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May 24, 2019 - January 24, 2021
Remember, it was not economic anxiety or even racism that was the best predictor of a 2016 Trump voter—it was Christian nationalism.
Progress is possible under our founding documents, while the bible will forever enshrine an ancient and outdated morality. Nothing in these commandments supports the Christian nationalist argument.
20
Perverting Sex and Love: The Seventh Commandment
VII. “You shall not commit adultery.” — Exodus 20:14
This country has a long history of regulating and prohibiting sex. More often than not, it is a history not just of ridiculousness, but of racism, sexism, and discrimination, all actively pushed by Christian churches.
Once upon a time, adultery was a crime and a cause for civil action in the United States.
Biblically speaking, the prohibition did not pertain to all believers: it applied only to married women. The married woman and her sexual partner were both considered adulterers. But if her husband slept around, or even took another wife, as Abraham, Jacob, Solomon, David, Gideon, and Moses all did, he was not an adulterer.
Essentially, adultery was a crime against a husband. Because husbands owned their wives.
It may even be fair to say that Christianity is founded on adultery. Joseph and Mary were “betrothed” with solemn espousals when “she was found to be with child,” a child that was not Joseph’s.
As two scholars on the role of women in the ancient world, Mitchell Carroll and the Reverend Alfred Brittain, have noted, that betrothal and those espousals are “as sacred as…marriage…. The woman was not allowed to withdraw from the contract, and the man could not fail to fulfill his promise unless he gave her a formal bill of divorcement for cause, as in the case of marriage; the laws relating to adultery were also applicable.”13 If that is true, the whole of Christianity may be predicated on Mary’s adultery.
The Catholic Church uses the same rationale to control its priests. According to Catholic law, Canon 277, “Clerics are…bound to celibacy which is a special gift of God by which sacred ministers can adhere more easily to Christ with an undivided heart and are able to dedicate themselves more freely to the service of God and humanity.”
Clerical celibacy dates back to at least 300 CE, when, according to the Catholic Church, it decided that “all clerics who exercise a ministry…must abstain from relations with their wives and must not beget children; those who do are to be removed from the clerical state.”
The unconstitutional anti-miscegenation law that the Supreme Court struck down in 1967 in the famous Loving v. Virginia case was similarly based on religion, as the trial judge explained: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents…. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
The primary historical justification for penalizing crimes against nature reaches back to the early Christian era and the Middle Ages. Following the lead of Saint Paul, early church fathers synthesized ideas from Christianity’s Jewish heritage and Roman context to create a regime whereby sex and pleasures of the body were considered presumptively suspect—morally valuable only when engaged in for procreative purposes within marriage.
The Bowers Court’s reliance on Judeo-Christian principles was historically accurate, but legally wrong. American courts cannot uphold laws for religious reasons; nor can our government legislate religion. The government must have valid secular reasons for its legislation. When overturning Bowers, the Court wrote, “The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce [religious beliefs] on the whole society through operation of the criminal law.”
When the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, it noted that the House of Representatives intended DOMA to express “both moral disapproval of homosexuality, and a moral conviction that heterosexuality better comports with traditional (especially Judeo–Christian) morality,”50 a sentiment correctly struck from our laws.
A State can no more punish private behavior because of religious intolerance than it can punish such behavior because of racial animus.
21
Misogyny, Slavery, Thoughtcrime, and Anti-Capitalism: The Tenth Commandment
X. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” — Exodus 20:17
Remember the Ladies
The bible treats women like property, not people.
The Catholic Church so feared women and has such warped senses of morality and sexuality that, to comply with Paul’s order for women to be silent in church,22 it castrated young boys. In 1589, Pope Sixtus V issued a papal bull, Cum pro nostro pastorali munere, which enrolled castrati in the choir of Saint Peter’s.23 Castrati, young boys whose testicles were removed or destroyed (by severing the testicles from the spermatic cord)24 were needed because women could not be a part of the liturgy. Since some songs in the liturgy required high voices and women were to remain silent, the religious
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Fuck the Catholic Church!
To question woman’s place was to question “God’s plan.” As with slavery, religion might not have been the root cause, but it provided an unassailable moral justification for diminishing half the population. For instance, when Myra Bradwell decided she wanted to practice law, the Illinois Supreme Court told her that, as a woman, she was unfit. This 1872 decision rested partly on the fact “that God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged to men to make, apply, and execute the laws.” When it upheld the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision, the US Supreme Court
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Women gained ground in spite of religion, not because of it.
