In a thematic echo of yesterday’s post, CJ Werleman of Alternet (using language more blunt that I try to use) sees the right-to-discriminate-against-gays bills in Arizona and numerous other states as the desperate moves of a dwindling Christian right.
Dwindling Christian Right Turns Into Cornered Animal, Lashes Out at Civil Rights and Democracy
The Christian Right’s dirty little secret is they are acutely aware that changing demographics are running against them. While they may believe the earth is a mere few thousand years old, they’re not complete idiots. They can read polls, and the data tells them this: millennials are abandoning religious belief. According to a recent Pew survey, one in four Americans born after 1981 hold no religious belief, which is nearly double the national rate of atheism. Other studies confirm this trend, including a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute showing more than half of non-religious Millennials have abandoned their childhood faith.
With this in mind, the nation’s radical religious fundamentalists see an ever-shrinking window to impose their Bronze Age worldview on the gay, atheist, liberal, immigrant, heathen, and science book-reading masses.
Despite their increasingly minority status, they manage to raise lots of money to win elections for Republicans. Werleman concludes,
While the Christian Right is becoming the dwindling minority, it remains an existential threat to civil rights, secularism and our democratic values. It’s a threat fueled by a seemingly unlimited supply of campaign finance, and a rabid base that believes it’s fighting for its place in a 21st-century world it can’t reconcile against an ancient book that says gays are an abomination. You know, like shellfish.
Meanwhile, all the usual suspects are issuing press releases (Joe.My.God is the best place to follow these) complaining that denying Christians the right to discriminate and marginalize homosexuals is oppressive *to Christians*. They’re the victims here. Of course.
