A Virginia Republican county committee isn’t even trying to cloak its religious beliefs, which sound amazingly familiar…
The full-page color ad in Thursday’s Staunton News-Leader shows the names and photos of the Augusta County Republican Committee of Virginia’s 15 candidates running for office. In the center, it reads: “Preserve our Christian Heritage! VOTE REPUBLICAN.”
The Republican candidate running to be the next Commonwealth of Virginia Attorney told the News Leader – which, by the way, has endorsed him – he found the ad “funny.”
“I’m Christian, so I don’t have a problem with it,” Martin told the News Leader. “As a prosecutor I will be guided by my Christian values. Paramount in my book, is justice, mercy, fairness and the positive values enumerated in the Bible.”
Clearly, Martin is unaware that the law, and not his Bible, is what should be guiding him. If he actually means what he says, will Augusta County be seeing people stoned to death for a wide variety of infractions – should Martin be elected?
“If I were to have invented the ad, I might have substituted ‘values’ rather than heritage. But parsing words is a dangerous game. I don’t distance myself from it,” Martin added, clearly having absolutely no issue with the “Christian” part of the ad.
The chairwoman of the Augusta County Republican Committee, Georgia Long, pointed to the section of her group’s published creed that states, “faith in God as recognized by our founding fathers is essential to the moral fiber of the nation.”
“Maybe the word ‘Christian’ might not have been the right word to use,†Long said. “Maybe we should have said ‘our religious heritage’ instead,†clearly not having an issue with the insertion of religion into electoral politics, wholly ignoring any thought of separation of church and state.
“God is a foundation of our nation,” said Larry Roller who is on the GOP committee and who created the ad, sees absolutely no problem at all with it. “If you read the histories of our founding fathers, (they say) you should not run for office if you are not a Christian.”
Of course, that’s false.
And Roller is angry.
“They have taken the Ten Commandments out of public places, along with the Pledge of Allegiance and daily prayer out of the schools,” Roller told the News Leader. “They seem to forget the very first thing they did before writing the Constitution was pray for 3 1/2 hours.”
Of course, the elephants in the room (excuse the pun) are the very obvious facts that, aside from issues of separation of church and state, the fact that there are many people in Virginia and across the nation who do not identify as Christian, or, even if they do don’t want to see political parties endorsing one faith over another, or any faith at all.
Additionally, “preserve our Christian Heritage” is a phrase used for decades by the KKK.
Blue Virginia has a copy of the full ad, and posted this to Twitter:
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Image by Rafael Gunti via Flickr and a CC license
Hat tip: AmericaBlog