I’ve said repeatedly over the years that most Americans have far too much sense and decency to be good Christians, and the nationwide uproar over Indiana’s odious attempt to protect discrimination against gays is a good example of what I’ve been talking about. Seventy-five per cent of us might call ourselves Christians but, push come to shove, a decisive majority of us have no intention of living like it.
Yay! for us. Or, as Mark Twain so famously wrote in Letters From the Earth, “These people would not allow it. They are better than their Bible.” What we need, now, is not to “return to God,” as the Holy Men constantly urge, but to stand-up like two-legged men and shake a fist under their noses and tell them frankly that we’ll have nothing more to do with their malicious and degrading nonsense.
There are doubtless years and years of legal wrangling to go but, practically speaking, the American people have spoken and the fight for gay rights is over.
The jockeying has begun for the 2016 Republican nomination for President, and the candidates are predictably cautious; some have quietly signaled their support for Indiana’s breach of common decency, and the rest are evasive. All are wrong; the one thing that can save the Republicans in 2016 is for a man or woman to step forward and declare the Evangelical Right persona non grata, offenses against the very essence of American ideals — and unwelcome. Weeny-ish equivocations will not work; the entire American public knows now what they are, and the only Republican who will win in 2016 is the one who will say plainly that they are a sickness that must … GO!