Dangerous Alchemy
In a single event, Texas Governor Rick Perry managed to attack the separation of church and state, women, gays, and the entire judicial branch of our government.
A few choice quotes:
FORT WORTH, June 5 - Making good on a Republican campaign call to celebrate with “Christian friends,” Gov. Rick Perry traveled to an evangelical school here on Sunday to put his signature on measures to restrict abortion and prohibit same-sex marriage.
he signed a bill passed during this session of the Texas Legislature requiring girls under 18 to obtain their parents’ consent before having an abortion. Previously, they needed only to notify their parents.
“We may be on the grounds of a Christian church, but we all believe in standing up for the unborn,” Mr. Perry said.
He also said he was putting his signature - although it was not required - on a measure that places a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages before Texas voters on Nov. 8. “Activist judges have used the bench to advance a narrow agenda,” the governor said, adding that the measure defining marriage as a sacred bond between a man and a woman “places it beyond the reach of activist judges.”
Ibid
The Rev. Robin Lovin, a Methodist minister and an S.M.U. professor holding the Maguire Chair in Ethics, said, “There are lots of reasons to go to church on Sunday, but making laws isn’t one of them.”
Signing a bill into law in a church, he added, “is a pretty clear symbol that the church is at the service of the state or the state is at the service of the church and either way we’ve crossed an important line that has a long history in both politics and theology.”
Ibid
Instead of defending our longstanding tradition of separating church and state, this new Republican party is actively encouraging this one religious group to feel they are entitled to decide not just what’s moral and right for themselves, but what is moral and right for all of us.
I’m certain that if some other group were trying to force their religious norms on the rest of us by making them into laws, these Evangelicals would cry foul.
I can’t help but feel that we should all be crying foul right now.
