Freedom is in the balance.

I want to start this column out by saying that I believe a person has the right to have faith in any religion he or she chooses.  I respect that; but I also add this caveat: so long as that religion does not violate the civil liberties of others. It can be a thin line, but rational folks know how to walk it. It the others, the irrational — the extremists — that I am writing about today.

I watched a documentary the other night about the days before and after the fall of the Shah of Iran. Now let’s set the record straight…the CIA and the Brits screwed this one up almost as badly as they did in Cuba and in Palestine.  They pushed the pendulum so far in one direction that when it swung back, it went way, way to the extreme, and a flourishing modern society came to a crushing halt and became a mob-ruled festering sore in the Middle East.

When the hardliners took over Iran in 1979 and drove democracy out of the country, they replaced it with a theocracy — a government based on religion. Everything in society changed over night.

The way women were treated in society changed most abruptly.  Education for women was curtailed. Freedom of expression for women was all but shut down. Look at old footage of the revolutionary days and you will see men’s faces in the streets, but no women.  Before the rise of the theocracy, women were everywhere in Iranian society.

Free speech and freethinking was also curtailed. Freedom of expression from all opposition parties was stamped out, as were hundreds of social mores that no longer sat well with the ruling Islamic Revolutionary council. A once proud and free society became a dark and brooding culture of hate and mistrust and poverty. (To be sure, American, European and British sanctions aided this process, but it was because of the hardline attitudes and actions taken by the fundamentalist in Iran.)

Now we do not have an Ayatollah leading an armed revolution, but we do have the makings of a fundamentalist theocracy in the United States, as hardliners on the far right of the Christian faith would have us revert to an Old Testament penal system for sins and sinners with whom they do not agree.

America’s pulpits are getting the fires stirred.

And they are marching us down that path, one little law at a time.  A discriminatory practice here, an anti-abortion ruling there. A mandatory church attendance run up the flagpole in Arizona’s legislature.  The weakening of voter rights all across the nation. Step by step, the far right is trying desperately to move America away from individual freedom and toward a shared faith philosophy in the way in which we govern.

Civil rights are almost sinful to them.

Women’s rights are definitely sinful. A man should be in control of a woman. It is preached from their venomous pulpits, with no less zeal than the Imams who preach hatred from their Mosques in Iran and Iraq and other extreme Islamic countries.

Sharia Law is not that different from the practices that the evangelical extremists would have us move. Not different at all. Everything is based on the “word of God.”  Everything. The reason and rule of law is subjugated beneath the bible to them.

And if you do anything to stand up to these merchants of discrimination and hate, they cry persecution and defilement. They wrap themselves in the flag and wave their scriptures around and protest with loud voices that they are not being allowed to practice their faith…even if their faith tramples the rights of others.

Our country is headed into an election year. Ted Cruz has raised millions from the far right PACs and is ready to start spewing his right-wing, ultra-narrow,  Christian propaganda over the land.  Convert, contain and conquer — the three C’s of the movement. And he is at the head of it. Just listen to his stump speeches and you can all but see and hear an old time evangelist railing against the pitfalls of an evil society gone wrong and gone against God’s will.

These are dangerous people. Well intentioned, I am sure. But dangerous. If America decides to follow them down their path, it will be a dark time for these United States. A dark time in deed. For women. For minority communities and for free thinkers everywhere. Artists, writers, even other ministers will find it a time of great concern should these extremists be successful in their quest. There will be no room to step out of line.

It will be their way or the highway.

I know good Christians who fear this sect of their faith. They fear it an awful lot. And that should tell you something. Don’t fall for the lies. Don’t fall for the half-truths and the innuendo. “Family protection”, “religious freedom”, “return to values”…these are their catch phrases designed to deliver a warm glow to people who feel marginalized on the fringe of society. Perhaps they are marginalized because they have placed themselves out on the edge of a modern, progressive and inclusive society —the place America has moved. A place where all people can be free. 

Our country was founded on the principles of liberty and justice for ALL.  Not for just the born again. Not just for the churchgoers. Not just for those who carry an ideology around that would put anyone not like them down. No. America was founded on the premise that all men (and women) are created equal. Everyone in America has their civil rights granted to them by law.  Those rights come to us through the Constitution. Not from the bible. Not from the pulpit. But from the pen of men who wrote down the framework for our great country.

‘We the people’…it means all of us.  Not just the saved.

Wake up America. The hardliners are at the gates and they are well armed, well financed and bitter as hell. Just listen to the gospel they sell. There’s not an ounce of love in it.