The pair of men who entered the White House in 2017 cling to a benighted view of women, criticizing working wives and working mothers. In a 1994 interview, Donald Trump said he thought women should stay in the home because working is unattractive: “Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing” because a woman’s “softness disappear[s]” and because “when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.”33 This is language the Christian nationalist no doubt appreciates and concurs with.
Thoughtcrime
Religion must maintain a closed information system to perpetuate itself.42 Religious dogma cannot withstand the facts, scrutiny, or doubt that come with exploration, discovery, and expanded horizons. Religion is often too inflexible to incorporate new information, like human evolution or a heliocentric solar system, so it demands that followers shut out reality.
The very concept of the Judeo-Christian god encapsulates thoughtcrime. He is, as Christopher Hitchens so memorably phrased it, “an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thoughtcrime while you are asleep, who can subject you—who must, indeed, subject you—to a total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life…before you’re born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you’re dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate?”43
Catholic canon law governs the Catholic Church and mandates beliefs for Catholics worldwide. Arguably the most important precept for people claiming to be Catholic is also the most repellant. The law requires a total submission of the intellect: “A religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals…Therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.”46 This is canon law: the law of the Church and, as far as Catholics are concerned, the
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Fuck the Catholic Church and anyone who willingly remains a Catholic in light of such obscenity!
The Catholic Church’s power players convened the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s to determine how to impose their will for the next few centuries. The Council analyzed the coveting commandment and declared that thoughtcrimes “are more dangerous, than those which are committed outwardly.”48 Failing to engage in groupthink was worse than committing murder. Banking on the perpetual guilt these crimes ensure, the Council required that “all mortal sins, even those of thought” be confessed to the priests.49
Again, I say - Fuck the fucking fuckers! Fuck the Catholic Church!
Feeling randy? Angry? Then you’re guilty. With Jesus, humans are guilty for being human.
Christopher Hitchens put it more simply when he observed, “The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey.”
Judeo-Christianity, and particularly Catholicism with its confession and priestly absolution, relies on thoughtcrime to ensure perpetual guilt. Then the guilty—everyone—must turn to the Church for forgiveness and absolution.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions.”
The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that “the First Amendment protects against the prosecution of thought crime.”
No truly civilized society will punish for ...
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This is perhaps the precept at the heart of the American experiment: ...
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The freedom of thought is the only absolute right protected under our Constitution. Every other right is limited in some respect. You have free speech, but can’t threaten others. The press is free, but the media can’t publish willful lies that destroy someone’s reputation. We have the freedom of assembly, but we cannot trespass on someone’s property to exercise that right. There may be a right to bear arms, but we can’t take those guns on planes or into courtho...
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Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”59
Justice Jackson again: “Our Constitution relies on our electorate’s complete ideological freedom to nourish independent and responsible intelligence and preserve our democracy from that submissiveness, timidity and herd-mindedness of the masses which would foster a tyranny of mediocrity. The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.”60 Judeo-Christianity attempts just such a claim; I refer you again to Catholic Canon law, “a religious submission of
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Coveting is human. This particular Judeo-Christian prohibition is both anti-American and anti-human.
22
The Ten Commandments: A Religious, Not a Moral Code
Nearly all of the Ten Commandments conflict with America’s ideals in one way or another.
The Ten Commandments are not a moral code; they are a religious code.
A moral code is a set of principles that help us analyze and reach moral solutions in the innumerable dilemmas life presents. A religious code is a set of rules based on divine authority—its only “morality” is to obey, to follow. Those who obey are treated favorably; others are killed, excommunicated, banished, or otherwise removed from favored status.
What would you do if your best friend asked you to come to mass or the high holidays or morning prayers just so you could better understand their beliefs? What would you do? Probably not kill them. If you have any moral sense, you would not even consider murdering that family member, child, or friend. The mere hint that you might kill a friend or family member for exploring other beliefs ought to be viscerally repugnant. Yet the bible commands you to kill anyone who would “entice” you to worship any god other than the Judeo-Christian god—especially your family members.8 There is no worming out
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There was no perfect god writing down laws with moral deficits so obvious that today’s second-graders could improve them.
