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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levon" data-source="post: 524918" data-attributes="member: 1270"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008083698763&__cft__[0]=AZUBZLsuD2pyvX3H3Hlk2KzBQVB0kHOqxrA0Xq4KCtBcz9zHj7O66m_t57bk6KXbHjeW1nWt6pgQufSVmk1qNKit6wg72UxHrZL6V_zBjEAtuXNiJUnZ5GqKu_WObQDvOVY&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R" target="_blank">George Godwyn</a>March 12, 2018A few years ago a friend and I were talking about our families and my friend began to complain about his newly evangelical sister. She’d become fairly insistent in her protelytizing and it had become pretty annoying. I think he’d mentioned his feelings to her, at least implied them, but she wasn’t slowing down, and he was getting sick of it.Half-sardonically I made the point that, really, it may be a little obnoxious, but it would be pretty fucking rude if she didn’t try. If you think someone is going to be tormented eternally, if you truly believe that, what kind of psycho wouldn’t at least give it a shot? “Dude, it’s your immortal soul. Wouldn’t it kind of be worse if your own sister just didn’t care?” He thought a minute and he had to agree.There’s a medical clinic not far from my house. Apparently abortions are performed at this clinic, because it has been the locus of protesters four years. Sometimes I see the protesters, I’m reminded of that conversation.This is the standard I’ve always use to understand the evangelical community, or tried to, anyway. I think most of us have some beliefs grounded at least partially in intuition. I have certain spiritual understandings myself that may not be perfectly explicable in terms of pure reason. So, given the Christian’s initial set of beliefs, if those beliefs are sincerely held, I’ve always felt that I have to afford the person holding those beliefs some measure of respect. Even when it was kind of challenging, as with missionaries interrupting me at home, or overly insistent relatives, or, especially, anti-abortion demonstrators, I’ve tried to do that.As unpleasant as anti-abortion demonstrators can be, I ultimately had to concede that they may be acting in line with deeply held principles, and that those principles were not necessarily malevolent at their base. It was a pretty simple case to make — if I thought hundreds of thousands of children were being murdered every year, I guess I’d act pretty pissed off, too. I understood them to be fighting what they considered a civilizational injustice on par with the worst democides of the bloody mid-twentieth century. What else could a responsible person do, in that scenario, with those ideas as a basis? The lives of millions of infants are at stake.Of course I still had my misgivings about this or that particular incident or person, and when it spills into open hatred or insult or violence, it’s completely unacceptable. But I felt the initial benefit of the doubt had to be extended. Any given evangelical might be entirely sincere. The annoying witnessing, the silly TV personalities, the peaceful (if aggressive) protests — they may be delusional, but it could be a sincere delusion. As offputting as it could be, as nasty as it could be, sometimes, how much could I actually blame someone for that?I took heat for this position from my pro-choice friends, sometimes. They would explain to me that these people were hypocrites, I was giving them too much credit. I’m pro-choice, and they knew it, but it would still bother them that I defended the protesters on that basis.I maintained my qualified defense. We are, all of us, vast epistemological failures and we are reminded of it every day. It’s a reality from which only the child and the fanatic can remain sheltered. So in a liberal, pluralistic society, how far out on a limb do you really want to climb in condemning another person for being simply, and mostly benignly, mistaken? Especially when the thrust of their concern is trying to save human lives or immortal souls? As wrong as I thought they were, I had to respect the determination about some things, and the more so because they looked so ridiculous, so often, to so many of us. It may even be a little heroic, I thought.Then 2016 happened. And now I need to thank my evangelical friends. Because 2016 is the year almost all of you voted for Trump.Of course, you always vote Republican. I get that. But you actually voted for him in the primaries. By the end of January, Donald Trump was running at 37% of the evangelical vote. His closest competitor was Ted Cruz, at 20%. Then Ben Carson at 11%, followed by Marco Rubio at 10%. It wasn’t even close, at that point. You already loved Donald Trump. You had other choices you could’ve made, Christian men, decent men by your professed standards. Men you had supported for the presidency for years previous.You chose Trump. You knew what he was, by that point. We all did. And you chose him.By the time the general election came around, you voted for Donald Trump 81% to 16% for Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump made a better showing among evangelicals than Romney or McCain or Bush. Substantially better in the last case.You want to trot out the abortion excuse to avoid this fact, obscure it. His opposition to Roe v. Wade made it imperative. Of course this might be more convincing if all his primary opponents hadn’t actually been on substantially solider footing in their opposition to abortion than Trump could ever pretend to be, and if there weren’t polling that showed evangelicals putting about eight other concerns ahead of abortion or supreme court appointments on their list of voting points, immigration