A Stitch in Haste

I've been trying to avoid the putrid swamp that is the Katherine Harris Senate campaign. But it's just too damn hard.

Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) said this week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics.

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris told interviewers from the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention. She cited abortion and same-sex marriage as examples of that sin.

Whatever -- an (Evangelical) Christian blathering to (Evangelical) Christians about how (all) Christians are a "persecuted minority" in America (false) and how the United States is "a Christian nation" (false) and how the Framers were all Christians (false). Nothing new in any of that.

But there is also nothing new in this, Harris' post-gotcha spin:

In a recent article published in the Florida Baptist Witness, Congresswoman Katherine Harris was asked to comment on the interplay of faith and politics in the public square. In the interview, Harris was speaking to a Christian audience, addressing a common misperception that people of faith should not be actively involved in government. Addressing this Christian publication, Harris provided a statement that explains her deep grounding in Judeo-Christian values.

This gobbledygook is a particular annoyance to me (though I am not Jewish), and I have blogged about it previously. These (Evangelical) Christians, when they are (or when they think they are) strictly amongst themselves, prattle about "Christian this" and "Christian that." Then, after the gotcha, or when they know that they're no longer safely locked inside their political sanctum sanctorum, they gratuitously, obnoxiously and totally disingenuously stick on that "Judeo-" nonsense, strictly for CYA purposes (by which I do not mean "Christian Youth Association"). It's almost like a "reverse Macaca" effect: the (perceived) ideological purity of your audience determines the ideological purity (and therefore the sincerity) of your word choice.

Don't buy into it. When they say "Christian," they mean Christian, without the "Judeo" (but with the "Evangelical").

When they whine about some lawsuit over a Decalogue in a courthouse, they are not siding with Jews, they are siding against the First Amendment. And as I have said more than once, I am still waiting to meet someone who introduces himself as a "practicing Judeo-Christian." (See also here.)

Just as gays must certainly realize by now that it is prima facie evidence of self-loathing to be a Republican in the current environment, so too should Jews start acknowledging that when the social conservatives say "Christian," it is not shorthand for "Judeo-Christian."

Do you really want to risk them eventually treating you the way they treat us?

More thoughts from Below the Beltway.