|
ESTHER KAPLAN: With God On Their Side? With talk of Armageddon, Creation science and the outlawing of abortion, is our government hell-bent on enforcing a Christian-fundamentalist agenda?  INTERVIEW BY BRUCE DAVID AND CAROLYN SINCLAIRAccording to the mainstream press, it was "moral values" that tipped the vote for President George W. Bush. But whose morals are we talking about? Since coming into power, the Bush Administration has poured an unprecedented amount of tax dollars into faith-based initiatives, including the teaching of Creation science and abstinence-only sex education. Even America's foreign policy has been colored by religious fervor-especially with regard to the Middle East. In the next four years, Bush will likely make at least two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. Already he's met with pro-life groups about a future plan to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark High Court decision that, in 1973, legalized a woman's right to choose abortion. Afforded a second term, Bush and the Religious Right are gearing up to spend their political capital. HUSTLER discusses Church and State with Esther Kaplan, a highly regarded journalist and community activist. Specializing in AIDS, politics and religious issues, she is the author of the new book With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House. Kaplan has also written for the Village Voice, The Nation (where she was once acting senior editor) and the AIDS magazine POZ. HUSTLER: We're being told that the Religious Right put Bush over the top in the 2004 election. Do you concur? ESTHER KAPLAN: The election was really a turnout game, and a lot of what my book documents is that he and his political advisers have spent the last four years carefully, assiduously cultivating the loyalty of the Christian Right movement. They've done this, first of all, by providing unprecedented access, including weekly conference calls, special meetings in the Oval Office, inviting fundamentalist Christian leaders to join the President in his motorcade and at bill-signings-all kinds of special treatment. On the policy level this administration has greatly increased spending on abstinence-only education and is using faith-based initiatives to channel tens of millions of dollars to evangelical groups. They've openly opposed gay marriage, signed the Partial Birth Abortion bill, and on and on. Perhaps most consequentially, they've appointed federal judges who are friendly to Christian Right fundamentalists' views on morality. The Bush Administration got this one sector so passionate, so inflamed, that they viewed the 2004 election as a contest between good and evil, and that really pushed the vote over to Bush's side in a few key states. But that doesn't exactly make a broad cultural mandate on any of these issues. Explain what faith-based initiatives might mean for this country. Before believing he had a mandate, Bush had already created a faith-based initiative that would allow federal taxpayer dollars to go to groups who discriminate in hiring and firing. It was blocked in Congress, but with a series of executive orders, he pushed it through. Now federal money is going to religious groups that can post a job and declare that no Jews, Muslims or single parents are allowed to apply. It turns out, after my investigations, that all of the faith-based money has gone only to Christian groups. I think that violates our Constitutional protections. If taxpayer money privileges one faith over all others, we're moving into a religious establishment. Also, if you look at federal court appointments, we have people on the bench who have compared homosexuality to bestiality and to necrophilia. And despite the fact that a majority of Americans support a woman's right to choose, we have judges bent on tearing down these rights. I think we're going to see more decisions coming out of the federal courts which reflect a Christian agenda that will be imposed on the rest of us. Keep in mind that the Christian Right only represents maybe 20% of the country. However much Bush declares that he has a mandate, it is still a minority view. Does the Bush White House plan to overturn Roe v. Wade? The previous head of Concerned Women for America has said publicly that she believes that that's the direction Bush is heading. I think all of us are expecting that Bush is going to have at least one, if not two or three, appointments to the Supreme Court during his tenure. So it seems quite likely that we might see convergence just in time for a partial-birth abortion ban challenge to make it up to the Court. That'll be the big test. Do we take away a woman's right to choose in this country? Bush is clearly giving a behind-the-scenes message to these [pro-life] groups that that's the ultimate goal. He's been very good that way at simultaneously projecting an image as a moderate to most Americans and as a fellow traveler to the Christian Right. Could you explain to our readers why Bush brought up the Dred Scott decision during the debates? During the pre-election debates, Bush brought up Dred Scott, a Supreme Court case from 1857 which declared that slaves remained the property of their owners even when taken into free territories. Dred Scott is often referred to on pro-life Web sites and in Christian literature. The case stripped away rights from a particular class of human beings, reducing them to property. [Editor's Note: The case was overturned in 1868 by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.] Christians see Roe v. Wade the same way. Their feeling and their argument is that some beautiful day, maybe 60 years from now-after Roe v. Wade is overturned-we'll all look back and see it for the profoundly immoral decision that it was, just as we look back now and see Dred Scott. Bush uses this kind of code in a lot of ways. He'll subtly build references to Christian scripture into his speeches, and use parts of Christian hymns that wouldn't necessarily be caught by your average American. But that sings out loud and clear to his Christian Right