Gaslighting.

When you raise the hostility of the Left and the Democrat Party and Obama to religion and people of faith, the response is "you're crazy" and "that isn't true."

This article by an Evangelical former Obama administration staffer - who is actually defending the Democrat party by using the "seamless garment" argument that Catholic leftists use - pretty much ends that gaslighting.

For example, Hillary's candid defense of the goodness of third trimester abortions gets mentioned for the unprecedented rupture with conventional morality that it is:

//How would you characterize Democrats’ willingness to engage with the moral question of abortion, and why is it that way?

Wear: There were a lot of things that were surprising about Hillary’s answer [to a question about abortion] in the third debate. She didn’t advance moral reservations she had in the past about abortion. She also made the exact kind of positive moral argument for abortion that women’s groups—who have been calling on people to tell their abortion stories—had been demanding.

The Democratic Party used to welcome people who didn’t support abortion into the party. We are now so far from that, it’s insane. This debate, for both sides, is not just about the abortion rate; it’s not just about the legality of it. It’s a symbolic debate. It’s symbolic on the pro-choice side about the autonomy of women and their freedom to do what they want with their bodies. On the pro-life side, they care not just about the regulations around abortion, but whether there’s a cultural affirmation of life.

Even the symbolic olive branches have become less acceptable.//

Undoubtedly because they were looking forward to four years of sending their enemies to re-education camps.

And there is this:

//Green: If you were talking to a secular Democrat who is skeptical about the need to do outreach to conservative evangelicals or make a compromise on language surrounding social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, etc., what would you say?

Wear: It’s sad that this is a throwaway response, but it’s the duty of statesmanship. It’s the duty of living in a pluralistic society to make a case to all folks.

The second would be that America is still a profoundly religious nation. There are reports that high-level Democratic leadership was not interested in reaching out to white Catholics. And they sure didn’t have a lot of interest in white evangelicals. That’s a huge portion of the electorate to throw out. So if the civic motivation doesn’t get you, let me make the practical argument: It doesn’t help you win elections if you’re openly disdainful toward the driving force in many Americans’ lives.

The Democratic Party is effectively broken up into three even thirds right now: religiously unaffiliated people, white Christians who are cultural Christians, and then people of color who are religious.//

If you thought they despised you, that's because they did.

Oh, Noes!!!!

Death of freedom!!!!

America is a Theocracy!!!!

A victory for "civic theism."

Prayers that open town council meetings do not violate the Constitution even if they routinely stress Christianity, a divided Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The court said in 5-4 decision that the content of the prayers is not significant as long as they do not denigrate non-Christians or proselytize.

The ruling by the court's conservative majority was a victory for the town of Greece, N.Y., outside of Rochester. The Obama administration sided with the town.

In 1983, the court upheld an opening prayer in the Nebraska legislature and said that prayer is part of the nation's fabric, not a violation of the First Amendment. Monday's ruling was consistent with the earlier one.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the prayers are ceremonial and in keeping with the nation's traditions.

"The inclusion of a brief, ceremonial prayer as part of a larger exercise in civic recognition suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and the institutions they represent, rather than to exclude or coerce nonbelievers," Kennedy said.//

I did not know that this was on the Court's agenda.

"Democrats - It's different when they do it."

Joe Biden plays "Uncle Tom" and argues that good Catholics must vote for Obama.

Because murdering the helpless doesn't count.



Watch it, if you can stomach someone selling out the Church for a few pieces of silver.

Democrats appeal to religious prejudice - Mormons and Catholics ("RCs") are "cultists."

We know this would get ugly, but Chris Matthews couldn't wait to go there.

Chris Matthews opines on Catholics and Mormons:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews says Republicans are willing to outsource the election to a Mormon in order to win the presidency. Matthews also likened the process to calling India or another third-world country to get your computer fixed.


On top of that, Matthews called Romney a cultist as well as his two opponents, which are Catholics.


"I think religion matters," Chris Matthews said on MSNBC's "Ed Show" with host Ed Schultz. "Reverend Al, you, Ed and I know the way that the people in these polls down there say they think the president is a Muslim. I mean, the majority in one of those states thinks he is, the other 30-some percent don't know. In other words, they don't know whether he's lying about his religion, which is a pretty strong indictment right there. So, culturally, they are out to lunch for the president. There not going to vote for President Obama. So who they going get to beat him. That seems to be on their mind's now, not who they like. They are willing to outsource it to a Mormon."

