If it has been made abundantly clear the religious right will elect or stand behind anyone who swears his allegiance on the Ten Commandments, sees abortion as murder, and believes in the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.
We saw Alabama religious conservatives continue to support Roy Moore, the so-called Ten Commandments judge, despite numerous highly credible claims that he was a sexual predator of teenagers while serving in the District Attorney's office. The same "moral majority" similarly has no problem with thrice-married Donald Trump, who admittedly cheated on each of his wives and left a trail of sexual abuse allegations that continue to hound him in office. Now we see the same religious zealots coming to the defense of Brett Kavanaugh, despite a serious charge of attempted rape while a senior at a prestigious Georgetown prep school.
The underlying thread among all these nefarious characters is their steadfast support of the holy trinity of religious right political issues. Religious conservatives believe firmly the country was founded upon the principles of the Bible, abortion from the point of conception should be treated as a criminal offense, and that there is no room for gay marriage. They will elect virtually anyone who supports these positions no matter how dubious their personal character, and are determined to pack the Supreme Court with judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade. Little wonder you see them turn a blind eye to Kavanaugh's highly questionable character, as he is the judge they have long been waiting for.
Trump telegraphed this pick, just as he did his ban on Muslims during the campaign. The Supreme Court still upheld his travel ban, as his administration had added Venezuela and North Korea to the final version so that it could no longer be called a ban on Muslims. Religious conservatives can rest assured Kavanaugh and his fellow conservative judges will find a way to undermine Roe v. Wade similar to the way the conservative court invalidated key parts of the Voting Rights Act, even though he danced around the issue at Senate hearings.
American religious conservatives have adopted the same no-holds-barred political attitude of Jewish Zionists in Israel. They don't give a fuck how their agenda is fulfilled, as long as it is fulfilled. This is why we see so many references to The Handmaid's Tale. You might call it Old Testament Christianity -- an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth -- which was made very explicit in the television series.
You actually have religious conservatives running for office in Idaho on the belief that abortion should be punishable with the death penalty. As it is, Idaho has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
This has been a march that started in full earnest in 1980 when the "moral majority" led by Jerry Falwell helped get Ronald Reagan elected. Not coincidentally, it was the time Margaret Atwood wrote her now famous book. Since then Falwell's Liberty University has become one of the largest colleges in the country with an enrollment of over 100,000 students, the vast majority of them on-line. It is the "think tank," if you will of the religious conservative movement. The bastion of their higher principles, now led by his son Jerry Falwell Jr., a vocal Trump supporter.
It's not just Roe v. Wade they want overturn. They want to rewrite the Constitution as well, or at least make it explicitly clear the Founding Fathers were basing their beliefs on the Bible, not the Enlightment as historians would tell us. The religious right does not believe in a separation between church and state, they see it as one in the same. Their origin point for the United States is Plymouth Rock.
James Madison's words fall on deaf ears in the Bible Belt. David Barton and other conservative religious scholars have been busy rewriting the Founding Fathers, replete with copious footnotes, asserting that they always saw the United States as a Christian nation, and that Thomas Jefferson set up the University of Virginia as an evangelical college, even though there were no evangelicals around at the time.
The second Great Awakening, from which all these evangelical religions sprung, didn't happen until the mid 19th century, long after the Founding Fathers were dead. Time, however, has a way of becoming compressed in the conservative evangelical mind, kind of like dinosaurs on Noah's Ark. After all, these people believe the world is little more than 6000 years old, an origin derived by tracing back the dubious genealogy in the Old Testament.
However, these evangelicals should be watching what is going on in the Vatican more closely. When you harbor sexual predators in your midst, sooner or later it all comes out, and whatever moral high ground you like to claim erodes pretty quickly. Eventually, people lose faith in the their leaders and seek alternatives, as was the case in Alabama when Doug Jones defeated the contemptible Roy Moore, who was best known for placing a stone monument of the Ten Commandments in front of the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery. Turns out the Ten Commandments Judge liked to chase after high school girls while serving as an assistant district attorney.
Now we have a man seeking the highest court in the land who was an equally contemptible prep school bully, forcing himself on at least one woman, and judging from his buddy's book, was a regular party animal in high school. It's not like "Bart O'Kavanaugh" (as he is referred to in the book) mended his ways. He just learned better how to conceal them. Surely, the Republican Party could have better vetted their Supreme Court nominee!
Yet, the religious right stands behind Kavanaugh, as seen by Rev. Franklin Graham's defense, who dismisses the sexual assault allegations as he has done those against Donald Trump. All is forgiven as long as you support the key tenets of the evangelical religious faith. Unfortunately for Kavanaugh, Maryland law doesn't see it that way and he is still liable for the claims being made against him by Christine Ford. That's why he has hired a high-profile female lawyer rather than seek religious forgiveness.
Meanwhile, a panel of 11 Republican men on the judiciary committee mull over their approach to Ford, as the optics aren't very good. Their attempts to discredit Ford have already backfired on them, with 63 of the alleged 65 women who signed a letter in support of Kavanaugh refusing to come forward or simply didn't exist in the first place. The best Fox could do was get two women to vouch for the Supreme Court nominee, having dated him roughly around the time in question.
That's probably enough for the Republican senators and religious conservatives, but many more women have come forward in defense of Ford, all of whom were high school classmates. It's like the global warming debate.
Whatever the case, these allegations have exposed the fatal flaw in the Religious Right Movement. It can't pretend to serve as a moral vanguard for this country if many among its midst are either sexual predators or condone their abusive ways. They may try to deal with it among themselves, as the council of local commanders did with Commander Warren in The Handmaid's Tale, but we still live in a secular United States where the rule of law counts more than the Ten Commandments.
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