The Daily Profaner: Putting Snark First, Myths Last!

The nation is filling with that new president smell and a billion hopetards are swarming into Washington to celebrate the dawning anti-christ Obama apocalypse. It’s time for every media outlet ever to run an Obama story about how he’s realized King’s dream and will heal the country (but not it’s syphilis). Instead of fighting over who gets to give the new President the best media hand-job the Daily Profaner has made a special list for you - a list of three reasons Barack Obama is no friend of the godless:

Number Three: Obama’s Love Affair With Evangelicals

Obama loves him some Jesus, so it’s only natural that he likes to hop into bed with other folks who love the Jesus, and nobody shows that love off like the religious right. Obama’s policy positions may be pretty sexy, but his heart is in the wrong place. That might be why he opposed CA Prop 8…but couldn’t find time to work to preserve LGBTQ civil rights…virtually at all.

While he had no time for gays and equal rights, he sure had time to go to Rick Warren’s Saddleback faith forum, had time to make sure we all knew he was a Christian who thinks marriage is between a man and a woman, and had time to start a special outreach project to evangelical youth. If you look at his record, Obama isn’t reaching out to Evangelicals because he wants to heal Washington; he’s reaching out because they’re kindred spirits (in many ways).

Rick Warren’s selection shouldn’t come as a surprise; Warren is not the first conservative evangelical Obama’s gotten Jesus-jiggy with. Obama might be trying to liberalise the evangelicals by cuddling up to the bigots who hate poverty, love environmentalism “creation care” and spread lies about sex to brown people care about AIDS in Africa, but he is placing that priority over both separation of church and state and civil rights. I don’t know about you, but my friends put civil rights before playing political grabass with Rick “doughnuts” Warren.

Number Two: Obama Loves Him Those Faith-Based Initiatives

Remember back in 2001 when George Bush gave the religious right that giant reach-around by creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to funnel billions and billions of dollars into the “social projects’ of the religious right? If you thought that program was going to vanish under Barack Obama think again - Obama wants to revamp and expand it.

Obama has paid lip service to the separation of church and state, and has made it clear that he thinks faith-based groups should not be allowed to proselytize on Uncle Sam’s dime or discriminate in hiring. Somehow this totally means that the government needs to fund their charitable proselytizing missions and give money to groups of people who are exclusively one faith.

How is Obama going to take the proselytizing out of missionary work and intigrate heathens into church groups? Who knows. Here’s a thought - affirmative action. If they want money, they need to have some mandated non-discriminatory hiring. Every Christian mission funded needs at least five Muslims, four Buddhists, three Hindus, two Wiccans, a Satanist, a Jew, a Sikh and an Atheist on staff.

Number One: Obama’s Just not That Into You (He’s into Jesus)

Obama wants this to be a nation of faith, with faith driven politics and his own frothy brew of liberal religion:

“Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting “preachy” may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.

After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man. ”

As great as he is, Obama is just one of those people who thinks we need religion to be a good and moral society. People think he tried to include the godless by saying this:

“I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology - that can be dangerous. Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith. As Jim has mentioned, some politicians come and clap — off rhythm — to the choir. We don’t need that.

In fact, because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they’re something they’re not. They don’t need to do that. None of us need to do that.”

That only sort of works when you take part of the quote out of context. In the whole speech, he was trying to discuss the difference between secular progressives (not atheists) and religious (bible thumping) people. His statement should really read “I’m not saying Pat Robertson has a monopoly on morality, so don’t feel like you have to pretend you’re a born-again Christian when you run for office; everyone knows you’re not and it’s embarrassing.” Obama goes on to clarify his feelings about religion in public life and his feeling about secularism:

“What I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Law is a “codification of morality” that is “grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition”. That whole statement begs the question ‘if all those reformers were motivated by their Judeo-Christian faith and the laws are grounded in Judeo-Christian faith, then what were they all up and reformy about?’ In fact, our laws now stand in radical contradiction to Judeo-Christian scripture. Case in point - we don’t have slaves and women now have rights. Obama, however, is not satisfied with the current all but monopoly believers have in congress:

“And by the way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you’ve got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don’t need and weren’t even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate.”

Who does he think is there right now? How are we going to get more of them there? Add more seats? Run Pete Stark out of town? Virtually the only people on Capitol Hill in the ENTIRE HISTORY of the United States have been religious. These people (though mostly not in relation to their faiths) caused the problems Obama’s trying to fix. Obama, however, somehow thinks that a ‘more of the same’ plan is going to help. As for your godless notion that maybe we should stop bickering about our invisible friends and make law and policy that will address reality in order to help people, well, Obama’s already picked out a word to describe that idea - “wrong”.

Tuesday while you cry with the ‘I have a dream‘ speech ringing in your ears after Obama’s inaugural address, don’t forget where Obama stands on you and your issues. At least you’ll have a bunch of his other really sexy policy to keep you warm, because In the new administration the godless are going to be just like the crowd that watches Obama’s speech Tuesday - out in the cold.

[CBN] [The Advocate] [Christian Science Monitor] [Barack Obama]

Disclosure: Members of our staff voted for, volunteered for, and donated to Barack Obama. In spite of our ideological differences we have eyed his career with eager anticipation for many years. We would like to wish the new President luck and success as earnestly and fully as we wish he’d close the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.