Faith is defined as the confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing, and when applied to religion, it means faith that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. As a personal belief system, religious faith is not necessarily a bad thing, that is until a person or group of people takes their confidence borne of no logical proof or material evidence as a sign they are empowered to impose their beliefs on others. Faith becomes incredibly dangerous when in the hands of those who use their positions of power to impose their will on others, and Americans are in increasing peril from Republicans forcing their bastardized version of Christianity on the entire population under the guise of religious freedom.
In Article VI, paragraph 3, of the Constitution, it states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” that generations of scholars have interpreted to mean that no federal employee, whether elected or appointed, career or political, can be required to adhere to or accept any religion or belief. That interpretation opens the door for Americans to demand their representatives submit to a different kind of “religious test;” one affirming they will not use the power of their office to impose their religious beliefs on the people. For the first time in U.S. history, there is a concerted effort to use the Christian religion as the basis for legislation restricting the rights of Americans whether they are gay, women, or non-believers and the practice is escalating in state legislatures as well as the United States Congress. If a Virginia Republican state legislator is victorious in his bid to serve in the House of Representatives, there will be one more extreme fundamentalist Christian imposing his fanatical religious will on the population.
The latest evangelical zealot seeking to hasten America’s rush to a Christian theocracy is a Virginia Republican, Bob Marshall, who recently reiterated that incest exceptions in abortion bans are unnecessary because the bible tells him “incest is voluntary.” Marshall is running for the House of Representatives and the last thing this nation needs is yet another maniacal evangelical Christian who puts more importance on the Christian bible as law of the land than state, federal, or Constitutional laws. Marshall’s faith-based comments about incest are one in a long line of reprehensible bible-based assertions about any and everything with a legislative voting record to back up his evangelical lunacy. About four years ago, Marshall stated categorically that women who have had an abortion subsequently deliver children with developmental disabilities he claimed was God’s “vengeance” for not adhering to the religious right’s opposition to abortion.
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Marshall made the comments at an event to defund Planned Parenthood telling the gathered anti-women evangelicals that “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion who have handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.” A California opinion columnist wrote a commentary noting that according to Marshall’s medical pronouncement about god’s vengeance, he was accusing perennial idiot Sarah Palin, and his own mother, of having had an abortion to deliver a baby with Down Syndrome, and an idiot Virginia delegate who thought he was a medical scientist, respectively. The columnist was suspended and fined for suggesting that Palin had an abortion and that god’s vengeance was responsible for Marshall’s bible-induced mental defect. It was the first time one realized that speaking out against evangelical idiocy was punishable in America, but that is another story.
Last year, Marshall used his biblical reasoning to accuse Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy of being gay for writing the majority opinion striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 banning gays from marrying the person they love. Marshall was furious that the Supreme Court was not taking directions from the religious right and lashed out at Kennedy’s opinion saying, “For all I know, Kennedy’s a homosexual. You can’t be doing some of these things without this kind of conclusion. Clearly, some of the people who are making these decisions must be rationalizing their own bad behavior.” If Marshall is elected to Congress, and his district has elected him over and over again, he will join other Republicans who care more about enforcing biblical edicts than supporting the U.S. Constitution and that is more bad news for Americans frightened of living under a Taliban-like theocracy.
Marshall will join teabagger evangelicals such as Senator Marco Rubio who sponsored a religious right “Freedom to Pray” act that allows federal funding to go to programs that participate in religious activities, and voted to expand religious institutions’ rights to discriminate based on religious beliefs. Another Senator who belongs behind a pulpit, but not the U.S. Senate, is Rand Paul who believes a human being is a single-celled organism and introduced the Life at Conception Act last year that extended Constitutional protections to zygotes. Paul, like most Republican legislators, is certain that when a sperm punctures an ovum it deserves Constitutional protections the mother forfeits according to a stupid, and errant, interpretation of the bible. Teabaggers in the Senate have nothing on the House where a former teabagger preacher from Michigan, Tim Walberg, sponsored a bill for prayers at school board meetings, opposed non-theistic chaplains, opposed overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, sponsored a marriage act to redefine marriage as one man and one woman, and opposed a bill to teach young people the truth about sexual disease and prevention. He also fought to eliminate contraception coverage from the ACA and quoted Joseph Stalin to say America’s collapse is imminent because the Affordable Care Act undermines the nation’s “spiritual life.” A nation having a spiritual life is about as much lunacy as a private, for-profit secular corporation having a spiritual life, but that lunacy is on the verge of being the law of the land and woe to women, gays, and secularism when the High Court rules that anything goes for people, and corporations, of faith if the claim it falls under their exercise of religion.
There are plenty of other congressional representatives who are more willing to legislate from the bible than support and defend the Constitution; something they swear an oath to do in order to serve in the House and Senate. The prospect of another truly zealot Christian like Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall proves this nation desperately needs, and the American people deserve, a religious test to prevent theocrats from imposing the bible by legislative fiat with the sole purpose of undermining the Constitution as the law of the land. Bob Marshall’s despicable remark that exceptions in abortion bans for incest are unnecessary because biblically, incest is voluntary is a thousand times worse than Todd Akin’s reference to “legitimate rape” because unlike Akin, Marshall fully stands behind his incest remark and every other bible-driven comment he has made over the years; that alone should terrify Virginia voters and Americans likely to feel the wrath of the preponderance of religious right Republicans in the House and Senate.
It is doubtless there are very, very few Americans who deny that every person is entitled, and protected by the Constitution, to hold whatever personal religious beliefs help them navigate their miserably uninformed lives; that is the nature of a free society. However, most Americans would agree that any person’s personal religious belief should not be the impetus for imposing religion-driven legislation whether it is Islam, Heathenism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Christianity on other Americans and yet that is happening in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress solely because there is no religious test to ferret out Christian fanatics intent on imitating the Taliban’s religious tyranny. Men like Bob Marshall, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and the rest of the biblical-legislators represent Christianity’s version of Iran’s Mullahs and Supreme Council and not only are there liberals claiming the religious right is in decline, so-called “good Christians” are remarkably silent that emboldens the fanatics. Where is their outrage? Likely buried somewhere under their version of the bible.
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.
