DOG WHISTLES AND MORAL MAJORITIES

Every time I write about religion I find myself asking the question, why does religion get a free pass from scrutiny? I think it’s a more than fair question considering there are many out there who would wish that their religious beliefs should dictate civil law. Of course, they wouldn’t frame the argument that way. They would say that their beliefs are based on tradition and natural law. They would also be ignorant.

If there is one phrase I hate, one phrase that makes me want to projectile vomit across the room, it's, "This country was founded on Judeo-Christian Values." That's just plain ignorance. It implies that basic human decency is reserved for only the so called descendants of Abraham (except, of course, the Muslims). It's a backhanded attempt to detract from any person who doesn't think like them, and its implication that Christianity should dictate our law is antithetical to the most basic values of this country.

There no doubt that religion played a role in the formation of this country. The evangelical movement was a primer (not the only primer) for the idea that all were created equal and the true moral measure of a man is with his deeds rather than his hierarchical place in society. This certainly isn’t to say that religion or God, per se, was the reason for going to war. Our Founding Fathers weren't bible thumping evangelicals at all. Many were deists, many were Unitarians, Episcopalians, but certainly not snake-handling, tongue-speaking, fire and brimstone-preaching, holy-rolling, shove my religion down your throat Jesus freaks. They embraced the egalitarian principles of religion and dumped the dogma. Our Founding Fathers were also influenced by Rousseau, Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Machiavelli, among others. Do we call ourselves a country founded on Machiavellian principles? In fact, I would argue that the split from the Anglican Church and the ideas of the first great awakening and subsequent schisms in the Protestant Church were largely influenced by (secular) Enlightenment thinking.

There's no doubt and it's laughable to argue against the fact that the majority of Americans in the history of its post-Revolutionary existence were (and are) Christians. A Christian majority is not synonymous with a national Christian identity. There is only one fact that needs to be mentioned to understand the role that our Founding Fathers thought religion should play in government and that’s that there is no mention of God in our Constitution. Rest assured it was debated, but in the end, the decision was to leave God out.

But Lemon, how about the part that says, “…the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them,” or even more celebrated, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

You fool, that’s the Declaration of Independence.

But alas, I’ve got you this time Lemon…In the signatory section of the Constitution it states, “…in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven…”

Give me a break. This is a reference to time, not religion and it was common to refer to the date in this form in the period in both religious and secular circles.

The conspicuous absence of God from the Constitution should be a big flag to everybody out there that our Founders explicitly knew the dangers of intermingling civil law with religious doctrine. Combine that with the First Amendment, and it’s a no brainer—“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” In so many words, religion is an important aspect of many people’s lives and they deserve to practice their form of worship, but it’s a private choice and, thus, government has no business forcing it upon its citizens via legislation nor at the barrel of a gun. Yes, when the founders talked about free exercise of religion, they were largely talking about freedom to practice the whichever Christian sect you chose and, in deed, many feared atheism, Islam (Mahometans), and deism. But our Founders also owned slaves. People evolve and if you remain stagnant in a changing world then you, too, will become irrelevant. You want government sanctioned religion—go live in Saudi Arabia (I’d just suggest watching your head or you might lose it).

Now, all that said, what the hell are these Judeo-Christian theorists even talking about anyway? Which values, exactly, are they referring to? Are they talking about the fact that a large segment of society is denied basic civil rights because they love differently than the majority? Are we talking about relegating women to subservient and subjugated roles to men by denying them the right to make choices, paying them less for the same work, or making them pay more for basic medical care, if not outright taking away access to preventative healthcare? Maybe they’re referring to tactics ranging from covert operations to fighting outright wars in order to advance our (and our allies) economic interests and to satisfy our imperialistic tendencies from the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran to protect British oil interests, to Panama, to going to bed with Saudi Arabia, to going to Grenada to cover up for a disaster in Lebanon, to abandoning Afghanistan to go to Iraq, to filtering money from the World Bank and USAID to underdeveloped countries so corporations can rape them of their resources and then flee once the money’s made (shall I go on?). Are we talking about war profiteering and that the US military actually had the gall to inscribe Bible passages on weapons intended to kill in some of the most violent ways possible? I would remind these people what the Bible really says about war profiteering (Proverbs 1:10-19, Isaiah 59:1-8). Maybe these are the Judeo-Christian values they’re talking about.

But alas no, these are not the values our Judeo-Christian supremacists are referring to. They refer to our basic sense of right and wrong--equality of man, liberty, human creativity, that we don't (in theory) murder each other, steal from each other, lie to each other, or screw somebody else's spouse, among other things.

Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on morality. These are basic rules of human decency. Any group of people that has to live together in a community could figure out that they probably shouldn't kill each other. Do you honestly think that if there wasn't some invisible warden or taskmaster in the sky that you'd feel free to guillotine your neighbor? Is it only the threat of punishment that keeps you from murder? If so, then I fear you more than anybody outside of Judeo-Christianity.

The reality is, anytime you hear someone refer to our country being, "founded on Judeo-Christian Values," you can rest assured that it's a dog whistle. It's a coded message meant to rile up the emotions of supremacists who believe they're the gatekeepers to morality and saviors of our depraved country. They're telling their audience that they don't have to worry about the homos being able to marry, or the women folk aborting all those babies, or a Muslim being able to walk into an airport without being strip searched, and those atheist heathens aren't gonna be able to keep our God out of the public institutions anymore. Every time you hear "Judeo-Christian Values," or "Family Values," translate it as homophobic, anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-anybody who doesn't kneel at the cross on Sunday mornings. In fact, there was a time not long ago that churches had very little to no interest in playing politics. They didn't want the dirty pool of politics to taint their religion. Oh, what a wonderful time that must have been. Believe it or not, we weren't blessed with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Paul Weyrich, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and other right hand men of God until the latter half of the 20^th century. Now we're stuck with one political party that's a demi-religious cult.

I'm sick of hearing about Judeo-Christian values. I'm tired of Christians thinking they are the moral authority when, in reality, their value system is just a result of an evolving need to live together in a community. I'm sick of the claim of "family values" being a cloak for the hypocrisy of pastors who rail against gays while they're smoking crystal meth and banging their male masseurs on the weekends. A word of advice: the louder someone rails against homosexuality, the bigger repressed homo they are themselves. And I'm entirely sick of Christianity being used as a guise for racism and male hegemony. So the next time you think that your Christian roots give you moral superiority over all others, I have the perfect place you can stick your Judeo-Christian principles.