being foremost.It might be more convincing to me, in specific, as well, if I didn’t follow quite a few of your groups. See, I know what you actually talk about, what you care about, in those groups. It sure as hell isn’t Supreme Court vacancies. You supported him because you loved him, and you loved him specifically for some of the most hateful aspects of who he is, and his most unchristian policies. And the more religiously devout you were, the more you loved him. The more you still do.The problem is that, no matter what position he claimed to have during the election, or claims to have now, no matter how much you agree with him on this policy or that, there’s one thing anyone with one whit of semi-uncorrupted moral sense sees in Donald Trump’s behavior.Donald Trump is a truly, deeply, bad person. On a very personal level, he’s just a bad human being. I’m not talking about his philandering or any of his other, obvious, personal breaches of Christian morality. Of course they’re numerous and clear. And I’m not talking about blatantly unchristian policies, turning away dying children from our shores, splitting up families.I’m talking about his basic moral fiber. He’s just bad. Repellantly, unmistakably, bad. It’s unavoidable, grossly apparent. Donald Trump is a morally reprehensible human being. And I think you know that. I think everyone knows that. From the beginning it’s been the one, true constant. He is a petty, malevolent, nasty scumbag, he makes it unremittingly clear every chance he gets, and you have seen every, sordid second of it.You watched him tell Carly Fiorina she’s ugly, and that was fine.You watched him insult Ted Cruz’s wife’s looks, no problem.He stood on a stage and did an impression of a disabled man and the crowd loved it. (You know he did. You know he lied about it. And you loved the event and the lie, both.)You heard him talk about sexually assaulting women. You heard him brag about it, but that was fine, wasn’t it? Grabbing women by their genitals is fine for evangelical Christians, right?He actually kicked off his campaign by calling John McCain, a true, unimpeachable war hero if one ever existed, a loser. Donald Trump, a man who cowered in private schools while Senator McCain lost the use of his hand simply to stay by the side of his men, had the evil gall to pass judgement on the Senator’s record. “He’s not a war hero.” His reason being that John McCain had been shot down. He couldn’t be a war hero. And that was fantastic, hilarious.Explain this me. Just that one incident, that one fucking incident. Let’s forget about all the other stuff, for a minute.Donald Trump mocked another human being for literally  offering up their body in sacrifice for his brothers. He didn’t have to, he volunteered to. You supported that man. You supported that man, and you supported the act. A lot of you thought it was hilarious. how? How the fuck do you vote for a man who can do something like this? How can you do that and call yourself a Christian? How? How does that jibe, on any level, with any sort of Christian idea of morality? I guess I’ll refer you to John 15:13 for your answer.Since then, the American public, the citizens of the United States, have been subjected to a constant, unrelenting litany of spite, poison, and truly repugnant viciousness. Just poisonous, toxic, shit. Every chance he gets. I’m too tired and it’s too boring to list even a decent part. We all are. It’s disgusting. It goes on forever. So let’s skip ahead a bit to 2017.2017 is the year that evangelicals knowingly tried to elect a pedophile and rapist to the Senate of the United States of America. But let's put that aside for a second.  You’re Republicans. You’re not going to vote for a Democrat. That’s fine. Let’s talk about the primaries, Republican v. Republican.Luther Strange is a solid, down the line, Republican and conservative. Has been for years. As Alabama Attorney General, he carried water for big corporations, opposed the Obama administration’s clean power plan, and sued the federal government in order to allow schools to keep transgender students from using the appropriate restroom. He also vocally opposed gay marriages. He was appointed to his senate seat by the conservative governor of Alabama. He had the credentials. He also had Donald Trump’s endorsement. In any other year he would’ve been the man for the job. He should have been a shoo-in for the senate.Against this man, in that primary,  someone  so outside the institutional norms that he'd already been  removed from the bench twice. An incredibly bigoted, frankly verging on clinically disturbed, man. Luther Strange actually ran 20 points ahead of Roy Moore among nonevangelical Republican primary voters. 20 fucking points. Unfortunately, among evangelicals, Moore led by 21. Evangelicals not only voted for Moore, you’re responsible for nominating him. You, evangelicals, elected a rapist pedophile for the Republican nomination because the other candidate wasn’t hateful enough. And then, after finding out he was a pedophile and a rapist, still voted for him in the general election.Years ago, maybe decades, I think it was the 90s, I was listening to conservative talk radio and some homophobe called the show and started spewing the normal garbage about gay marriage until the host cut them off. He explained that gay people were sinning, sinners go to hell, etc. You know the drill. It wasn’t the Westboro Baptist Church, but it wasn’t a picnic.The next caller identified himself as a Christian evangelical, and, with just a touch of anger in his voice, he proceeded to explain that it wasn’t for him to judge any other man, that was God’s purview. That he didn’t know what was