the Reactionary Forest, the Christianists are plotting to impose their religion on all of us.
The idea behind Project Blitz is to overwhelm state legislatures with bills based on centrally manufactured legislation. “It’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side; it’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this,” David Barton, the Christian nationalist historian and one of four members of Project Blitz’s “steering team,” said in a conference call with state legislators from around the country that was later made public.
According to research provided by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, more than 70 bills before state legislatures appear to be based on Project Blitz templates or have similar objectives. Some of the bills are progressing rapidly. An Oklahoma measure, which has passed the legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature, allows adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate on the basis of their own religious beliefs. Others, such as a Minnesota bill that would allow public schools to post “In God We Trust” signs on their walls, have provoked hostile debates in local and national media, which is in many cases the point of the exercise.
Notice how atheists aren’t campaigning to have “We Are All Atheists Here” signs on the walls of public schools? Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could be that forbearing?
(It’s the “We” that’s so infuriating. No we don’t! Not all of us, and you don’t get to speak for all of us, and you don’t get to exclude us for not being part of your “We.” You don’t get to forcibly sign us up to nonsensical beliefs and nonsensical “trust” in a nonexistent phantom of people’s imagination.)
In their guidebook for state legislators and other allies, the authors of the Project Blitz program have grouped their model legislation into three categories, according to anticipated difficulty of passage. The first category consists of symbolic gestures, like resolutions to emblazon the motto “In God We Trust” on as many moving objects as possible (like, say, police cars).
Critics of such symbolic gestures often argue that they act as gateways to more extensive forms of state involvement in religion. It turns out that the Christian right agrees with them.
“They’re going to be things that people yell at, but they will help move the ball down the court,” Mr. Barton said in the conference call.
In the name of our Lord Donald Trump amen.
Annie Laurie Gaylor has suggested it would be better (and more honest) if it said “In God some of us trust”. I don’t think the dominionists or reconstructionists would be happy with that.
Oh, the “we” is accurate – they trust in God, naturally, because the God they follow wants exactly and precisely what they want. He’s very much like the legislators in the pocket of the NRA or ALEC – an obedient employee, granting divine imprimatur to whatever prejudice they happen to have.
Putting that up in schools and on police cars signals, precisely like gang sign, that this is their turf. Those of us who don’t trust their God are aliens, less than human, un-real Americans. That they can get this through their legislatures and past their courts is just part of the message.
It’s a burning cross on the lawn.
True. That too is why it’s so disgusting, of course.
It’s all about the bullying. Everything else is just window dressing.
One of the things that got me was the inevitable one on the responses, one that was picked by the NYT talking about how the current generation doesn’t remember people like Martin Luther King Jnr and other religious leaders’ contributions to the fight against racism, slavery and all that other shit.
Which got me thinking, hang on one minute, who were these guys fighting? In every case, not the secularists, and certainly not the atheists.
Martin Luther King Jnr was brought in specifically because the civil rights movement needed a face that was palatable to America’s religious right, essentially as a counter to the Southern Baptists. When you look at who actually led the civil rights movement, setting the agenda and organising the marches, it was A Phillip Randolph, humanist of the year and signatory to the second humanist declaration.
The American religious population have this nasty habit of raising the one or two religious leaders who were on the right side of history, generally decades after the American atheist community found themselves there, and acting like that’s the side religion took, and, well, those guys who were in favour of slavery when Charles Darwin was an abolitionist, lets just not talk about them.
For far too long the religious dominionist movement in America has gotten away with this bullshit precisely because religion has been on every side of every conflict and whichever side has ended up winning its been “well, that’s religion doing good, hyuck, hyuck, lets just forget about those guys who supported Apartheid shall we?”
Yeah lets remember MLK Jnr, and totally forget “honorary white” Max Yergan. That way we can have people who would most certainly not have been on MLK Jnr’s side use his corpse to sell their legislation, because hey its religion and MLK Jnr was religious, right?
Gaaahhh!
Bruce Gorton, it’s like the women’s movement. They specifically tried to keep Earnestine Rose off the dais because she was an outspoken atheist, and instead put on people who, if they were atheist, would at least hide or downplay it. The contributions of atheists were either hidden, or they hid their atheism, because…well, when it’s not safe to be who you are (even if safe in this case doesn’t refer to preservation of life but only to preservation of job, community, and sometimes freedom under the Comstock laws), you will be someone else in public.
So there are a lot of people who lived like atheists, said things that smack of atheism, but we can’t say they were atheists because we don’t know…and because they’d sneak the word “god” or “church” or “scripture” in every now and then just to assure themselves a seat at the table and a chance to change history.