Today's Must-Read: "Christian Nation"

If this doesn't send a chill up your spine. . . .

Recently, a congressional staffer going about his business on the Hill encountered a couple of people who handed him a pamphlet with the scintillating title "Sexual Sin and the Aphrodisiac of Power." Sadly, this was not a post-#MeToo effort to discourage sexual harassment in the halls of Congress. Instead, the document implored "legislators, staff and lobbyists" to adopt a strict fundamentalist view of sexuality, which holds that there is no legitimate expression of sex — including masturbation — outside "the confines and commitment of a husband and a wife (a male and a female) in the bonds of matrimony."

Most urban dwellers, in Washington or elsewhere, have had these chance encounters with religious proselytizers trying to lure in the lost, lonely and emotionally vulnerable. But this was no random encounter with some true believer or doorbell-ringer. These folks were working for Capitol Ministries, a powerful right-wing group that is laser-focused on founder Ralph Drollinger's goal of recruiting public leaders and leaning on them to impose the group's far-right views on a public that overwhelmingly rejects them.


Furthermore, the group has been quite successful so far. As the pamphlet indicated, sponsors of the Capitol Ministries Bible Studies includes seven members of President Trump's Cabinet, the head of NASA, and Vice President Mike Pence. According to Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way, who has been monitoring Capitol Ministries for years now, the group has weekly Bible studies for House members and senators, as well as one for Cabinet officials.

"[Drollinger] uses this really rare and privileged access he has by doing things like a Bible study with members of the Cabinet to tell these powerful public officials that the Bible mandates right-wing economic, social and environmental policies," Montgomery told Salon.

This is what the "religious" right has been working toward for decades -- since Ronald Reagan, in his infinite wisdom, thought he could control the Moral Majority. And as an example as to how far these fanatics have corrupted the teachings of Christ, get this:

As Montgomery has carefully chronicled at Right Wing Watch, a blog for People for the American Way, this relationship between Drolllinger's teachings, right-wing ideology and Trump officials is visible in a number of policy choices. Drollinger is fiercely anti-immigration, claiming that God deliberately separated people at the Tower of Babel and, by implication, that they should stay that way. He opposes environmentalism as a "false religion." And, of course, he opposes same-sex marriage; and teaches that despite all the language in the Bible about caring for the poor and the vulnerable, programs that do so are illegitimate.

So if you were wondering about the origins of those rule changes that target the poor, immigrants, women, and sexual minorities -- minorities of all kinds, actually -- it's not just Trump's petty cruelty. It's the petty cruelty of the religious right.

Read the whole thing -- it focuses mostly on these "Christians'" attempts to control everyone else's sex lives (because, after all, they're obsessed with sex), but there's enough in there to indicate just how wide-ranging their agenda is.

Via Joe.My.God.