"It seems to me, if they can win -- I said it's almost like calling up India, or somewhere in the third-world to get your computer fixed. You don't care who is fixing it, just fix the damn computer. They want to get rid of Obama so they're willing to vote for a guy they don't like or trust his religion. But they have no choice," Matthews said during MSNBC's primetime coverage of primary results on Tuesday night.

"They have three, or two RCs -- Roman Catholics running and a Mormon so the three cultists running. I have to pick one of the three cultists as they see them. This isn't as funny as I'm making it, but it's ridiculous to pick a guy they really think is the other, the heretic, the Muslim, what a strangest of religious prejudice is at work here, they pick the guy they don't like to pick a guy they hate worse," he finished.

Notice how conservative pundits don't say that Obama is a Muslim; liberal pundits make that claim about conservatives?

Notice how liberals always phrase their appeal to Know-Nothing bigotry on the grounds that Republicans - who are actually voting for the "RCs" and the Mormon - are religious bigots?

It's all projection on their part.

The Amazingly Vanishing Freedom of Religion Clause.

At Mirror of Justice, Michael Moreland comments on an Obama administration legal position:

I understand that the government’s role in litigation is to defend, well, the government. But the Obama Administration’s brief in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC (the upcoming Supreme Court term’s blockbuster ministerial exception case) goes beyond the narrow issue of whether the ministerial exception should apply to the facts of the case and takes the extravagant position that there is no general ministerial exception (no "categorical" or "prophylactic" rule, to use the brief's peculiar formulation) under the First Amendment’s religion clauses. (There’s been some speculation that the brief’s argument is limited to the ADA anti-retaliation claims of the employee, but it’s difficult to see why the logic of the brief’s argument is so limited.) As pointed out by Ed Whelan, this puts the Administration at odds not only with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, but also with (among others) the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Muslim-American Public Affairs Council, United Sikhs, and the Society for Krishna Consciousness, all of which filed amicus briefs on behalf of Hosanna-Tabor arguing for a robust ministerial exception as a necessary component of religious freedom. (See especially the brief by our own Tom Berg and Rick Garnett, the brief by Christopher Lund for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the brief by Michael McConnell for a consortium of Protestant churches, and the brief by my former colleagues at Williams & Connolly for the USCCB, the LDS Church, the Orthodox Union, and the Episcopal Church.) Indeed, the Administration takes a position more hostile to religious freedom than the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which acknowledge the ministerial exception in their amicus brief but argue that it should not apply to cases in which the alleged discrimination or retaliation is unrelated to religion.


What remains of the right of religious groups to select their ministers? Don’t worry, the Administration says:

Under different circumstances, a religious employer would be able to successfully invoke a freedom of association defense to application of the civil rights laws. The availability of such a defense provides a full response to petitioner’s concern that the operation of generally applicable employment discrimination laws “would prohibit many common religious practices,” including, for example, “the all-male clergy among Catholics and Orthodox Jews.” Pet. Br. 18. As an initial matter, it is unclear whether Title VII would permit claims challenging such gender-based qualifications because gender could well be considered a bona fide occupational qualification for such positions. See 42 U.S.C. 2000e2(e)(1); Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U.S. 321, 332-337 (1977). But assuming arguendo that the statute otherwise permitted such claims, religious employers could defend against them on the ground that compelled ordination of women would be impossible to square with their religious view that only men should occupy such roles. In light of the deeply embedded and long-standing nature of such ecclesiastical rules, the government interest in enforcement of anti-discrimination laws would necessarily give way. Cf. Dale, 530 U.S. at 656659 (state interest not sufficiently compelling to outweigh Boy Scouts’ right to shape message on homosexuality); see also Smith, 494 U.S. at 882 (“[I]t is easy to envision a case in which a challenge on freedom of association grounds would likewise be reinforced by Free Exercise Clause concerns.”). Brief for Federal Respondent, 31.

There’s a lot to say about this argument and much else in the brief, but I’ll make two points for now. First, if this is really EEOC’s position (it’s “unclear”) about the scope of the bona fide occupational qualification exception to a Title VII gender discrimination claim, I’d like to hear more from EEOC about how an all-male clergy requirement meets the prevailing (and ordinarily quite narrow) standard for a BFOQ (the cite to Dothard v. Rawlinson—a prison guard disparate impact case—doesn’t help much). Is EEOC's position that a religious employer doesn’t have a constitutional defense against a claim of gender discrimination in a ministerial employment decision, but the religious employer can self-define the qualifications for ministers in such a way that consideration of sex is essential to the employment function of a minister and thereby get the benefit of a BFOQ defense? And in what other contexts would that argument for a BFOQ pass the laugh test?

