I had already commenced writing this post when I heard that old Santorum finally called it quits – THAT is cause for much celebration (and relief since he stuck it out this long, this well?) - so this will be anti-climatical. Also my Microsoft Word was seized with a temperamental fit and not only refused to let me alter the document on which I writing this post but also wouldn't so much as allow me to copy and paste what I had already written. I was too lazy to rewrite the whole thing from scratch and it took me literally days to finally, after many failed experiments, outsmart the program. I thought about tossing the post altogether, but then this ignorance is hardly limited to Santorum and the Duggars.
I must indulge in a necessary political rant. What the hell is Santorum still doing around? He was the one taken the least seriously, the clown who should have gone out with the likes of Perry and Cain! (Of course, to be fair, the other candidates who have lasted are also quite ridiculous.) Every time I notice yet another positive comment about him on Facebook – and believe me, considering the vast majority of my friends are fundamental evangelical Christians, this occurs frequently – the logical/history major part of me is astonished and outraged at the amount of foolishness being so blatantly promoted.
And now, it seems, Rick Santorum has joined forces with the Quiverfull/patriarchal in the shape of the Duggar family, they of “19 Kids and Counting” fame. I detest the Duggars…. well, the parents, anyway. I feel intense pity for the poor kids: I know all too well the toxic beliefs the family subscribes to and the sapping effect it has in demanding perfection. Also the show seems rather boring to me. The one time I watched it when my roommate had it on (Hi, Abs!), the camera was trailing one of the boys into the kitchen so it could capture him making a sandwich. Fascinating stuff, that!
Anyway, I was over at Kathryn Joyce’s blog (I’m a avid fan of both her blog and book) and noticed that the Duggars have declared there support of Santorum and even “released a folksy video in support of Santorum: ‘19 Reasons & Counting to Vote for Rick Santorum,’” reasons one and two of which are the fact that the Santorums have been married for a significant amount of time and then that they have seven “blessings.” (Read the article here:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5844/%E2%80%9Cone_of_us%E2%80%9D%3A_rick_santorum_and_the_politics_of_%28very_big%29_family/#comments ) Is it just me or are these irrelevant reasons to vote a guy into office? A lengthy marriage and a bevy of children sure don’t make a candidate more qualified to run a country - in fact, the men I know thus endowed would make particularly horrible political leaders! And I consider Santorum little better: his economic and foreign policies are naive at best and even his home state views his stint as senator as disastrous, but Jim Bob and Michelle interpret his many kids as being nothing less than an the endorsement of God, himself. So passionate are they about this that they are even on the campaign trail with Santorum, determined, as Jim Bob put it, “get the word out… that this is the family-values candidate.” Like the Duggars, Santorum condemns contraception altogether, as children are a blessing and having tons of them will outnumber the liberals and turn this nation from its wicked ways. “We need to be a hopeful country that wants more children,” Santorum declared.
This kind of thinking - the whole cramming of God down our throats via legislation - has no constitutional nor historical foundation and gets me so frustrated, and yet, oh, so many Christians accept it. A bright young philosophy student from Liberty University, steeped in the wisdom of the magnanimous Jerry Falwell, actually told me that if we were faithful to God and voted in a president of high morals - namely, one will vow to do away with abortion and allow to fewest rights to gay citizens - God will reward our country and infuse that President with the wisdom to do an all-around good job. What the - ? And when I pointed out the obvious, telling him I felt there were other, larger issues at hand to be considered when voting for a President, he accused me of having my priorities screwed up, of caring about money more than life.
If you know anything about early American history and the founding of the nation, which apparently is knowledge that many of my Facebook friends are lacking, it is so overwhelmingly obvious that the whole premise of Santorum’s campaign, that of forcing his own personal beliefs and morals on others, is oh, SO unconstitutional! I even went to a little Christian college where we naïve little freshman were told to our wide-eyed astonishment that everything about American history we’d been taught as homeschooled or Christian school students was incorrect. This is where I really am tempted to go into a full-blown argument to support this – I actually did this in my first draft, but the original point was somewhat overshadowed. Let me just say that that the intelligentsia of the colonial era were obviously, by their writings and actions, for the most part not Christians in the sense of what Americans normally think of today. They admired the prominent men of the European enlightenment which was in progress at the time who pursued logic over spirituality. Thomas Pain, the “Father of the American Revolution” himself, was a deist. Oh, this is really trying to turn into a lecture, which I really don’t want…
Okay, so most of the Fathers didn’t outright claim to be deists, but they denied aspects of Christianity like the divinity of Jesus or the legitimacy of the Bible or wrote their own Bibles (I’m looking at you, Thomas Jefferson!). Christianity really didn’t take over the nation until right around 1800, when the Second Great Awakening overtook us.
My point is that the Constitution was written for a secular country and America is NOT at theocracy. Christianity is never mentioned in the Constitution but freedom of ALL faiths is, which was actually a radical concept at the time. This is why I believe so strongly that gays should be allowed to marry, since the only possible way homosexuality could be conceived to be wrong is through the lens of religion and we are NOT a theocracy and therefore should not favor one faith over another. If churches disagree with homosexuality and don’t want gays to darken their doors, that’s their choice, but there is supposed to be a separation of church and state. If Santorum wants to be a good conservative Catholic with his stellar "family values," good for him, but it’s wrong on so many levels for him to desire as President to force his morals on the rest of us who aren’t him, to have us act according to his ideas on reproduction, abortion, and homosexuals. He might and probably does have the best intentions for this country, but we're NOT his children to be told what is right and wrong. No wonder Satorum was overwhelmingly voted out his Senatorship in Pennsylvania. Forcing religion on the people never turns out well – need a lecture from the history major?
