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The Sexual Confusion of the Religious Right

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In connection with our campaign to #VoteOutTheReligiousRight, I wrote The Christian Fundamentalist's Erotic Dream to help pull the sheets off of the perverted sexuality at the root of the religious right's distorted politics, their utter mendacity. In that post, I quoted Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, who sums this up succinctly. "[T]he erotic dream of Amreican fundamentalism is a restoration of a cleansing of impurity, a nation without sin, an empire of the personal as political . . . "Today’s Christian conservatives define themselves as apart from the world, and ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Weekend Convo: TransMisogyny

Model Geena Rocero Photo by Steer Jurvetson Flickr/creative commons

This weekend I will be exploring the topic of transmisogyny, which can never be understated since its urgency is literally a life and death matter, especially for black trans women. It is a part of the larger fabric of emergency re-education that must take place to curb this violent trend (and perhaps along the way quell the transphobic trolls that periodically show up on my newsfeed, and maybe yours).

Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women and girls, as is transmisogyny. Its manifestations are horrible, and they are exaggerated 10-fold when it comes to trans women and ...

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in Campaigns / End Police Bias / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Combatting the Infection of the Religious Right

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"[Y]ou’re not able to see somebody else as a human being," 

Some may predict that the influence of the religious right is waning as the number of Americans identifying as evangelicals declines, but that misunderstands and underestimates the festering infection of their ideas, already in full flower. You can be an secularist but your world is still affected by the disease of fundamentalist thinking that has made and continues to make a deep impression on our laws and policies. The rubric of religious freedom has been fully distorted to protect racial bigotry and legalize discrimination. President Obama Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Watch: Jeff Sharlet on The Family, the Huge, Secret Cult Driving the Religious Right

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"American power worldwide, unfettered capitalism, no unions, no programs to help poor people, all with this idea that godly, powerful, rich men should get as many resources as possible personally and they should just privately help everyone else." (Rachel Maddow's impression of The Family after reading one of Jeff Sharlet's definitive, investigative books on the organization, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (2009) and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy (2011) Jeff Sharlet. This continues our month-long series on the The Family (aka Read More›

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

On the Anniversary of Custer’s Last Stand, the Religious Right Implodes

Major G. A. Custer Flickr/creative commons

Self-repudiation: (def.) the ability to shoot one's self in the foot by one's own words and deeds.

Custer was part of a murderous US political-military strategy that wiped out 95% of the indigenous First Peoples. Pause to think about today's survivors and how they see the American flag's stars and stripes as a relic of terrorism and racism, just as much as we are trying to make the flag of the confederacy disappear. Today the progeny of these religious European expansionists continues attempts to silence (perhaps not be murder) nearly as many of us because we don't ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Why Is Sex So Important To The Religious Right?

by Lucas Cobb Flickr/creative commons

"The laws regulating people’s sexual behavior originated in the interpretation of the Bible and religious texts by some citizens, providing the rationale for government intrusion in other citizens’ private lives," wrote Robert Levine.

I have long posited that the anti-science, anti-women, anti-LGBT, and xenophobic aggression coming from the religious right springs from something very deep inside these white men, a place of sexual repression and fear so great that they dare not examine it closely. Just as much as they seem to abhor legislating human rights and equality, the monster they fear the most is their own self -- what ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Sordid Money Trail of the Religious Right

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Wistfully, I recall presidential candidate John F. Kennedy speaking before a skeptical audience of Protestant clergy in 1960 who had been questioning whether his Roman Catholic faith would allow him to make important national decisions as president independent of the church. 

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote …"

Asked, and answered. The last presidential candidate to do so.

On Saturday as part ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

#StopDominionism in Government Now!

Dominionism, particularly the virulent American Fundamentalist brand of Dominionism, is a political and religious philosophy that pervades the U.S. government and governments around the world. This philosophy calls for the end of rule by man to be replaced with (their version) of god's law.

Many of the GOP presidential candidates and incumbents in House and Senate up for re-election, for decades and in 2016, are dominionists. We (you and I) are responsible for allowing them to seep into our democracy and cause it to rot from within. Their religious commitment to an Ayn-Rand-styled nightmare theocracy takes precedence over all ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Our September Round-Up

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, photo by 5oulscape Flickr/creative commons

This is our September round-up in case you missed some of our posts. If you like our unique mix of news and opinions, follow us on Twitter/VenusPlusX, and like our page, Facebook/VenusPlusX. We kept up with many of our key issues with a discussion of how and why police bias is the chief cause of criminality in Culturally Inept Policing Schools Criminals; the psychology behind domestic violence in A Women's Problem is a Men's Issue; and the underlying ecology of progress in Everyone Needs Examples, Including Bad Examples. These followed our extensive take on ...

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in Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Liberation of Women Will Change the World

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka Flickr/creative commons

"There's a very strong outperformance of companies that have women in management, particularly in operational roles," said Stefano Natella, Credit Suisse's global head of equity research. My very well-connected friend in Washington, DC, often says he knows the cure for all the ills in the world, from wars and racism and the economy to sexism and the environment, and on and on. My friend says, "Just replace all the men currently in power with women." I think he is tapping into something very important, and this recent report by Credit Suisse just underscores why women bring a special point of view to ...

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in News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments