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We know what the Afghan Taliban is all about. This Taliban is a fundamentalist Islamic sect of male vampires who suck the blood from a culture by placing themselves atop a “religious” pyramid where they sacrifice women for their own enrichment and gratification. Women are chattel to keep barefoot, pregnant, and ignorant. Excess females in poor families are sold like goats to the highest bidder. Education for girls is prohibited. Gender “apartheid” is practiced. Women must now stay at home, cannot have jobs, and must wear the burqa, the face-covering.
The Afghan Taliban has its own sharia laws based on local traditions, usually from the Pashtun tribal code. Public executions often follow “courts” where due process is totally absent. Thieves have their hands and feet amputated in public ceremonies. This extreme version of Islam is strict and dogmatic, with groups of male enforcers patrolling the streets as they enforce the hundreds of rules of sharia law.
I have had a file on religious beliefs for years, and I brought it out after reading Jane Mayer’s article “Bully Pulpit” in the June, 18 issue of the New Yorker about a very popular evangelical Christian broadcaster name Bryan Fischer who is on the the air two hours each day. His broadcast is on over two hundred radio stations scattered around the Southwest and Midwest. Fischer is supported by the American Family Association, an evangelical “pro-family” lobbying group that promotes Bible-based social conservatism and constantly attacks out “sinful popular culture.” This is only part of the American Taliban.

The Other
American Taliban

The other major American Taliban is the present hierarchy of the American Roman Catholic Church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They claim to lead 65 million U.S. Catholics, but evidence indicates that only about half go to church and less than that actually believe all of the “sharia” laws of the Vatican. When 98 percent of all Catholic women of child-bearing age have used contraceptives, which is against a major “canon” of the church, it gives one an idea of how popular other “canons” might be. I think it’s quite clear that when it comes to sexual issues, most Catholic constituents are in the 21st Century and their bishops and the Vatican are still in the 14th. As an example, many Minnesota Catholics who are opposed to the same-sex marriage amendment on the fall ballot, which is so strongly supported by a few conservative Catholic bishops in the state, are organizing to fight the position held be Archbishop John Nienstedt. I thought it was hilarious that these dissenting Catholics met to organize resistance-in a United Methodist Church in Minneapolis!

Sending Catholic Nuns
to Re-Indoctrination And
Brainwashing Camp!

Like something their Taliban cousins in Kandahar would do, the U.S. bishops are fighting the Obama administration’s efforts to provide universal health care because of a dispute over “religious liberty.” The battle is really over the use of contraceptives which the bishops lost shortly after “the pill” was invented, but they are trying to hide behind the religious liberty bit. To the Catholic bishops, religious liberty means that they should be able to collect billions of tax dollars to operate poverty programs, hospitals, nursing homes and other charitable programs--while forcing their employees, Catholic or not, to live by their extreme religious doctrines. That’s their definition of religious liberty. Catholic nuns, who have demonstrated for years they are more sensible, more compassionate, more human, much less Talibanish, more scientific, and more culturally intelligent than the bishops and the Vatican, are now supposed to be going through brainwashing, rehabilitation, and re-indoctrination programs by bishops. The Vatican insists the nuns emphasize anti-abortion stances and homosexual issues instead of working to relieve the problems of the poor and disabled.

