The Religious Right's Agenda: Make Everyone But Themselves Miserable

[ruggerson]

Their agenda, in the final analysis, is about causing great pain to all other human beings who don't believe as they do.

Why can't we just frame it that simply to destroy them politically?

The religious left's agenda: Healthcare for all. Real solutions to poverty. Concern for the environment. Common thread: making people's lives BETTER.

The religious right's agenda: keep gays and lesbians as second class citizens and tell lies about them. Forcibly have the state control women's reproductive choices. Confuse little children by telling them lies about how the world began. Common thread: Making people's lives WORSE.

What's so tough about getting this across?

[realisticphish]

1. i have one question

why do you hate america and jesus? :shrug:


But seriously, that is a really good way to look at it.

[Erika]

2. The Religious Right closely aligned themselves with the tactics

of Hitler. Who also hated gays in the name of Christ.

[ruggerson]

3. I agree

but I'm wondering why Democrats are having a tough time delegitimizing this movement in the eyes of the public. The obvious truth is that their agenda makes people's lives worse. This should not be so tough to get across.

[Erika]

4. The Dems are getting there

through all the trash thrown at them, thank you.

[bling bling]

5. Because the Dems are too whimpy.

And perhaps for legitimate reasons. Dean was brave enough to call a spade a spade a while back and the Republican attack dogs went nuts on him.

The GOP is a formidable group of thugs these days. I will never stop wishing that the Dems would grow stronger spines; but unfortunately I'm afraid that the citizens will have to learn the hard way how dangerous the religious right is.

[DanCa]

12. There's safety in numbers.

Remembere were still the minority party like it our not. I am sure that once we get more Dems into office, especialy true Dems and not the Libermen party that's out there, things well shift back toward the left. Remember a politician is a pack animal and they need a herd to run with.

[pnwmom]

7. The media frames everything, and they've been busy legitimizing the

Repubs. Bush can tell any lie and the news just repeats it, over and over.

But it's not just because the Repubs are the ones in power. Clinton was in power, and the media trashed him.

[DanCa]

11. Well how many of our own people think that a religious person

is someone who is prolife and anti gay? Our own people our buying into that crap.
What thing that the republicans practice it isn't true christianity.
Would Christ shoot someone or turn his back on the poor or sick. I want to make a sign that says It's the GOP party not the GOD party stupid. Maybe then we'll get thru to the sheeple.

[Squeech]

15. Good point

The religious right concentrates on these really narrow issues that have next to nothing to do with anything Jesus actually said. Culture of Life = no abortions. (No contraception either.) Defense of marriage = gay bashing. Faith based = you must accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior before we'll give you any actual services. And don't even start on evolution.

But they're conspicuously silent on any of the real actions of Jesus, like kicking over the tables of the money-changers in the temple, or of anything he actually said, like the Sermon on the Mount.

Me, I want a bumper sticker that says MATT 25:40 (look it up), and I hope it spurs lots of discussion among everyone that displays JOHN 3:16 on his car.

[pnwmom]

6. Wrong. They like to make themselves miserable, too.

Do you think those submissive wives are happy?

[distantearlywarning]

8. I was just about to say that.

Those people don't strike me as being too happy themselves, either, except for the handful of televangelists with all the money. In fact, I strongly suspect that many of them feel a tremendous amount of guilt, shame, and fear and can't deal with that so they take it out on others. Feel ashamed that you have an attraction to little boys? Bash some gays down at the local gay bar and feel better! Guilty about the stack of porn under your mattress? Pass legislation forbidding others to use sex toys and feel better! Afraid of the terrorists? Imagine God smiting everyone who is different from you and feel better!

Fundamentalism of all stripes is just a bad coping mechanism for fearful, immature people.

[LisaLynne]

9. I agree.

As a former Fundy myself, looking back, I really think that was why I was so angry at those who didn't believe as I did and didn't live by the same self-imposed restrictions. I was miserable and, even though I didn't realize it at the time, I was jealous of those who were going through life with less guilt, doing the things they wanted, living my their own sense of right and wrong. I don't think the Fundies realize exactly what their motivation is -- they try to cloak it with their fears that if the US doesn't become a "Christian" nation we're all going to die or something (which why do they care? They're going to Heaven, right?) and other such things, but in the end, I think the deeper motivation is much less admirable.

[pnwmom]

16. They can't control themselves -- so they want to control US! n/t

[ruggerson]

18. Yeah, I agree

but I'm talking about how we frame them to moderate voters. The nuance that they really are repressed and unhappy, while true, is irrelevant. The OP is about how we use one liners and short sound bites to stigmatize them in the minds of moderate Americans.

[DanCa]

10. I have young onset parkinsons how do you think I feel?

I believe in God but I can't attend the church of my birth because I want to be able to walk, no stand, unaidded. Yet there so backwards they believe that ssr comes from aborted fetus untrue. It's in the bills we write that says we cannot use embryos from a fetus. It's untrue that we create life just to destroy. The cells that we use aren't vialable for reproduction. It's another lie.
Hell one Bishop said that God is punishing me with parkinsons because I want to harvest babies for my own ends. Yet this Bishop wouldn't come down to an actual stem cell lab to see how the process is really done.

Let me just say that I agree with Al Sharpton on this, "The Christian Right, aren't the Right Christians." And that anyone who puts an embryo above a real breathing human being isn't religious. Hell there not even human.

[jazzjunkysue]

13. If they weren't miserable, they wouldn't need their drug: Religion.

It's a religous high that bandages their broken spirits. It's the balm of the miserable. The opiate of the masses.

You can have faith in whatever you want to without it being your excuse for not taking responsibility for your life and your loved ones. And if it attempts to control others, there's nothing remotely godly about it.

Their religion is "Control or be controlled." They think they're holding the leash, but in fact, they're puppets to the political winds.

[lectrobyte]

19. As someone once put it: Jesus -- the cure for a sickness you

didn't have until someone told you about Jesus.

[Strawman]

14. The Republican secret of politics: finding out "who hates who."

That's what Kevin Phillips, the architect of Nixon's Southern strategy said. And it seems to have worked out for them. In my own neck of the woods, Macomb Counbty, MI, Republicans figured out that they could use race as a wedge issue to capture middle class white Democrats because they feared and resented blacks more than they hated their rich fat cat bosses.

I don't know if liberals have had a good counter-strategy since MLK. People may be inclined to their hatreds and stereotypes, but they don't don't want to think of themselves as racists or haters of any kind and they certainly don't want to be exposed. They like to frame it as a justified reaction to some unjustified behavior by some group of others. MLK shamed racists and opened the door for them to identify with social justice by non-judgemental rhetoric. If we want to turn the tide we need to do two things to the haters: shame their hateful behavior and then claim them as brothers and sisters.

[rman]

17. Which coincides nicely with the fascist agenda