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| Evangelicals have replaced attempting to be 'Christ-like' for the power that Donald Trump gives them. Christian writer John Fea says because of this, they have lost all moral authority. |
I recently had a long conversation with a Trump supporter and fellow evangelical. We had a lot of differences, but we also found some common ground. We agreed that evangelical leaders who support Donald Trump have failed to rebuke the president’s immorality. . . .
When Trump engages in these activities, many of his most ardent evangelical followers —Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Paula White, Eric Metaxas, Jerry Falwell Jr., James Dobson, and Ralph Reed, to name a few — look the other way. They are unable to speak truth to power because Donald Trump and his Republican Party hold them captive. I recently challenged the bipartisan readers of my blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, to find five examples of a pro-Trump evangelical leader making a strong public condemnation of the president’s tweets, speeches, behavior, or policies. So far, I have not received any responses.
. . . The United States is not a Christian nation. Nor was it founded as such. The Founding Fathers argued over politics and policy just like we do, but they were united in the belief that republics fail without virtue. They believed people must always exercise what they called “political jealousy.” A jealous citizen kept a principled watch on government leaders to guard against vice and corruption. Political jealousy served as a unifying force, a common ideology of resistance to tyranny grounded in a shared morality. By keeping our heads in the sand as Trump proves he is incapable of living according to the most basic standards of decency, evangelicals neglect to do their part in sustaining our republic.
We have failed to be good citizens. We have become complicit in the president’s nativism, racism, xenophobia, narcissism, and fearmongering. Sadly, Trump-supporting evangelicals have now lost much of their moral authority to speak out on matters related to government corruption, pornography, sex and violence in movies and television shows, racial reconciliation, school bullying, and the decline in civil discourse.
. . . The political problems in our community run deeper than just our failure to speak with a prophetic voice. Donald Trump will be gone one day. But the political playbook that evangelicals follow will not go away unless we decide to burn it and start over. There is a very good chance that this playbook will lead evangelicals into the arms of another immoral tyrant who promises conservative Supreme Court justices and offers platitudes about religious liberty.
We need a new political playbook. We need to replace our lust for political power with heavy doses of humility. We must forge a new kind of politics defined, at its very core, by human dignity. It is imperative that we teach our children and grandchildren a way of engaging the world that offers it a glimpse of a coming kingdom defined by love, justice, mercy, and compassion. We need to offer hope, not fear.
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| Alveda King's (left) goddaughter Angela Stanton King (right) has copied her homophobia and embarrassing "tomming" for Donald Trump. |
Over the last few months, we've all been re-introduced to the teenaged child of Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union-Wade. Through a series of interviews, Dwyane revealed that the 12-year-old had revealed to the family her true gender identity, and would be referred to as Zaya moving forward. And now, the incredibly insightful pre-teen is storming the red carpets.
"Everyone allow her to re-introduce herself her name is Zaya Wade!" Dwyane wrote to Instagram on Sunday. "Last night was Zaya’s first red carpet and we couldn’t have been prouder of how she handled the questions that were asked of her. She has emerged as one of the young faces and voices for the LGBTQ+ community."
On Saturday, Zaya, Gabrielle, and Dwyane headed to the Better Brothers of Los Angeles Truth Awards. That event, according to Dwyane, was "created to recognize and highlight the accomplishments of the Black LGBTQ+ community and its allies." The family was on hand in order to honor stylist Jason Bolden and interior designer Adair Curtis, husbands and stars of Netflix's Styling Hollywood, who were receiving the event's Business Leadership Award.
. . . "It was important for Zaya to be a part of such a beautiful night and reminding her of all the love and support she has," Gabrielle wrote in an Instagram caption about the evening. "We were moved to tears so many times throughout the night. So much gratitude."
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| Joe Biden releases LGBTQ policy plan |
The Alabama Senate today passed a bill that would make it a crime for doctors to prescribe opposite sex hormones or drugs that block puberty from people under age 19 who identify as transgender. The bill by Sen. Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, was approved by a committee last week after a public hearing that included testimony from doctors and people with first-hand experiences who took positions both for and against the bill.
