Cousin Marty fears for values agenda in new Congress
By Robert Horenstein
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It's the day after the 110th U.S. Congress has convened. My cousin Marty, looking troubled, drops by my office.
"Marty, you seem upset," I say.
"Did you expect me to be celebrating now that the Democrats have taken over both houses of Congress?" Marty replies. "There's hardly anyone left to champion the moral values agenda."
"Actually, I think the new leadership plans to take up several important moral issues," I say. "They've already mentioned priorities like reducing poverty, providing healthcare for uninsured children, and fighting government corruption."
"No, I mean the issues that define a nation's moral character," Marty says. "I'm talking about banning same-sex marriage, illegalizing abortion and permitting religious expression in our public schools. Now we're going to have the Left trying to impose its values on the rest of us—secularism, atheism, feminism."
"Are you kidding?" Marty says. "We're already being beaten over the head with political correctness. Check out Jerry Falwell's Web site and you'll see what I mean. He has a long list of companies that he encouraged people to boycott last month because they refused to use 'Christmas' in their advertising. Can you believe Gap, Old Navy and a bunch of other stores would bend over backwards not to offend atheists?"
"Let me see if I understand this," I say. "Falwell's followers were expected to go down to the local mall, patronize the stores that had 'Merry Christmas' in their ads or catalogues and shun the ones that simply wished customers 'Happy Holidays?'"
"Precisely," Marty replies. "It's one way of countering the campaign against religion and family values being waged in this country. For our pious Christian friends, it's part of their struggle to keep Christ in Christmas."
"I guess if I want to be an informed shopper, I'll have to pay closer attention next time," I say. "Then again, I must admit that when I see a Victoria's Secret ad with half-naked models promoting their 'Red-Hot Christmas Sale,' family values isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Besides, Marty, wouldn't volunteering at a soup kitchen be a better way to instill the true meaning of Christmas than making a fuss about what's going on at the mall?"
"You don't get it," Marty says. "Wherever the so-called separation of church and state is being taken to an extreme—in malls, schools, town squares—people of faith need to respond. Do you realize that a public school teacher can't so much as mention God without the ACLU pouncing on him? I just read about a high school history teacher in New Jersey who, heaven forbid, expressed his personal religious beliefs to his students, and now he may lose his job over it."
"Marty, that teacher—who also happens to be a Baptist preacher—was teaching creationism and proselytizing in class," I say.
"Well, you can't expect him to lie to his students and say God had nothing to do with creating the world," Marty says. "But he's hardly an extremist. He acknowledged that evolution has played a limited role in the overall scheme of things by hypothesizing that dinosaurs were aboard Noah's ark."
"That's interesting," I say. "Does he also teach his students that Fred Flintstone led the Children of Israel out of Egypt and received two stone tablets on Mt. Sinai?"
"If I were to make that kind of disparaging remark, you'd say I was intolerant," Marty snaps. "All the liberals ever talk about today is the need to show tolerance—tolerance toward gays, toward humanists, toward illegal immigrants. But when it comes to people of faith who wish to express their religious views in the public square, where's all that tolerance they keep preaching? Suddenly, it's nowhere to be found."
"I may be going out on a limb here but I'm guessing it's not likely to turn up in a classroom where the teacher tells his students they'll face eternal damnation if they don't share his religious beliefs," I say.
"The point is there's a concerted campaign to scrub every influence of religion from American public life," Marty insists. "The ACLU and their allies have removed God from our public schools and military institutions, and now we've got a federal judge trying to do the same in our nation's prisons."
"You must mean the court order closing down the Iowa program that rehabilitated inmates by immersing them in Christianity," I say. "I understand that inmates who 'embraced' Jesus got preferential treatment, like special visitation rights and access to classes needed for early parole."
"Surely I don't need to remind you that faith-based programs have been proven effective in reducing criminal recidivism and other social ills," Marty says. "But once again, you have an activist judge who instead of applying the law to the facts of the case, legislated from the bench based on a perverted view of the Constitution."
"Marty, what part of establishing a taxpayer-funded Evangelical church inside the walls of a state prison do you think passes Constitutional muster?" I ask.
"It's so sad that those who believe in erecting a high wall separating church and state—and you can bet they're the very same people who just put the Democrats in charge—can't understand the power of faith to transform lives," Marty laments.
"Oh, but they do, Marty," I reply. "After all, on Election Day, their deepest prayers were answered several times over."
Robert Horenstein is the community relations director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.