Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It (3 page)

In 2009, I read an article about the Secular Coalition for America. I’d never heard of it, but this organization, which lobbies, advocates, and organizes under the banner of our secular founding principles and our Constitution, seemed to embody the voice I wanted to see working in Washington, DC, on behalf of my own values. Learning that it was looking for an executive director, I applied for the position and was lucky to be chosen. I had lobbied for my state bar association years earlier and enjoyed it, but I’m particularly happy to do what I’m doing now. I’m glad to get up in the morning and look forward every day to working on issues that I care deeply about. I enjoy working for a cause rooted in our nation’s proud heritage and
very creation, when Americans boldly broke free from the stranglehold of theocratic government. It is an exciting job, encompassing both lobbying in Washington and coalition building throughout America.

I’m deeply passionate about our Coalition because its mission aligns fully with my personal vision of where our nation must go if we are to be true to the values of our Founders. Herb Silverman, founder and president of the Secular Coalition for America, had a historic vision in initiating and creating the Coalition (see
appendix
). We are a nonpartisan organization and we specifically seek participation from all those who support our mission—no matter their political stripes. Indeed, the Secular Coalition for America has not only many Democratic supporters but also Libertarian and Republican supporters. Given the fundamentalist tenor of the Republican Party today, the number of Republicans in our Coalition is smaller than I would like. We are determined to welcome as many people as are willing to join us.

In the most specific sense, the Secular Coalition for America fights for the separation of church and state, as well as for the acceptance and inclusion of Secular Americans in civic life. Those who hold the naturalistic worldview of Deists like Jefferson or Madison, or of agnostics like the charitable Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, or of atheists like the humanitarians Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, are all Secular Americans. All these people share a philosophy worthy of full inclusion in American political life. The Secular Coalition for America serves an essential patriotic mission. At a time when theocratic attitudes are on the march in America like never before and the all-important wall of separation between church and state is crumbling, Herb Silverman’s brainchild strives to meet this pivotal moment in history and protect the secular nature of our government.

Despite this new, unified effort, the secular movement suffers from a noble flaw. Secular people tend to have an almost religious faith in statistics and dry arguments and abstractions as the proper method by which to carry the day. This has made it difficult to connect with the broader American public, particularly when many of our battles emphasize symbols—and not the numerous religious laws that harm real people.

Secular Americans remain a sleeping giant, a huge demographic that has thus far failed to flex its own muscle, much less galvanize the general population. We ignore people suffering under religious privilege while shaking our fist at a slapped-together manger with a plastic baby Jesus in the town square at Christmas time. While symbols are meaningful and these particular symbols on public grounds do violate Madison’s Constitution, Secular Americans must do better to reach all Americans. We must explain
the human story—the human harm and the outright abuse of our tax dollars that result from religious privileging in law.

Theocratic fundamentalists love when the debate is about nativity scenes or “the war on Christmas,” because, meanwhile, that sideshow allows them the opportunity to quietly transform our government—and our laws—to their liking in ways that harm real people. If we are to be strategic, if we are to build a case to a broader audience—and we can—the secular movement must unite around the human harm caused by religious bias. A uniting call to compassion—and to moral outrage—makes smart strategy because it’s so deeply just, and because it appeals to the best of our nature. An energized reaction to our message—to our very human stories—is in itself unique and new within the secular movement. We must stir people’s emotions with a mission of justice and compassion, not merely for Secular American but for all Americans.

If our goal is to improve our world and serve our fellow human beings, then a savvier strategy, a more businesslike strategy, a strategy more accepting of the nature of human emotions, is imperative. Religious special rights are about real people and real harm. Secular Americans must offer sound arguments, but we must do so in a way that connects with the hearts of our fellow Americans. Now is the time to step forward and take moral responsibility for our nation through social action. After reading this book, I hope you will see the imperative of doing just that—and a clear course of action for us to return America to its secular roots.

I believe that God wants me to be president
.

—George W. Bush

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and state
.

—Thomas Jefferson

I was twelve, riding in the backseat of the family car on a vacation in the American West. I’d been given
The Children’s Bible
as a gift. With time on my hands, I decided to read the Holy Scripture. The trip sure felt pretty biblical, what with dad driving us through the desert and all. I got to the part where God tells Abraham to kill his son. If Abraham was willing to kill his son, then, in God’s eyes, Abraham was a moral person—a God-fearing person. I looked up at my dad in the driver’s seat and wondered to myself how God fearing he might be out here in the desert.

This was the first time I remember having real questions about the Bible. Would a truly moral person obey such a command? Would a moral God issue such a command—even as a test of loyalty? Would it be moral to treat a child as something to be used as property—an object to be used as a religious sacrifice?

The story of Abraham is an ancient one. And we’re living in what is often called the modern age. Surely the invocation of religion today would never place children at risk, right? Well, let’s consider a true story from the twenty-first century.

Amiyah White, age two, attended a child-care center in Alabama. The center’s staff lost track of Amiyah and she was left alone, trapped in a van. After two hours in that van under the Alabama sun, Amiyah’s two-year-old heart gave out, and she died alone in that van. On the outside of the van were painted the words “Holy Church.” Amiyah attended a religious child-care center. Now, you might say, Amiyah’s death was an accident that also could have happened in a secular child-care center. True, but such an event would be less likely to happen—because under Alabama law, health and safety statutes that apply to secular child-care centers do not apply to religious child-care centers. As the head of the Alabama Christian Coalition said, “The pastors and the congregations are our quality control.”

