Sally Quinn, longtime Washington Post writer, today claimed that you can only be an American citizen if you believe in God. Yes, you read that right. Quinn, who decades ago famously was hired having never written an article in her life, pens the Post’s “On Faith” column, and included this rave review of Mitt Romney‘s debate performance in her column, “Romney captures the God vote at first debate,” yesterday:

This is a religious country. Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian.. [sic] We’ve got the Creator in our Declaration of Independence. We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our coins. We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. And we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God.

“When Mitt Romney mentioned the ‘Creator’ in the debate Wednesday, he owned it. ‘We’re all children of the same God,’ he said,” Quinn adds.

(Those who follow me on Twitter know I live-tweeted the debate, and when Romney uttered that offensive falsehood, I responded:

“We’re a nation that believes we’re all children of the same God.” No, that’s Iran and North Korea, Governor. #debate #p2

— David Badash (@davidbadash) October 4, 2012

 

Atheist and agnostic Americans, did you catch that?

“Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian.”

So, all those who either don’t believe in God, or aren’t sure about our degree of faith, are hereby not American citizens.

ICE and the INS are about to become very busy, unless President Romney can make our lives so miserable dozens of millions of now-former Americans self-deport.

Sally Quinn has in one fell swoop explained why sane people the world over hate — and I do mean hate — what the radical religious right have done to America.

It’s no longer enough that they have the freedom to practice their religion as they see fit. Now, the rest of America must be equally religious — or we’re just not Americans. We are actually being stripped our our citizenship in their minds. I imagine if Quinn were to meet me an image of my U.S. passport and birth certificate would immediately be summoned, then lit afire.

Sally Quinn’s theocratic, asinine bullshit rhetoric is unacceptable for a regular Washington Post column. That she believes I have to believe in God to be a real American is unacceptable.

Quinn, unsatisfied leaving the issue there, adds:

An atheist could never get elected dog catcher, much less president. (Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California is a nontheist but doesn’t talk much about it).

Up until now, the idea of being American and believing in God were synonymous.

When the Republicans tried to take away the flag it took a long time for the Democrats to realize they had been hijacked. For years, Democrats were wary of wearing flag pins for fear of seeming to pander. They finallygot the message.

Now it’s God. The Republicans have claimed God as their own this entire campaign, each candidate trying to out-Christian the other. Even Obama, though 17 percent of registered voters think he is a Muslim, has talked about being a Christian as often as he can.

Still, none of Obama’s references have been in a debate. And there was Obama– grim faced, nervous, fumbling his words and wearing his American flag pin — letting Romney, confident and aggressive and in control, roll right over him at every turn.

But the God thing clinched it. If Obama wants to win the next debate, he needs to wear God, as much as it offends him to do so, the same way he captured the flag for this one.

Branding it “some crazy-ass shit right here,” Charles P. Pierce at Esquire had a particularly fun time with Quinn’s bullshit. In “Sally Quinn Wants Obama to Wear God, Has Gone Mad,” Piece writes:

The continued authorship of something called “On Faith” by Beltway social-climber and Hall of Fame trophy wife Sally Quinn remains the most hilarious thing about The Washington Post, a once-great newspaper now d/b/a an adjunct to the educational testing institute. In her dotage, Sal has become a spiritual explorer, a religious quester, and a thoroughgoing loon. Reading her stuff is like showing up at Lourdes and finding Bernadette Soubirous standing there, dressed in Prada, chilling the champagne and offering the Blessed Mother a couple of seats at the owner’s box at the next Redskins game.

Anyway, she seems to have been transported to something resembling ecstasy by the fact that Willard Romney took time out from stomping on the Ninth Commandment the other night long enough to mention a certain Deity, although not by name….

Pierce adds:

A belief in God has nothing to do with “claiming your citizenship.” And, not for nothing, but Willard Romney’s god happens to believe that Jesus came to America to smoke dope with the Iroquois.

Memo to Sally Quinn, aka, all right wing radical religious Republicans:

1. Jesus said it was ungodly to pray in public. That includes “evangelizing” and that thing you do when you shove your religion in my face and claim you’re allowed to infringe on my right to be free of your religion. “Witnessing.” Yeah — leave that at home.

2. Freedom of religion includes my right to be free from your religion. Frankly, I’m not sure where I stand on the God question, but I do know that the so-called “religious” people — those who think I’m going to hell because I’m gay, and/or think they have the right to try to save my soul, and/or think they have the right to tell me and the rest of the LGBT community how to live our lives — have totally turned me off to organized religion. If I decide to believe in God, or some form thereof, it will absolutely be despite you, not because of you.

3. Who the hell do you think you are?

Note #1: Regular readers know I almost never, ever use profanity on these pages. The fact that I did should mean something.

Note #2: Because I’m a gentleman, I did not include more details about Sally Quinn’s illustrious career.

Note #3: Apparently, Sally Quinn’s readers are equally angered. Read the comments section.

Image via Wikipedia by Financial Times photos