The Great Separation

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute.”

- Sen Rick Santorum (R-Pen)

The former Senator went on to say, “What kind of country do we live in where only people of non-faith can come to the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up.”

To turn the question around, what type of country would we live in if only people of faith were allowed in the public square to make their case?

In the same year that Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” in 1492, Spain expelled their Jews. In 16th century England, alternating Catholic and Protestant monarchies spent their time burning and torturing the “heretics” who made up their political opposition. Spain held a formal debate on whether the natives they found in North and South America had souls. If they didn’t they could be enslaved or killed, their land taken and their gold confiscated.

Guess which side won.

Theocrats use religion as a way to settle political and social scores, to neutralize their enemies and hold on to power. Since the beginning, religion in America has been used as the basis of repressive policies. Rhode Island was founded by refugees from religious repression in Massachusetts. Southerners created an extensive theological framework to support slavery and Jim Crow.

The current target for American Theocrats is the economic, political and social power of women.

Now I am not suggesting that Santorum is going to pull out the rack or a new set of thumbscrews, but his fellow travelers have no problems with trans-vaginal probes. The Republicans try and describe this proposal as a medically sound requirement. But it is really a thinly disguised religious based attack on a woman’s right to choose the appropriate course of her medical treatment, in privacy, with her doctor, without the interference of the Government.

Religion is being used to put women in their place and that place is out of the way.

In the United States, more women attend college than men, and women are more likely to finish. College graduates earn more, and go farther than non-college graduates. They also tend to be more politically and socially progressive. Women are holding an increasing amount of power at the Federal, State and local level.

But, if you increase the risk that a woman becomes pregnant in her early 20’s you increase the likely hood she will not go to college, be shut out of the lucrative areas of the job market, not vote a progressive philosophy - or obtain any political power.

Even though blinded by many of the social norms of their day, the framers of the Constitution believed a person’s rights came from a creator. Their God was the enlightenment’s “clockmaker” who wound up the Universe and stood back to watch it run. You didn’t have to believe in a specific God (or any God for that matter), to exercise your rights as a citizen.

The Republican Party’s God - Rick Santorum’s God - is a judgmental interventionist, deciding winners and losers in every day life. Santorum and his fellow Republicans are happy to communicate those decisions from the Almighty to the rest of us. They will use those decisions mandate what freedoms you can exercise, what type of jobs women can have, and what medical procedure are legal for a Doctor to perform.

Since 1996 the national Republican party has focussed on “values” voters. The term has come to describe an ever narrower and more repressive philosophy. We let the Republicans hijack our American values once before when we allowed them define our legal values of due process. This led to the torture prisoners, spying on average American’s and holding suspects for years without trial.

Now they want to use religion to define the American values of equality. We know from what the Republicans say about women what those values are. If they win, they will impose those values on us all.

But, what values do the rest of us support? What do we believe the American values of equality and opportunity are? How does the Government protect those values? The broad assault the Republicans launched on basic American freedoms and values will force all of us to choose. There is a dwindling middle ground. We have to take sides.

In 2012 all voters will become “values voters.”