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RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

A Christian Anti-LGBT Hate Group Designed Mississippi Abortion Ban to ‘Eradicate’ Roe – SCOTUS Is About to Hear the Case

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In January 2018, Right Wing Watch broke the story that lawyers for religious-right legal giant Alliance Defending Freedom bragged at an anti-choice conference that the 15-week abortion ban that had been introduced in Mississippi was based on ADF’s model language. ADF lawyers said the law was the next step in the group’s strategic plan to “eradicate” Roe v. Wade through the courts.

Now, nearly four years later, legal challenges to the ​Mississippi law have made their way to the Supreme Court, which will hear Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Wednesday, Dec. 1. Religious-right groups hope that the court’s right-wing justices will use the case to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to criminalize abortion outright. The ​Supreme Court could also make Roe “irrelevant” without formally reversing it.

ADF is using the hearing to raise money. In a fundraising Monday morning email, the group told supporters that ​the court could ​use Dobbs to overturn Roe. Last week, ADF sent a fundraising pitch that offered supporters a chance to download its “Generational Wins Prayer Guide” for the Dobbs case. (ADF also hopes to achieve a “generational win” that would overturn marriage equality for same-sex couples.)

On Thanksgiving, Intercessors for America, a network of right-wing pastors and religious-right activists, called Dobbs “the most crucial Supreme Court case in 45 years.” On Thursday and again on Friday, it urged its supporters to sign its “emergency pro-lie amicus brief” as a “citizen co-sponsor.” IFA wrote, “Let the Supreme Court know that while abortion may be the law of the land now, but with the power of prayer we can overcome!”

The Heritage Foundation​, a right-wing think tank, called the Dobbs case a “chance at redemption” for the court in a Monday email​.

ADF’s Monday email bragged about the record number of legal briefs that were filed in support of the Mississippi abortion ban. The Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the National Association of Evangelicals are among the many religious-right groups signing amicus briefs urging the Court to overturn Roe and allow states to criminalize abortion. Joining them is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The Family Research Council hosted and streamed a two-hour event from a Jackson, Mississippi, church Sunday night that was emceed by FRC President Tony Perkins and featured an array of anti-choice religious and political leaders praying that the Court would overturn Roe. ADF President Mike Farris and Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser joined the broadcast from the steps of the Supreme Court, where Farris prayed that the justices would not ask Mississippi’s lawyers any questions they had not prepared for. Anti-choice activist Tina Whittington prayed about the importance of young people “engaging with our government to see Heaven’s values on life rule in our land.”

Among the other speakers was California-based pastor Jack Hibbs, an associate of Christian nationalist political operative David Lane and an ardent Trump supporter. This summer, Hibbs preached that President Joe Biden should be court-martialed and removed from office; a month earlier he asked God to forgive Californians for electing “people with antichrist” worldviews “like Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris.” Hibbs said on Sunday night that Dobbs case “will define whether God remains in this nation or not.”

Also joining the FRC broadcast were anti-abortion extremist Flip Benham and his grandson, anti-choice activist Alveda King, and former Rep. Michele Bachmann, dean of the school of government at Pat Robertson’s Regent University and chair of FRC’s board of directors. Speaking of the Supreme Court, Bachmann said, “But Father, these men are but dust. One day these justices, men and women, their knees will bow, their tongues will confess that you are Lord.”

Some religious-right activists believe that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed by Senate Republicans just days before voters rejected Donald Trump, was anointed by God to lead the Supreme Court in overturning Roe. Among them was dominionist Lou Engle, who wrote this month that he believes that “God is looking for the Church to respond at this moment, standing with Him in the court of heaven to release a decision in favor of His saints. The ekklesia on earth must agree with the Divine Counsel of Heaven.”

Engle celebrated that the three justices nominated by Trump have created an anti-choice majority on the court, but he warned that those justices are coming under spiritual attack by “demonic forces.” Engle called on his supporters to wage spiritual warfare to “bind these five conservative judges into a coalition of conscience from which they cannot get free.”