in another person’s heart, including the hearts of gay people. That we are all sinners, and hating other people for sinning was neither decent nor Christian. He went on from there. He was obviously a hard-core Christian, and he completely decimated every hateful, bigoted argument any homophobe ever made on purely scriptural terms.I remember being surprised and just a little inspired. He was clearly a good, decent person, and he was sick of being represented by hateful, malicious people. I’ve remembered that call ever since, I try to remember that any given evangelical might just be that guy, someone who has that truer understanding of the words in that book. And that they and their beliefs deserve my respect.And on December 12, 2017, evangelicals, happily and enthusiastically, cast tens of thousands of votes for a monster. Someone who had done things for which they would likely have demanded his death in any other situation, and with solid, scriptural support for the killing.Explain this to me. Explain how that happens. Explain to me how I should assimilate that? How the fuck do I digest that fact and continue to defend the sincerity of the men and women standing around that woman’s clinic. I don’t understand how that’s possible, anymore. How do you manage to contort your belief system thoroughly enough to do something like that? You tried to elect a fucking pedophile and rapist to the United States Senate and fucking knew it. How do you cast a vote for someone like that and pretend to remain authentic to your beliefs?See, I’ve read the fucking bible. I know the answer. Anyone who’s actually read that book, anyone who actually understood just a little of the New Testament, would know that answer. You just can’t. And I am legitimately ashamed for you for thinking otherwise.I’m ashamed for your ignorance of that book, and the failure of your faith. I’m ashamed for your hypocrisy and how far you’ve deluded yourself into believing you can still call yourself Christian. Whatever lingering Christian spiritual understanding is left within me is ashamed and truly saddened by the malignant, twisted perversion you’ve created out of the words and ideas in that book, and the vacuum you’ve allowed your moral sense to become.I know Christians, and I know pro-life supporters. The real ones. The ones who hold those convictions deeply and sincerely. And they wouldn’t vote for someone like Donald Trump or Roy Moore if he were running against the risen Judas Iscariot, rope burned, leaking guts, and turning Zima into Lagavulin. They just wouldn’t.You just don’t give someone like that power. No matter how much he pretends to share your projects, your ideals, your beliefs. No Christian who actually read the words inside the bible, tried to inhabit those words, could do that. Character matters, and it especially matters in leaders. Something some of you used to understand, or so you said. So you pretended. I guess that pretense is gone, now, isn’t it?In a tantrum of rage and perverse entitlement, you have spit on what should be your most sacred, dearly held principles for the evil thrill of watching the most vile, depraved, nakedly Unchristian man to ever occupy the Oval Office shock your opponents, pretend to share your concerns, and inflict anxiety, pain and horror on innocent people around the world. And you did it so smoothly, easily, without batting an eye at the transition. You moved seamlessly from a position of assumed moral superiority to one of abject, fawning acceptance of pure, malignant shit at the drop of a couple mean-spirited remarks and you never looked back.What the evangelical community has done over the last two years has been one of the most grotesque displays of rank hypocrisy and mass, ideological, spiritual disease I’ve seen in my lifetime, and that’s a lifetime that includes the Catholic Church being exposed as complicit in at least thousands of crimes of pedophilia. I’m not going to forget it, a lot of us won’t. We’re going to remember who, and what, you are for the rest of our lives.So here’s my thank you to the evangelical community. From now on, when I go past that clinic, I don’t have to entertain the usual moral conundrums. I don’t have to tease out the subtleties of the situation. I’m grateful that I don’t have to defend the motivations of the people holding signs. It makes things so much easier.  I will never have to defend people like that again. Because I’ve got your number now, motherfuckers. It’s entered in my phone permanently under “Pharisees”.Do whatever you want. Play at your tribal resentments, try to hide your real motivations. I may have been born yesterday but it was pretty early in the day and I stayed up all night reading Wikipedia. I’m not a sucker, you can’t shit me anymore. You don’t love your neighbor, you’re not truly religious, and you sure as hell aren’t Christian in any meaningful sense of the word, not past the most shallow, hollow, strictly cultural sense of the word. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a bunch of little Donald Trump’s and Roy Moore’s, spitting venom and malice and lies at the world every time you open your mouth.My beliefs are kind of complex, I guess. Maybe confused. I don’t know if I have a soul and I don’t know if you have a soul. You seem to know, though. You seem to be pretty sure of it. If you’re right about that, I guess maybe it’s time you stop worrying so much about everyone else’s and look to your own.There’s a beam in your eye, brother. Before you do anymore voting, you may want to take that thing out.[MEDIA=facebook]2029181114027992[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

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