The Politics
Of Talibanism

I have admitted in many previous columns that I am a socialist-commy-pinko, liberal, libertarian, agnostic, fiscal conservative, atheist, ex-Roman Catholic with 27 years of experience, pantheist, a supporter of same-sex marriage, a believer in most science, and a liberal ECLA Lutheran at various times times during the week. As one of my W.C. Fields said when he was caught reading the Bible “I’m just looking for loopholes!” I know one thing. I don’t want my children or grandchildren to live under the domination of the American Taliban represented by conservative evangelicals and Roman Catholic bishops.
According to national polls the Republican Party and Mitt Romney have the overwhelming support of these two factions. I’m going to list just some of the stands taken on issues by these two groups. If you agree with these positions, the vote for Mitt. I have taken them form magazine articles, news stories, books and essays in my collection. If you question the source, I will be glad to respond.
Genesis 1:16 reads, “God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the less light to govern the night. He also made the stars.” The writer of this biblical verse made a scientific mistake. Science has proven that the moon reflects the light of the sun but does not produce any light from an components like the sun’s. Our astronauts have been there, done that. When Bill Nye, nationally known as “The Science Guy,” was in Waco, TX, a center of evangelical mischief and misdirection, he gave a series of lectures on global warming and other science subjects. When he mentioned that the Bible was wrong about the moon have a light source, Bible-Thumpers stormed out of the lecture “in a fury” according to Waco Tribune reports, yelling “We believe in God!” Do we want evangelicals establishing out science curricula?

Bryan Fischer on this show “Focal Point” made these statements: “A rational culture that cares about its people will, in fact, discriminate against adultery, pedophilia, rape, bestiality, and homosexual behavior.” In a later interview he said Thomas Jefferson wanted to castrate homosexuals, be he just wanted to change homosexuals because “We’re not animals in heat that have a biological compulsion to yield to every sexual impulse. Gays can experience a reorienting of their sexuality. I’ve met a lot of ex-gays.”

The United States was founded as a Christian nation so that it would have laws reflect the rules of a particular brand of Christianity. The first Puritans were fleeing another religious denomination, the Church of England.

The evangelical Trinity Broadcasting Network in California is the largest “Christian” TV network and offers the prosperity gospel and made the pastors Paul and Janice Crouch very rich. The couple has “his” and “hers” mansions, each worth over $6 million. Janice Crouch also runs the Hold Land Experience Theme Park, a for-profit business. they ahve two corporate jets worth $57 million which they use to fly themselves to other homes they own in Texas and Tennessee. All of their workers are “ordained as ministers so they can avoid paying Social Security taxes. Records indicate the Crouches often have $1000 dinners with fine wines paid for with tax-exempt money. Their average annual meal expenses are in the $300,000 range. Mr. Crouch is driven around town in a chauffeured Bentley. It is also used to ferry their TV guests from airport to studio. I don’t think Jesus Christ is driving the Bentley.

Tea Partiers have joined the evangelicals to introduce either anti-choice bills in the House of Representatives, endorsed by 225 Republican representatives. Evangelical and Catholic representatives in state legislatures introduced over 1,100 bill related to reproductive health and rights by women, ranging from sections requiring trans-vaginal ultrasounds to those outlawing contraceptives. Of the 28 states controlled by Republicans, 26 have passed laws limiting reproductive choices. Over 55 percent of American women live in states which are “hostile” to abortion, up from 30 percent just ten years ago. In Missouri Republican House Majority Leader Tim Jones sponsored legislation which would allow medical personnel to deny services like abortion, contraception, assisted reproduction, or male and female sterilization. He said he was qualified to sponsor the legislation because his father is a veterinarian.

Christian talk radio, particularly in the Southeast and South, support the following political positions: 1) The next president should criminalize all abortions, even in the case of rape and incest, 2) Contraception should be made available only to married couples (this represents a split in the American Taliban-Catholic bishops want all contraceptives banned), 3) All schools should be allowed to teach intelligent design alongside “the morally bankrupt theory of evolution” (66 percent of Republican voters in Mississippi don’t believe in evolution), 4) America will never be safe with a president who believes that man evolved from slime, 5) Following scriptures that say “if a man will not work, don’t let him eat,” payments for welfare and Social Security disability not only are against the Bible, both are unconstitutional.

The Bible is the “unerring” word of God. Women have the same worth as men, but men have authority over women. America is a Christian nation and it must be “reconstructed” before the Second Coming. Jesus is going to return to earth by 2050. Jews in Israel must control the Holy Lands by that time so Christ is welcomed.