Before joining the high court, Barrett was paid at least five times to speak at conferences for recipients of ADF’s Blackstone Legal Fellowship. Right Wing Watch noted in May, when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Dobbs: 

During the Trump administration, religious-right leaders and activists repeatedly prayed for God to “remove” Supreme Court justices to give Trump the ability to name justices to the court who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Last year, Frank Amedia, founder of the dominionist pro-Trump network POTUS Shieldcelebrated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death as a “move of God” that would allow Trump to fulfill prophecies that he would be given three Supreme Court nominations to fill.

When Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed the 15-week ban, he said that he wanted his state to be the “safest place in America for an unborn child.”  In the Family Research Council broadcast Sunday night, current Gov. Tate Reeves echoed that sentiment, saying that when he was running for governor, he made a commitment to God “that I would do everything in my power to make our state the safest state in the nation for an unborn child.” And he told the audience, “We’re gonna fight together to make this nation the safest place in the world for an unborn child.”

As I noted at the time, when Bryant signed the law, Mississippi was by many measures the least safe state in America for women, infants, and children:

 

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

Image by Do512 via Flickr and a CC license

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RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

US Secretary of State Denounces Uganda’s New ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is publicly denouncing Uganda’s latest Anti-Homosexuality legislation, which is being called a “Kill the Gays” bill for its capital punishment penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”

The legislation passed in a nearly-unanimous vote and now heads to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni‘s desk.

“The Anti-Homosexuality Act passed by the Ugandan Parliament yesterday would undermine fundamental human rights of all Ugandans and could reverse gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS. We urge the Ugandan Government to strongly reconsider the implementation of this legislation,” Secretary Blinken said via Twitter Wednesday morning.

Uganda, a far-right religious country has a long history of targeting and marginalizing its LGBTQ citizens, including passing a modified “Kill the Gays” bill that was signed into law in 2014, only to be overturned in court on a technicality. That law was drafted and promoted with the aid of American far-right evangelicals.

READ MORE: Florida GOP Lawmaker Who Wrote ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Facing Up to 35 Years After Pleading Guilty in COVID Fraud Case

Ugandan lawmakers on Tuesday passed legislation that makes being LGBTQ illegal, proscribes the death penalty for certain same-sex acts, and decades or life in prison for identifying as LGBTQ. It also requires anyone with knowledge of another person being LGBTQ or engaging in same-sex acts to be reported to the government.

“All but two of the 389 legislators voted late on Tuesday for the hardline anti-homosexuality bill, which introduces capital and life imprisonment sentences for gay sex and ‘recruitment, promotion and funding’ of same-sex ‘activities’,” The Guardian reports.

“A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality and is liable, on conviction to suffer death,” the bill states.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in a statement warned: “If the bill is signed into law, it will render LGBTIQ+ people in Uganda criminals simply for existing, for being who they are. It could provide carte blanche for the systematic violation of nearly all of their human rights and serve to incite people against each other.”

READ MORE: ‘Chilling’: Law Enforcement ‘Seriously’ Investigating Threats Ahead of Possible Trump Indictment Says Top WaPo Reporter

One of the two Ugandan Members of Parliament who voted against the bill, Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, calls it “ill-conceived,” and says parts are “unconstitutional.”

He says it “reverses the gains registered in the fight against gender-based violence and criminalises individuals instead of conduct that contravenes all known legal norms.”

President Museveni, who signed into law a modified version of the 2014 “Kill the Gays” bill, will now have to decide if he wants to sign this version as well.

 

Image: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock

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RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

Christian Nationalist Former Lawmaker Wants Right-Wing Evangelicals to ‘Take Authority’ Over All Levels of Government

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Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator and founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, appeared on the “Give Me Liberty” program late last year and laid out his vision for a nation in which every congressional seat is occupied by Christian conservatives.

“Give Me Liberty” is produced by Liberty University’s Standing for Freedom Center, which was originally named the Falkirk Center in honor of its founders, former Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr. and right-wing youth activist Charlie Kirk. The organization changed its name in 2021 after Falwell resigned in disgrace and Liberty decided to  part ways with Kirk.