Let’s consider for a moment this “quality control.” Under Alabama law, (1) secular child-care centers must keep medications locked up, while religious child-care centers are exempt from medication-safety regulations; (2) secular child-care centers must follow food-safety regulations, while religious child-care centers are exempt from food-safety regulations; (3) secular child-care centers must submit to unannounced state inspections, while religious child-care centers are exempt from such inspections; (4) secular child-care centers must obey child-staff ratio laws, while religious child-care centers need not obey child-staff ratio laws; (5) secular child-care providers must participate in safety training that, for example, covers proper child tracking, while providers at religious child-care centers are exempt from such training.

Was Amiyah’s death an anomaly? Perhaps. And yet a three-year-old named DeMyreon Lindley, who attended a different religious child-care center in Alabama, was left alone in his center’s van for ten hours before he died.

No politician, in the context of Alabama child-care laws, has argued that it is a positive characteristic to actually consider killing a child at the behest of a deity. But Alabama law is similar to the story of Abraham in this respect: they both share the concept that religion justifies a separate moral code. Put another way, by providing an exemption to a basic code of safety simply because a business invokes religion, modern Alabama law stands united with the tribal Abrahamic code in its willingness to endanger children in the name of religion. While Alabama law is particularly extreme, there are more than ten states that provide for some form of religious exemption from laws governing child-care centers.

Now consider a religious practice of the Incas from five hundred years ago. The Incas would take children to the mountains, drug them, then kill them as a sacrifice to their gods. That was part of their Pre-Columbian religion. Primitive? Perhaps. Brutal? No doubt. But at least they tried to
anesthetize the children and killed them swiftly. Contrast that with what happens in twenty-first-century America.

Jessica Crank was fifteen when a tumor began to grow on her shoulder. The tumor was treatable with modern medical science, but Jessica’s mother did not believe in modern medical science. She treated her child with the Epistle of James. Had a secular parent neglected his or her child’s medical needs, the law would have unequivocally authorized the government to remove the endangered child for proper medical care. Jessica’s mother and her pastor could correctly point to the “faith-healing” exemption in Tennessee’s child-protection law as providing their actions with wider latitude. Jessica’s tumor grew and grew until it was the size of a basketball. Jessica suffered extended, agonizing pain—then she died.

In so-called faith-healing homes, children with otherwise treatable maladies have needlessly vomited fecal matter, bled from giant eye tumors, and gasped for water as a result of untreated diabetes. And, yes, children have died and continue to die in agonizing torture. It is unconscionable that, in most states, there are so-called faith-healing exemptions to basic child-protection law.

Many Americans, including perhaps readers of this book, protested or spoke out against the U.S government’s use of waterboarding. As bad as waterboarding is, waterboarding usually does not lead to permanent injury and is rarely fatal. Compare waterboarding to what happened to—and what continues to happen to—these innocent children: Vomiting fecal matter? Bleeding from eyes? Tumors on children so festering and large that people, even at a distance, gag from the smell? All this needless and pointless suffering, often followed by death?

The fact that fanatical parents may not recognize their own actions as torture does not by one iota diminish the torture that these children experience. This torture of children, justified on religious grounds, is worse than anything that occurred in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Yet, relatively speaking, there is not a peep of protest. Following his election, President Barack Obama proclaimed, “Waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it’s torture.” When will the same be said about the torture of innocent American children that is justified in the name of religion?

This legal imprimatur for “faith healing” violates the very nature of our form of government, and the separation of church and state. The statutes used to excuse these actions give the stamp of “morality” to immoral actions. This “moral” stamp results from the concerted efforts of religious extremists.

The Fundamentalist-Industrial Complex

The hideous deaths of Amiyah White, DeMyreon Lindley, and Jessica Crank represent human horror stories. But they also represent something much more insidious. Their deaths, and the deaths of all other children as a result of laws that privilege religion, are emblematic of a much broader violation of—and attack on—the secular values of our Founders and our Constitution. As John Witte of the Center for the Study of Law and Religions at Emory University states, “Separation of church and state is no longer the law of the land.” This change has gone largely unnoticed by the media and the American public in general.

You will hear Rush Limbaugh complain about “special rights.” Fundamentalists tell us to fear the specter of special rights for gay citizens, though of course gay Americans aren’t after special rights—merely equal rights. The irony is that special rights actually do exist in this country—for religious groups. Just as the described horrors suffered by children have all occurred under some form of legal imprimatur, some statutory form of recognition, so too have countless other injustices and instances of harm been authorized by many other forms of religious bias inscribed in law. These laws aren’t unenforced blue laws from the time of the Salem witch trials. They are laws that grant special rights in twenty-first-century America to religion and that are justifed by ancient texts.

There is no comparison between calls for basic equal rights among all Americans no matter one’s gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion and laws that elevate one class of people over another on the basis of religion. Rush Limbaugh would likely point to affirmative action as “special rights.” Yet whether one agrees or disagrees with affirmative action, one must concede that, in the case of African-Americans, centuries of slavery and many decades of violations of civil rights constitute a reasonable argument for it. What similar historical injustices or disadvantages have religious groups in the United States suffered to justify the special status they enjoy in law today? Why give people like Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and Ted Haggard affirmative action for religious affiliation?