A Nation Sits in Intolerant Judgment

 

John 8:7 - So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, 

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Proverbs 17:15 - He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth 

the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD.

“It is a sad and scary time,” Dr. Paria Hassouri who specializes in pediatric 

and adolescent care, addressing LGBTQ childrenOne of my most uncomfortable feelings about the American populist evangelical movement seems to be best described these words of hypocrisy: “menu Christians.” While I am sure this descriptive epithet applies to many of those of differing faiths, willing to misinterpret and selectively apply the most sacred teachings of their holiest books, the application of a most distorted Biblical interpretation to American lawmakers and legal system has resulted in some of the most severe polarized politization in our nation’s history. We live in a country that has almost as many guns as people, where homicide by gun is increasingly justified if not encouraged. Yet many fervent evangelicals oppose abortion but cherish guns and the death penalty. The United States was founded in significant part as a nation of tolerance and religious freedom. But because of a bias against cities and in favor of rural agriculture – America was 94% agricultural/rural in 1789 – 30% of the population elects 50% of the Senate.

What this means is that a minority of Americans who adhere to this distorted pattern of Biblical misinterpretation are able, by means of a series of mean-spirited and judgmental litany of intolerant laws in populist states, to repeal “tolerance” from both the Bible and the Constitution, virtually all in states where rural minorities outvote often larger urban constituencies. This reality has led one organization – Freedom House, which applies varying metrics to the laws and practices of individual nations – to determine that the United States has veered so far off its initial path that it simply has lost its way. 

Citing the Freedom House report, Moneywise (11/12/21) summarizes: “Despite the United States' reputation as the freest country in the world, Freedom House gives the U.S. a score of 83/100 — which means the country doesn’t even make the top 50… While Americans enjoy plenty of basic rights, accusations of government corruption and election fraud, growing economic inequality and controversial policies on immigrants and asylum seekers have dropped the country's ranking… Freedom House says gerrymandering and voting restrictions have also impinged on the rights of U.S. citizens.”

This unfortunate path has impacted too many Americans in a most negative way. People of color, for example, struggle against laws intended to minimize their vote and continue embedded patterns of discrimination. When you hear “cancel culture” and stopping “critical race and gender theory,” you know without doubt that you are dealing with bigotry. Racism is still with us despite the cry that it ended in the 1950s and 60s with civil rights legislation and judicial rulings. We KNOW it did not. The latest flurry of this discriminatory trend has focused on the LGBTQ community, particularly children. The notion of gender differences is attributed by such bigots as a matter of choice and not genetics. As pointed out by Tyrone Reason in the March 29th Los Angeles Times:

“Paria Hassouri feels fortunate that her family lives in California and not Texas, where the Republican governor recently issued a directive to investigate parents who seek ‘gender-transitioning procedures’ for their minors… Her 18-year-old daughter, Ava, revealed she was transgender to a teacher five years ago and now identifies as female… ‘If I lived in Texas and supported my daughter when she was in transition,’ Hassouri says, ‘I could be considered a child abuser.’

“Hassouri, a physician who runs the Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Wellness Clinic at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and advocates are alarmed that Republican lawmakers across the U.S. have introduced a record number of bills and regulations purporting to shield young Americans from what they see as undue pressure to identify as gay, lesbian, nonbinary or transgender, or accept those who do.

“With the midterm elections looming, GOP leaders see stoking homophobic and anti-transgender sentiments as way to help the party seize control of Congress in November. Their strategy was on full display at last week’s confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, which saw Republicans accuse the Supreme Court nominee of threatening parental rights as a trustee at a private school that, as Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee claimed, ‘teaches kindergarteners ... that they can choose their gender.’

“State lawmakers have proposed at least 238 discriminatory bills targeting LGBTQ students, athletes and curricula in the first three months of 2022, compared with 41 for the year in 2018, according to an analysis by NBC News based on data from the advocacy group Freedom for All Americans and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“About half of these measures single out transgender students, such as two bills passed by the Arizona Legislature on Thursday, and one of three anti-LGBTQ bills Oklahoma senators approved the same day… Instead of helping the students who need support the most, [Tenika Jackson, a clinical psychologist who counsels LGBTQ youth and their families] and other experts say, the bills under consideration, coupled with the politically charged cultural debates they’ve sparked, only add to the isolation and fear children cope with as they struggle to accept and love who they are…. ‘It’s hard for us to change that messaging in the therapy room when they’re getting that message every day at school,’ Jackson says.”

Right-wing populist Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just signed the popularly recognized “don’t say gay” law, a statute that ostensibly bans discussions or mention of gender disparity in grades K thru 3, which also applies to any level of public instruction to “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students,” a most ambiguous statement. Bigotry under the guise of “parental rights,” even though parents of school-aged children overwhelmingly find no need for this restrictive legislation. See my recent Red States Tell You Teachers are Radicalizing Our Kids blog for the underlying statistics. What have we become? Rule by a religious minority literally changing and repressing majority voters?

I’m Peter Dekom, and even as we support Ukraine’s battle to maintain its democracy, we watch serial laws and judicial rulings slowly repealing our own most fundamental personal democratic rights.