The Christian Right Wants to Tell Everyone
How to Celebrate the Holidays

     Christmas is fast approaching. Shoppers are shopping, carolers are caroling, and evangelicals are ... declaring holy war??? Yes, the season of joy, peace, and giving knows no respite from religious bigots. They are stirring the faithful with the trumpets of fear and hate.

       "We find ourselves in the midst of ... the days of Sodom ... regarding the abomination of homosexuality," writes evangelist Bob Mondy in the Springfield News Leader."The handwriting is on the wall and if we as a nation do not repent; then we most assuredly will reap the wrath of Almighty God."

        I would have thought that what with thousands of children starving in North Korea, genocide continuing in Darfur, and disease continuing to ravage much of Africa, the Good Lord might have had other things on his mind than homosexuality. It's not like we're running short of people as a result.

    Snuffing out same-sex marriage is the chief preoccupation of the religious rightwing this season, but not the only one. More than a hundred cross-bearing Taliban types gathered in New York City this week to hammer out what they are pleased to call The Manhattan Declaration. It seeks support for three easily decoded propositions:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

    Number one is a familiar religious dogma which holds that a zygote is ensouled at conception and therefore has the same rights as, say, a toddler. As the basis for public policy, this is absurd. A zygote is not a person in any sense except religious, and not all religions agree on that.      Not by a long shot. 

    How do we know there isn't a person in there at conception?  Apart from the obvious -- a zygote has no bodily organs -- as the it develops, some of the daughter cells will become a placenta, which is clearly not a human being. Occasionally, a zygote will split into two and eventually give rise to twins. So it is simply counterfactual to claim that a zygote is a person, anymore than an acorn is an oak tree.

    Number two is the passionate attack on same sex marriage. Note the implication that if two men or two women take vows, marriage itself is robbed of its dignity. If that's how it works, didn't marriage already lose its dignity when Governor Sanford went "hiking" in Argentina? Opponents claim that same sex relationships are unnatural. In fact, science has found that they are commonplace in nature and crop up everywhere in humanity.

    Like the opposition to embryonic stem-cell reseach, the drive against same- sex marriage derives from religious dogma. Interestingly, this is one place where fundamentalists forget their fundamentals. While scriptures contain various injunctions against men "lying" with men, there is not a word prescribing lesbian relationships. Perhaps women just weren't important enough in those days to have their own prohibitions.

    Number three is the most Orwellian: it means the right of the Christian right to impose its crude anti-scientific, authoritarian theology on the public. Mainstream America is all for freedom of conscience and religion -- but like all freedoms, it ends where the next person's rights begin. We don't want government teaching our kids to pray in school, telling us who our Lord is or what he wants from us, or infusing religion into the science curriculum. 
     
    Despite what you may hear from Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly, no one is waging a war against Christmas. We want the freedom to celebrate it -- or not -- in our own ways. You want to put Christ in Christmas? No problem. Set up a creche in your home and attend your church. You want to put the crass in Christmas? Go right ahead! Buy a "Cross-mas" tree like the one pictured above. Just don't insist that everyone in America do the same.

    But perhaps a touch of humility and tolerance would better fit the spirit of the season. After all, Christmas was originally a pagan holiday of Northern Europe, a time to push back against the darkness of the winter solstice with a festival of lights. America likewise is not a nation that follows a single star, but a place where everyone has the right to live and to celebrate according to their own lights, provided they respect the rights of others. That's the American way.

    But not according the gospel of the religious right. To take just one example, here's Paul Cook writing in the Augusta Chronicle this morning: "Sadly, there will be millions of people who will not celebrate Christmas this year. Yes, they will gather together with family and friends, they will eat and drink, they will laugh and tell heart-warming stories, and they will gather around a Christmas tree and exchange gifts. But the name of Jesus Christ will never be mentioned, and when Christ is taken out of Christmas there is no real celebration."

    Says you! With "spirituality" like this, I'm starting to feel like Charlie Brown had it all wrong about Christmas -- bring on the commercialism! Or better yet, bring back the spirit of giving, sharing, and celebrating. That's something we can all share in.

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