Shelnutt said today most children with gender dysphoria eventually adjust and that giving them medications that could have permanent effects amounts to child abuse. Shelnutt’s bill is called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. The Senate passed the bill today by a vote of 22-3. It moves to the House of Representatives. “I just don’t think and others don’t think that kids should be given experimental drugs or surgeries that could have irreversible consequences for the rest of their life,” Shelnutt said. “Kids are not fully developed until later in life. I think we can all agree that kids aren’t capable of making certain decisions until certain ages. And so, we want to just stop these procedures from happening in Alabama.”
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| The right continues to be scared of Drag Queen Story Hour |
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles called for drastic measures to prevent drag queens from being around children, with Walsh explicitly calling for violence against them by saying “real men” should kick a drag queen “out on his ass” and call the police. Walsh also said that the adults in a room in which a drag queen danced in front of a child “should be going to prison,” and Knowles called on “the arm of the state to stop this.”
. . . On the March 2 edition of his podcast The Matt Walsh Show, Walsh claimed a video of a drag queen dancing in front of a child at a drag brunch illustrates “the collapse of Western society.” He called for violence against performers, saying that “real men” would be “grabbing that drag queen by the collar, if he has a collar, and dragging him out of the room, and kicking him out on his ass, out of the room, and then calling the police.” Walsh said that he believes that “all of the adults in that room, in that video, should be going to prison” and that the video should end with police officers storming the event.
. . . Also on March 2, Knowles covered the same video of the drag queen on his podcast, The Michael Knowles Show. He similarly called for state action against drag queens, saying, “We should use the arm of the state to stop this ... radical sexual grooming that’s going on for young people.” He also asked for the country to introduce laws to prevent drag queens from being around children, saying, “We have always had laws against this kind of stuff in America.”
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| Trump continues to target the LGBTQ community and the media continues to ignore it. |
. . . the same team that sells pride merchandise on its site, is supposedly working to help LGBTQ people across the globe, and that gives lip service to being a friend to LGBTQ people is choosing to rally at a church that deeply opposes LGBTQ people and all that we stand for. Solid Rock Church has made no bones about its resistance to even basic acceptance of LGBTQ people, and has even managed to carve out a national profile due to this stance. But for Team Trump, this is just another opportunity to court ant-LGBTQ people through yet another deeply homophobic and transphobic partnership.
During a public testimony hearing, an anti-LGBTQ rant from a Florida man was so offensive that a Republican lawmaker had to shut him down. Greg Pound—who has made a name for himself by attending public hearings to tout conspiracy theories and spew offensive language—was attempting to testify before the Florida House Appropriations Committee about a controversial school voucher program that provided funding to many anti-LGBTQ Christian schools.
Florida man Greg Pound at yesterday's House Appropriations Committee meeting says LGBTQ stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and P for pedophile" #BecauseFlorida (shout-out to Chair @Travis_Cummings for shutting him TF down) pic.twitter.com/YYh0YIixza— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) February 26, 2020
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| VP Mike Pence |
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that he was putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the task force to combat the coronavirus pandemic, touting him as a former governor experienced with health care.In reality, though, Pence’s record on health care policy is extremely checkered — and his fitness to lead up such a task force is questionable.
When Pence was governor of Indiana, he oversaw an entirely preventable AIDS disaster in Scott County. Pence dragged his feet on implementing a recommended needle exchange program, out of a religiously motivated belief that doing so would make him a party to intravenous drug use — even though studies show clean-needle programs do not increase drug use. By the time Pence finally relented and let the program go forward, over 200 people had contracted HIV – in a county of less than 24,000 people.
Since Pence became vice president, he has been one of the administration’s foremost architects of health care policy. Several staffers and advisers from his Indiana days came with him to the Department of Health and Human Services, like Secretary Alex Azar, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and Medicaid and Medicare Administrator Seema Verma — and they have spent a great deal of energy imposing their ideological beliefs against the interests of public health. Verma, for example, spearheaded a push for states to require Medicaid recipients to provide proof of employment to keep their coverage, a policy which led to tens of thousands of people being kicked off the program in Arkansas alone.