Second, there’s something striking (and downright odd) about an argument that the religion clauses of the First Amendment don’t protect the right of religious groups to select ministers, but the right of free association somehow does. I am all in favor of a robust freedom of association, but, as argued by John Inazu, current freedom of association doctrine rests on a tenuous constitutional basis somewhere amid freedom of speech. And while I agree with Dale, it’s remarkable that the Administration is arguing that a hotly contested decision that has been subject to substantial scholarly criticism somehow provides the authority for what remains of the freedom of the church with regard to selection of ministers. Alas, instead of a constitutional limitation on the power of the state to interfere in the ministerial employment decisions of religious bodies and rooted in nine centuries of Western political theory, the Administration's view implies that such freedom--in those rare instances where it exists at all--is merely the provisional outcome of weighing the state’s anti-discrimination interest against a religious institution's right to expressive association.

Mark Shea summarizes: "Looks like the EEOC wants to reignite the Investiture Controversy or something."

I'd bet a day's wage that no one in the Obama administration has even heard of the Investiture Controversy.

So, the journalistic group-mind agrees that this year it is appropriate to ask questions about the interaction of faith and political conscience because several Evangelical Christians are in the mix....

...but four years ago asking a candidate about his faith - including the effect of his father's adherence to Islam on his views or about his pastor's adherence to a weird kind of anti-Americanism - was totally off base because it intruded into matters of personal privacy.

Weird, huh?

Bill Keller of the New York Times decides that now is the time to uncork "tough questions about faith to Republican candidates...uhm, errr...candidates who are not Democrat...which is to say...candidates who belong to the dominant American religious tradition and therefore who cannot be discriminated against by definition because clearly asking such questions of a candidate whose pastor crowed about the mass murder of Americans would only be for the purpose of a political smear." 

Whew... I'm glad we got that impartial rule defined.

You have to love how the impartial Bill Keller likens religious belief to a hallucinatory belief in space aliens:

If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions. Like, where does he get his information? Does he talk to the aliens? Do they have an economic plan?

Quick, name the fallacy.

According to my copy of the "Big Book of Cheap Shots," that would be labeling.

Strange Herring disembowls Keller's "tough questions" as the ideological argument they are, and uncorks a few that might be nice to lob at Democrats:

Now for the Sacramone Questionnaire for Nontheists:


1. Do you think that anyone who believes in the supernatural is delusional? If so, do you believe they should be treated medically? Do you believe they should be allowed to adopt children?

2. Do you think anyone who believes in six-day special creation should ipso facto be barred from holding public office?

3. Do you believe the religious beliefs of historical figures should be eradicated when discussing them in schools? For example, that Louis Pasteur was a devout Catholic who prayed the Rosary daily?

4. Do you believe that the religious faith of those responsible for the birth of modern science—Galileo, Copernicus, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, George LeMaitre (father of the theory of the big bang), Jesuit priests too numerous to mention, et al.—should be eradicated when discussing them in schools?

5. Do you believe that it should be noted that the rise of modern science occurred in the context of a civilization that was still explicitly Christian when teaching either European history of the history of science?

6. Do you think homeschooling should be illegal, as it is in some European countries?

7. Do you believe vaccines are a factor in the rise of autism cases? Do you believe parents should be allowed to opt out of vaccine programs?

8. Do you believe that global warming/climate change demands we de-industrialize?

9. Do you believe churches and all religious institutions should be taxed?

10. Do you believe that there is such a thing as life unworthy of life? Explain.

11. Do you believe assisted suicide and euthanasia should be made legal either on a state-by-state basis or by federal fiat?

12. Do you believe infanticide should be made legal? If not, when is a baby a human being protected by the rights any other human being enjoys?

13. Is there any point when an adult human being loses the right to life? If so, under what circumstances?

14. Do you believe polygamous marriage should be legalized, either on a state-by-state basis or by federal fiat? Do you believe that “minor-attracted adults” should be protected by law as a perfectly valid expression of human sexuality that was much more common in ancient Europe and among non-Western cultures? Do you believe incest and/or bestiality should be protected by law as perfectly valid expressions of human sexuality?

15. Do you believe that individuals are ultimately responsible for their behavior, or do you believe they are subject to too many internal (biochemical, psychological) and external (social pressures, strange belief systems) factors to be held accountable, such that many of our criminal laws should be seriously reformed or eradicated?