Theocrats. Oh, You So Crazy.

There's this dude by the name of Gary Cass, right?  He's part of something called the "Christian Anti-Defamation Commission," which, if Gary is any indication, a load of hyper-extremist, paranoid, reactionary mega-Fundamentalist Christians.  You know the ones: handing out Chick tracts on Halloween, spending their Saturdays at the park bellowing chunks from Revelations through their Mr. Microphones, convinced that non-Christian religions (especially the Muslims) are out to somehow take over America, and generally thinking God should be a source of fear and not love.

They're always pissed off about something: my grandmother fit in with that group, and I once heard her go on a five-minute rant about "those damn Presbyterians."  Mr. Cass had this to say recently (I pulled the last paragraph because I didn't feel like dealing with the whole thing):

"America is religiously and morally schizophrenic. Built on a foundation of Christian law it has been hijacked by secular relativists. Secularism is NO less a religion than any other faith, yet it is arguably the most subjective of them all. The only answer for the United States judicial system is to return to our tried-and-true Christian heritage.
Some people argue this would mean having a “church dominated state.” This is not in accordance with our history or the facts. While there is a legitimate way to speak of the separate spheres or jurisdictions of church and state, both are subject to God and his standards of justice. All spheres of jurisdiction are responsible to God; the individual, the family, the church and the civil government. Because God is the only legitimate source of justice, you cannot separate God from government.
Currently we are under the arbitrary god of humanistic secularism that makes an idol of the machinations of man. May the “laws of nature and nature’s God”, revealed in scripture, be our moral compass, not the clever deductions of black-robed tyrants."

It’s a little strange. I take great comfort in knowing that Gary Cass hates me.

There’s a saying in the BD/SM scene: YKINMK, or, Your Kink Is Not My Kink. Hey Gary: your god is not my god.

(I just used the “YKINMK” comparison here in the last couple days, didn’t I? Fuck it, it still fits.)

If they weren’t so goddamned scary, I’d find the Theocrats hilarious. Yeah, we’re gonna party like it’s 1299! Dunking stools installed in every town square! (I guess in San Francisco, they could use the fountain at Civic Center Plaza, they’d just need to deepen it a bit more. Chasing out the homeless that use it for washing clothes would be a problem, too.) Of course, places like Glide Memorial and Grace Cathedral would be dynamited for engaging in heretical behavior: y’know, comforting the afflicted, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, healing the sick—- Wait a minute Gary, that stuff sounds familiar.

Oh wait: all that feeding and clothing and healing and comforting? They were doing it to non-believers, and we can’t have that. Obviously all the volunteers at Grace and Glide are filthy heretics. Cart ‘em off to jail. Along with their fellow heretics who were receiving the services.

For suburban and rural areas, all the Jews, Unitarians, Atheists, Deists, Agnostics, Congregationalists, Catholics, Episcopals (who just sorta look like Catholics, but close enough!), American Baptists (who had that Communist troublemaker Martin Luther King as a pastor — don’t trust ‘em), and Methodists (kind of a grey area, but they support rights for the sodomite homos) will be rounded up and placed in Manzanar-style camps. In urban areas, special ghettos neighborhoods will be created; pass-cards will be mandatory to enter and exit.

Most criminal activities will be punishable by death. This in line with Biblical teaching (more or less), and really speeds things up at the courthouse. Many behaviors and activities, formerly considered “legal” under the Godless secular court systems, will also be punishable. Homosexuals, suspected homosexuals, and those found consorting with homosexuals (i.e. night club DJs, anyone in the fashion industry, or residents of Noe Valley) will be sent to re-education camps. Second offenders will be castrated. Through the use of the re-education camps and castration, there will be no need for homosexual ghettos neighborhoods. Adulterers, masturbators, pornographers and their customers, and those engaging in sexual activity outside of wedlock will be executed: we don’t have the time to cure every degenerate pervert out there, so it is simpler and more cost-effective to kill them.

We may not apply the above edicts to the lesbians. Punishment for those found guilty of lesbianism will be to be placed in storefront windows, covered in body oil, wearing lingerie, and engage in making out and heavy petting for a minimum of five hours a day, to publicly demonstrate what sinning against God looks like. The sinning demonstrations should be as explicit as possible. Oh yes. God almighty, yes! (Unless they’re totally butch. Then they get sent to the re-education camps.)

Going by the Bible, rapists will not be punished, but made to marry the woman. This is for the woman’s sake: as she is now viewed as unclean, she will be unemployable except as a prostitute, and unworthy of marriage to a respectable man.* So being married to the man that raped her is the best thing for her, really. And the rapist can end up accumulating a multitude of wives, given time and a strong will.

All those of non-Judeo-Christian faiths will be deported, sent back to where they came from. This may cause some confusion initially, as, say, Muslim families would be asked where they originate from and will answer, “Orange County, man. Laguna Niguel, to be exact.” This sort of treachery will occur often. The most expedient solution will be to allow the families to pack a single bag each and send them to Pakistan, Kuwait, or the United Arab Emirates. The families may protest that they do not know the language, the culture, or even the basic day-to-day behaviors of their new homes: tough. They are the ones who chose to believe in a false god; they are reaping what they have sowed. Their fellow terrorists will surely greet them with open arms.

As can already be surmised, there will be great changes to to the court systems. Lawyers not holding degrees from either Liberty University or Oral Roberts University must take revised versions of the bar exams, ones which reflect Biblical law as well as the recently-corrected Constitution. Any lawyer with connections to the (now-criminalized) American Civil Liberties Union or the Southern Poverty Law Center will be shot, and then brought up on charges of treason. Public defenders offices will be eliminated, along with trial by jury. Both are wastes of time and money: providing a defense for the poor may mean they won’t be found guilty. A jury of peers may also mean the same thing.

Instead, the accused will be brought into court, have the charges read, be found guilty, be told by the judge that God loves him or her, and is then executed by gunshot in a small vestibule off to one side of the bench. A good forty cases a day can be handled by using such a swift, Jehovah-like manner of judgement. (And what about all those bodies piling up? Well, we worked out a solution, signed some contracts, and — Um, let’s just say, don’t eat at Jack In The Box.)
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*There are special circumstances in the Old Testament for when a married woman is raped, but I’m totally blanking on what they were. Possibly polygamy; god knows there was plenty of that going on, but it was usually one dude with a shitload of wives.