Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It Read Online Free Page B

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?
    You might be asking, surely Billy Graham’s multimillion dollar organization doesn’t get special rights, does it? This would be the Billy Graham who complained to Richard Nixon of “synagogues of Satan” and who, encouraging a militaristic policy during the Vietnam War, quoted Jesus as saying, “I am come to send fire on earth” (Luke 12:49) and “I am come not to send peace but a sword” (Matthew 10:34–36). Billy Graham may beretired, but yes, his multimillion dollar organization, now run by his son, Franklin Graham, gets special legal rights that average businesses do not.
    Surely Rick Warren doesn’t get special rights, does he? This would be the Rick Warren who preached at Obama’s