If everyone agrees the religious right is “nuts,” can liberals finally catch a break?

Posted by Joshua Holland at 7:02 AM on October 17, 2006.

If you're a liberal, no matter what you say about religion, no matter how hard you work to distinguish your healthy, natural and wholly-understandable contempt for a small minority of far-right Christian wackos from other people of faith, there’s always someone who will say, excitedly, ‘See! Liberals do have a knee-jerk hostility towards religion!’

You could be talking about a specific Evangelical who was running an underage prostitution ring from the back of his Guatemalan sweat-shop when found torturing cute little puppies and still you would be accused of harboring an irrational and instinctive theophobia.

The corollary is that, because you're alienating an alleged super-majority of hypocritical right-wing televangelists, you're personally responsible for Democrats’ electoral failures, stagnating wages, Reagan’s “Dirty Wars” and the existence of Paris Hilton.

So, I have a question...

Now that David Kuo, religious right True Believer and former associate of such righteous leaders as John Ashcroft and William Bennett, has come out with the not-terribly-shocking news that mainstream conservatives are in agreement with the bulk of liberal opinion that those who have taken it upon themselves to be America's full-time public moral scolds are "goofy," "insane," "ridiculous" and "out of control,' will liberals finally catch a break?

I'm just looking for equal treatment here. I'd be satisfied if the next conservative to write anything at all about Evangelical Christians were accused of alienating White Middle America™, waging a jihad against Christmas and generally making the Baby Jesus cry.

I won't hold my breath.

Anyway, to remind everyone why anything less than contempt for [hypocritical, manipulative, far-right, scheming] Evangelical Christian leaders [who advocate policies antithetical to Jesus' actual teachings in exchange for a few pieces of silver] is inappropriate; I give you the culmination of 40 years of cynical politicization of religion in American politics.

Behold: God opposing Colorado's minimum wage initiative (click through for video).

Tagged as: religious, right, god, satire, minimum, wage

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.