Like I said earlier, that Pat Robertson interview on ABC’s This Week really pissed me off. From the same interview I wrote about last night, here’s his endorsement of Rudy Giuliani :

STEPHANOPOULOS: If the party chooses a moderate like John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, do you think religious conservatives will split off and form a third-party movement?

ROBERTSON: I don’t think so. Rudy’s a very good friend of mine, and he did a super job running the City of New York. And I think he’d make a good president. I like him a lot. Although he doesn’t share all of my particular points of view on social issues, he’s a very dedicated Catholic. And he’s a great guy.

McCain I’d vote against under any circumstance.

Keep in mind that this is the exact same interview in which he stated that the perceived attacks on marriage and human sexuality by the judiciary are the biggest threat this country has ever faced. Now that the topic has turned to politics, however, they’re just “social issues” in which Rudy (a pro-choice, gay-friendly adulterer) and Pat (a politician pretending to be a man of god) can agree to disagree. What a fucking hypocrite.

Now, it wouldn’t be a Pat Robertson interview unless he exposed his persecution complex to the world.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said also that you believe Democrats appoint judges who don’t share our Christian values and will dismantle Christian culture. So do you believe that Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg, who were appointed by President Clinton, they’re trying to dismantle Christian culture?

ROBERTSON: Justice Ginsburg served as a general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU.
[blah, blah, blah....]
ROBERTSON: Well, she was the general counsel for this organization whose purpose right now is to rid religion from the public square (inaudible)down here in our university in a debate. She’s a very pleasant lady but that’s what she said was her avowed goal: to take all religion from the public square. That’s their initiative.

Now I think there’s a big misunderstanding here about the word “public”. When non-partisan groups like the ACLU talk about “public” spaces, they mean “government sponsored and/or funded” places such as schools, courthouses, libraries, etc. In other words, if our tax dollars pay for it, it can’t be used to promote your religion. Government-sponsored religious displays are unconstitutional, unfair, and generally a bad idea.

When Pat and his rabble-rousing allies talk about “the public square”, they’re trying to convince their devotees that liberals are trying to ban the Bible outright¹. They’ve got a nation full of jittery Jesus-heads convinced that the Democratic party wants to shut down churches and discriminate against anyone who has devoted their life to the Bible. This isn’t a difference of opinion, it’s a shamefully dishonest attack on an entire group of people who don’t share the political views² of Robertson et. al.

There’s plenty of stuff that the ACLU does that I disagree with³, but the vilification that the group takes from religious people is based on ignorance. For some, I’m sure it’s because they’re unable to reconcile the group’s stance on civil liberties with the uncomfortable fact that those rights apply to even the most immoral aspects of our society. I don’t have the stomach to defend the rights of monsters like the KKK or NAMBLA⁴, but I’ll give the ACLU credit for being consistent enough to defend the freedom to express unpopular views. For leaders like Robertson, however, the Protestant jihad against the ACLU is based on willfully ignoring the vast majority of what the group does in an effort to strengthen their coalition in opposition to a common enemy. It’s no more fair to single out a few of the thousands of cases that the ACLU has defended based on their controversy, than it is to point out how active the BTK killer was in his church in an attempt to malign Christianity.

Finally, Robertson’s anti-liberal tirade had this little nugget of trivia that I’d never heard before :

STEPHANOPOULOS: Because in the past, you’ve said that you believe that only Christians and Jews are qualified to serve in the government.

Is that still your belief?

ROBERTSON: Well, Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence, said he wouldn’t have any atheists in his cabinet because atheists wouldn’t swear an oath to God. That was Jefferson.

Did Jefferson really say this?? I can’t find a reference to it anywhere, but even if it’s true, I find Robertson’s attempt to transform Jefferson into some stalwart against the forces of atheism to be hilarious considering that the 18th-century clergy didn’t seem to have as high an opinion of Jefferson as Robertson has now :

Jefferson was inaugurated the third president on March 4, 1801, following one of the most bitterly contested elections in history. His religion, or the alleged lack thereof, was a contentious issue in the campaign. His Federalist Party opponents, especially New England’s Congregationalist clergy, vilified him as an “infidel” and “atheist.” The campaign rhetoric was so vitriolic that, when news of Jefferson’s election swept across the country, housewives in New England were seen burying family Bibles in their gardens because they fully expected the Holy Scriptures to be confiscated and burned by the new administration in Washington.

The amusing thing here is that Jefferson wasn’t an atheist. He was a deist, but one common thread between then and now is that many true believers don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about when it comes to the beliefs of others. Just as Jefferson was a “howling atheist” to religious leaders in 1800, Robertson and his allies are dedicated to spreading the lie that Democrats are trying to “destroy the Christians”.

As a Democratic atheist who has a number of conservative Christians in my family, let me just say “Fuck you, Pat”. I’m so goddamned tired of these self-appointed arbiters of religious purity trying to drive a wedge between me and my family. It’s a wonder that they can still respect me after sitting through these paranoid lectures about how much liberals want to destroy the world. The willingness for people like Pat Robertson to exploit the religious devotion of the people I love makes me seethe with rage, but I refuse to fall for the bait and let them turn me into the sickening caricature they use to manipulate others. I have no problem with people whose faith guides their political identity, nor do I begrudge people the right to disagree with me. I really do think that our nation is best served by a spirited debate between conservatives and liberals, the religious and the secular, etc., but that debate needs to happen on civil terms, not terms dictated by the incendiary and xenophobic hate speech of political wolves in religious sheep’s clothing like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson. Those men give Christianity and conservatism a bad name and, even though I don’t identify with either label, I hate them for it.

^{1 : Yes, that’s the real message of scripture-fiends like Pat Robertson and their GOP toadies.}

2 : Or shady business dealings with terrorist-friendly foreign governments.

3 : I strongly disagree with their decision to file an amicus brief in Nike, Inc. v. Kasky case. As far as I’m concerned, a corporation’s sole purpose is to make a profit. I’m not making a judgment about that either way, but it’s pretty clear to me that in keeping with the profit motive, any actions taken by a corporation to protect that profit (like, say a misleading press release to refute charges of running sweatshops) is by definition “commercial speech”.

4 : Note that I used the word “views”, not “practices”. I don’t know anything about the NAMBLA case, but the ACLU’s defense is here and here. Like I said, I wouldn’t defend those sickos, but the ACLU’s stance does seem to be consistent with their mission to defend freedom of expression.