LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This AllterNet article talks about the yearly rallying of the religious right, and their demands of the Republican party.

Republicans are staking their hopes of holding on to power in the November elections on looking tough on terror. But at the Family Research Council's first "Values Voters Summit" in Washington last week, billed as the most important political event in the Christian Right's history, a showcase of 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls, and, tellingly, the president's own spokesman, all focused not on terrorists or war or global jihad, but on the threat posed to America by two men getting married. Under the stress of possibly losing its grip (on power), the party of the so-called "values voter" has collapsed under the weight of its own moral dishonesty.

Speakers at the conference fired up the audience, but there was virtually no mention of the occupation of Iraq, spiraling health care costs, a huge housing bubble, or the daily economic struggles many Americans face. Those things pale in comparison to the real threats: a declining culture, and the shadowy network of feminists and Hollywood executives that are responsible for its fall.

Bishop Wellington Boone, a black preacher, distributed a pamphlet entitled, "The Rape of the Civil Rights Movement: How Sodomites Are Using Civil Rights Rhetoric to Advance Their Preference for Sexual Perversion." Jenn Giroux of Cincinnati's medievalist Citizens of Community Values denounced feminism and proclaimed, to enthusiastic applause, "We want to be protected by men! That doesn't make us weak!" Don Feder, the anti-Hollywood provocateur and founder of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, said that George Clooney hates George W. Bush the way Hamas hates Jews. An unrepentant George Allen was canonized as the victim of "the worst gotcha journalism we've seen in recent years."

It is by now old news that the Perkins-Dobson-Wildmon-Bauer quartet is hysterical, close-minded, and out of touch with all but a vocal minority of religious fundamentalists who think that the ACLU has laid waste to America and that everything could be fixed if all gay people turned straight and Christians were just allowed to preach the Gospel in every corner of America's public squares. But while the movement lacks what many would consider virtue, its virtue to Republican bean counters is the durability of its leaders' predictability. Every two years, Republican strategists, sensing an election about to slip away, beg the Christian Right to mobilize its voters. The Christian Right complies. And about a year and a half later, like a jilted lover, the Christian Right complains loudly that the Republicans have betrayed them, have forgotten about their issues, have led the nation astray by allowing crazy judges to let two men get married. So they organize a conference. The Republicans show up. The Republicans pretend there is nothing more pressing in the world's greatest democracy than preventing certain citizens from having families. Relieved, the Christian Right (and, illegally, some of its tax-exempt pastoral foot soldiers, too) tells its followers to vote Republican. And it will go on this way until a collective wave of moral spine -- from Republicans, Democrats, and just regular, nonpartisan people who think statements like "Sex and the City" "is one of the most damaging shows of our generation" are just plain ludicrous -- stands up against the bullies at the pulpit.

Here's the most telling- and chilling paragraph in the article:

The most telling moment of the afternoon, though, came during the remarks of Mike Huckabee, Mr. Covenant Marriage and Governor of the Other Sodom, Arkansas. Huckabee was the only person, all day, to discuss poverty, health care, housing, hunger, or Katrina, to obligatory applause. But when Huckabee implored his audience to "prove we don't have closed minds, but open hearts and hands that will lift people up," he was met with stone cold silence. He had suggested, blasphemously, that his audience work with feminists to end pornography, with proponents of gay marriage to combat AIDS, and with unions to make better workplaces. While nearly everything anyone said was met with thunderous applause, when these words came out of Huckabee's mouth, the room was so quiet you could have heard people thumbing through their Bibles to see if what he said was sanctioned by God. But they didn't. Not a soul even tried to start a chain reaction of applause with a single clap.

So, the one person who actually tried to introduce genuine Christian values- including tolerance and the desire to 'lift people up' instead of stomping them underfoot, did not get a single acknowledgement of his ideas. Gov. Huckabee is a Baptist minister, and while some of the things he flogs are very religious and almost theocratic in intent, it is a very telling thing that in spite of that, his was the lone voice of reason and compassion, and his thoughts were met with icy silence.

Remember: for these people, hating gays, disempowering and enslaving women, and ignoring or even oppressing people who are poor are is more important than adhering to Christ's teachings.