Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum signed onto the Marriage Vow (PDF), a religious right document filled with silly and unreasonable ideas dressed up as values. The Marriage Vow is a product of FAMiLY Leader which is a federally funded Christian organization associated with Focus on the Family.
Already this ridiculous document had to be altered due to language which appeared to convey the idea that slavery of blacks in early America was not really that bad! The ignorance based statement read, "Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President." Bachmann, when questioned about why she signed the Marriage Vow when it contained twisted ideas such as this claimed she only signed The Candidate Vow portion. Like all politicians, Bachmann is slippery indeed!
Looking at The Candidate Vow portion of this nonsensical document we quickly see this portion contains a statement which invalidates the entire vow while making politicians' support of Christianity and Judaism off limits. The statement is, "Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control."
Based on this statement it appears the Christians who created this crazy document are not familiar with their Bibles.
In particular 1 Timothy 2:11-12 which says, "Let women learn with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." This appears to a reasonable mind to be "anti-women" and thus in violation of the above vow.
Another anti-women superstition based teaching in the Bible is Genesis 3:16 which claims God said, " I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." This is yet another anti-women belief/superstition which is in direct violation of their own Marriage Vow! It's interesting to note that the man considered to be the father of the neoconservative movement, Leo Strauss, wrote in his speech and essay Jerusalem and Athens regarding the myth of the Bible's fall of man story, " Thus the stage was set for the fall of our first parents. The first move came from the serpent, the most cunning of all the beasts of the field. It seduced the woman into disobedience and then the woman seduced the man. The seduction moves from the lowest to the highest." There are many, many other anti-women teachings in the Bible.
Regarding anti-human rights, the above examples also apply. However, we can also add many other Bible teachings such as killing someone who works on the sabbath (Exodus 31:15), killing homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13), killing people the superstitious fools believe to be a witch (Exodus 22:18), killing children who curse their parents (Exodus 21:17), and the list goes on and on.
Politicians in the religious right are constantly making political gains which threaten the liberty and freedom of all Americans. One powerful example is Pat Robertson's (Robertson donated $25,000 to McDonald's campaign) protege Bob McDonald who won the gubernatorial election for the state of Virginia. McDonald had written a thesis while a student in Robertson's law school which made it very clear his intent to mix religion with government.
Hopefully people will recognize this very real threat from the religious right and take the necessary action to render it harmless. Educating sincere people in the religious right about America's Deistic roots should help achieve this very important goal.
