Last updated on April 12th, 2013 at 10:29 pm
In 1797, one of America’s Founding Fathers, John Adams, categorically stated “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion” as he signed a treaty that was ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797, and in conjunction with the 1st Amendment’s Separation Clause, put to rest any question about America being a Christian nation. Interestingly, two-hundred-and-sixteen years later, so-called Constitutional originalists in red states are imposing Christianity on their residents in spite of the Constitution’s explicit prohibition on establishing religion the Supreme Court has upheld on numerous occasions. The latest states to impose theocracy on its people are North Dakota and Kansas as part of a growing trend to establish Christianity as the State religion informing that Americans face a very real threat the nation is doomed to fall victim to the same extremism that took hold in Iran and Afghanistan under Sharia Law.
As usually happens in a theocracy, people are bound to lose freedoms, and according to America’s religious patriarchy, women will lose their 14th Amendment rights to a zygote as both Kansas and North Dakota passed personhood bills granting all 14th Amendment rights and protections from the moment of fertilization. The laws are touted as life-protecting measures because personhood advocates are very careful to avoid calling them what they really are; imposition of Christianity.
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In North Dakota, a measure was passed “which grants legal personhood rights to embryos from the moment of fertilization,” and it means women lost their personhood rights under the 14th Amendment. The measure bans abortion without exceptions for incest, life of the mother, or rape, and threatens the legality of contraception, stem cell research, and in vitro fertilization because in North Dakota, women are held in the esteem given them in the Christian bible; subjugation to a man’s will and without control over their own bodies that embryos were granted with the laws’ passage.
The Kansas measure that passed last Friday declares “that life begins at fertilization,” or as one of the Republican sponsors said “from the microscopic until full development we are celebrating god’s creation.” The bill did not stop there because it requires doctors to lie to their patients and warn them of a phony link between abortion and breast cancer The National Cancer Institute concluded in 2003 was a blatant lie leading a Democratic representative to rename the bill “The Women’s Right to Be Lied to Act.” Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is expected to sign the bill so it can begin taking women’s rights away on July 1st and establish Christianity as the state religion.
This past week, North Carolina attempted to establish Christianity as the state religion but it was scuttled by Republican speaker of the house Thom Tillis after several days of intense media attention. However, a recent national poll revealed that one-third of Americans support amending the U.S. Constitution to establish Christianity as the official State religion, and that 55% of Republicans favor imposing Christianity in their states. Further, 46% of Republicans want to repeal the First Amendment and officially declare that Christianity is the Federally sanctioned religion and law of the land. The poll exposed a growing belief among Christians that the Founding Fathers, Supreme Court, and U.S. Constitution went too far and violated god’s law in keeping religion from controlling the government, and the Kansas and North Dakota zygote-as-persons laws reflect that sentiment.
The growing theocratic movement is not unique to Kansas and North Dakota, or removing women’s 14th Amendment rights, as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is fighting to maintain prison sentences for consensual sex acts between gays and married heterosexual couples by appealing a 4th Circuit ruling that struck down Virginia’s “Crimes Against Nature” law. It is another indication that Dominionists are approaching the tipping point in establishing a Christian theocracy to replace America’s two century-old representative democracy, and most Americans are still sitting passively watching their rights succumb to a group of theocrats with no regard for the Constitution or Americans’ religious freedom and they are not stopping at controlling women and married adults.
The Kansas zygote-as-person measure is especially troubling because it gives Christians control of what children learn in school about sex and contraception besides forcing medical professionals to lie to their patients to enforce bible edicts. In several states such as Louisiana, public education funds are being diverted to fund private religious schools, and in Texas students are learning the bible supersedes established science, the United States was founded as a Christian nation based entirely on biblical principles, and that they are living in the bible “end times” with Jesus’ return imminent.
When will the transformation of America as a representative democracy into a Christian theocracy end? Sadly, not until Dominionists successfully repeal the Constitution and impose their bastardized form of Christianity on the government and the American people. Theocrats began assailing women’s rights according to biblical edict because conservative Christian males are inclined to restrict women’s rights as a matter-of-patriarchal course, and they find willing cohorts among bigots who would criminalize homosexuality in a heartbeat given the opportunity. There are those who say the mood of the nation toward gays and women’s rights are changing for the better, and yet theocrats are forging ahead to restrict their rights whether it is personhood laws or defining Crimes Against Nature (bible).
Americans are already supporting and subsidizing the move toward theocracy by giving religious organizations tax-exempt status as well as direct taxpayer payments in the form of faith-based initiatives, and turning a blind eye to campaigning from the pulpit to install more theocrats in states and Congress. Taxpayer money is being funneled to private religious schools and funding religious instruction in public schools to indoctrinate the next generation of Americans that the bible is the source of founding adopted by the Constitution’s framers, because crucial to their plans are future votes establishing Christianity as the law of the land to transform America into what they claim to hate; an Islamist-like theocracy.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