constituency. Who are several key players of the Religious Right, and what is their role in the administration? Franklin Graham, Billy's son, is a key figure on the international front. He gave the benediction at Bush's first inauguration; he's called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion." Bush not only refused to condemn him for those remarks, but about a month into the invasion of Iraq, he invited Franklin Graham to give a homily at the Pentagon. Graham's group and others were very influential in lobbying to get Bush to pass the emergency global AIDS initiative. Now that $15 billion, approved to be spent over the next five years, will privilege faith-based organizations. Groups like Graham's are likely to become recipients of many of those grants. They will privilege abstinence-only education, a failed approach that's been shown in scientific studies to increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. There's also James Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, a huge Christian media empire based in Colorado Springs. They have a radio show, magazines, self-help pamphlets and thousands of employees. They're a massive operation. Back in 2000, Dobson declined to endorse Bush. That was considered a real problem for the Christian Right to not give their support. But Dobson was cultivated very forcefully by Bush over the last four years, and he's become an enthusiastic Bush supporter. In the 2004 election, Dobson actually took leave from his nonprofit position to be more directly involved in the political-election battle in the fight against gay marriage. So I think Dobson is someone who will have a lot of political capital moving forward. [James Dobson was lambasted in HUSTLER's April '05 issue.] Is the Religious Right manipulating science to support its political agenda? There's been kind of an exile of real, independent scientific expertise from the government. Christian scientists will find little scraps of data to support their claims. They'll create these fake, pseudoscientific bodies to put forward warped readings of data to try and justify their positions against scientific consensus. They've been doing this with a lot of energy in recent years. Focus on the Family, for example, has a publication called Physician magazine, which specifically reaches doctors on the Christian Right. There's a group called The Christian Medical and Dental Association. To be a member, you have to believe in the literal word of the Bible. Many members are now sitting on Bush's scientific-advisory panels. One example is Joe McIlhaney, who runs the Medical Institute for Sexual Health-based in Austin, Texas-and is on at least two different Bush science-advisory panels. McIlhaney has made a whole career coming up with bogus data to prove that condoms cannot protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Everything he's come up with has been completely debunked by hundreds of scientific studies. And his information is one of the main sources used to create federally funded abstinence-only literature, distributed throughout the country. What about Creation science? Creation science claims that the Grand Canyon was formed during the time of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood. These Creation-science organizations make treks down into the canyon and claim they've found residue of the Great Flood. So they're cloaking their religious view in bogus sciences. They're using that to say, "Well, you have your science, and we have ours, and we're in power; so our science is going to win the day." These people believe that Armageddon is coming and embrace the whole concept, do they not? That's an incredibly popular idea within the Christian Right movement. If you look at polling data from the Center on Religious and Public Life, you'll see there's a substantial number of Americans who believe the end times are near. The way this has come to affect Bush Administration foreign policy is very worrisome. There's a group within the Christian Right, called Millennialists, who believe that all Jews need to return to Israel in order for Christ to return to Earth. That means that they don't support any kind of land for peace negotiations. Which is, of course, internationally viewed as the only way to end the Israel-Palestine conflict. And so, anytime the Bush Administration even tiptoes into an arena where they might be supporting the resumption of negotiations, this Christian-scientist lobby rises up and demands that they stop. In fact, Elliot Abrams-who is Bush's top adviser on the Middle East-met with a group of Christian scientists over the issue of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's proposal to withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. They sat down and tried to convince them, on biblical terms, that it was okay for Israel to withdraw from Gaza because the land is not part of the biblically ordained Israel. Are these fundamentalists trying to bring about Armageddon? Absolutely. That's the whole idea. They're Zionists, even though they believe that in the end, when Jews return to Israel, they're either going to convert to Christianity, or they're going to go into fiery pits of hell. It's not a friendly view toward Jews, but they're Zionists because they want the Jews to return to biblical Israel in order to usher in the Second Coming. For the prophecy to be fulfilled, there are a number of things that have to happen. For example, one of the predictions is that the Antichrist is going to come to Earth and advocate a one-world government. This is the reason that people who believe this scenario in the Christian Right are extremely skeptical of the United Nations. They believe that the U.N. is potentially a satanic institution. When you look at Bush's tendency toward unilateralism, and his dismissive attitude toward the United Nations, you again see an echo of this Armageddon-influenced outlook. So, yes, they do support public policies that in their view will hasten the return of Christ. They're encouraging the President to bring it on. |