Despite the departure of Kirk and Falwell, the center’s “Give Me Liberty” podcast appears to have kept its Christian nationalist bent.

A longtime religious-right activist and ardent Christian nationalist, Rapert declared on the December 17, 2022 episode of the “Give Me Liberty” show that right-wing Christians must rise up and “take authority” over everything from their local school boards to the federal government.

“When people quote the Bible and say, ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord’—Psalm 33:12—how in the world do you expect to ever have that if you are not electing somebody that would adhere to that worldview?” Rapert asked. “You can’t have a nation whose God is the Lord when you’re electing people that are holding up Sodom and Gomorrah as a goal to be achieved rather than a sin to be shunned.”

“What we need is a revival of spirit that will change individual hearts, and then once that happens, then we need to have men and women that say, ‘We need to take authority so that in our school boards, our city councils, our state legislatures, and in Congress, that we’ve got people that love God and want to do what is right in the sight of God and man,’” Rapert added. “I’ll tell you, there’s over 330 million people in this nation in the last census; I think we could find 535 more people to serve in the Senate and in the House. Are you telling me that the evangelical community can’t muster 535 men and women qualified to run for office that would stand up for God and country? Oh, yeah, we can.”

“There’s only 7,383 state legislators,” Rapert continued, “You’ve got more students at Liberty than serve in our state capitals. What if one crop of the Liberty classes all went home and ran for office? You’d make a difference, you’d change the community, and you just might save the nation.”

Christian nationalists like Rapert believe that the country was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and that right-wing Christians must keep it that way. Via the National Association for Christian Lawmakers, Rapert is putting this talk into action, advancing so-called “biblical” legislation in statehouses throughout the country that would roll back abortion rights and the rights of LGBTQ Americans. As Rolling Stone reported last month, the group’s advisory board includes politicians like Mike Huckabee and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as well as influential religious-right activists like Tony Perkins of Family Research Council and Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel.

 

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission. 

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RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

‘Bait and Switch’: Minister Slams Hobby Lobby Founder’s ‘He Gets Us’ Ads

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The mysterious “He Gets Us” ads airing around major sporting events have been traced back to groups tied to the billionaire conservative founder of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, David Green, who is using the spot as an effort to “rebrand Jesus” and bring religion more prominently into the public square.

But his effort is just a “bait and switch,” argues Rev. Darrell Goodwin of the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ, in an opinion for the CT Mirror.

The Super Bowl ads, which highlighted Jesus as a “refugee” who “confronted racism with love,” first appeared to be “a breath of fresh air,” wrote Goodwin, a progressive, Black, and openly queer minister who preaches in Bloomfield, Connecticut. “However, the funders of this invitation are the same folks who promote anti-LGBT legislation, a denial of women’s rights to their own bodies, the campaigns of clear white supremacists, and the evangelical church.”

“This approach to sharing faith can lead folks to feel violated, abused, and most of all can cause irreparable harm and even death,” Goodwin warned. “Instead, I would rather these ads promote a gospel of radical inclusion, a path that says no matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey you are welcome here.”

READ MORE: GOP ‘buffoons’ hate Biden so much that they’re giving ‘aid and comfort to Russia’: Morning Joe

This comes as all around the country, progressive Black ministers have sought to push a more inclusive and justice-focused Christianity, from Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who preaches at the baptist church that was once home to Martin Luther King, to Everett Mitchell, an activist pastor turned reformer judge now running for the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

In contrast to what he claims is the contradiction of the “He Gets Us” campaign, Goodwin promoted a site his own conference is launching, known as “Find Hope Now.”

“It may not be a flashy ad on the Super Bowl but it’s an invitation that isn’t funded by right-wing propaganda or a false attempt to love,” wrote Goodwin, saying that his effort is funded by small contributions throughout Southern New England “so that there will be hope centers all over New England awaiting you with open arms.”

 

Image: Romolo Tavani/Shutterstock

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