Fox News talk show host Mike Huckabee thinks that the Obama administration's requirement that contraception be included in employee health insurance packages, contributed to the Newtown massacre.

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Fox News talk show host Mike Huckabee distinguished himself recently by asserting that the reason for the Newtown massacre was that America has removed God from the public schools.   Unsurprisingly, other other Religious Right leaders have made similar assertions, although they vary in the reasons from a generalized national apostasy to marriage equality. All this has generated several rounds of unsurprising outrage.  

And now Huckabee has struck again.

This time, Huckabee broadened his argument.  In a sermonette on his show, he  blamed contraception, which he demagogued as "abortion pills" -- in an apparent reference to the Obama administration's requirement that oral contraception be included in employee insurance packages.

Think Progress transcribed Huckabee's latest: 

Christian-owned businesses are told to surrender their values under the edict of government orders to provide tax-funded abortion pills. We carefully and intentionally stop saying things are sinful and we call them disorders. Sometimes, we even say they're normal. And to get to where we have to abandon bed rock moral truths, then we ask "well, where was God?" And I respond that, as I see it, we've escorted him out of our culture and marched him off the public square and then we express our surprise that a culture without him reflects what it's become.

Of course, God and gods, are very much a part of our culture and our public life. That has not changed in any important ways in decades. The way that these things are expressed evolve over time, and not everyone likes change, but people are nevertheless free to express themselves in the "public square" (just try and stop Huckabee!). And in a free society, they might get some feedback when they do. 

That Huckabee and his allies on the Christian Right want hegemonic conservative Christian control over our society, our institutions and our laws, is no secret even if they do not always speak openly about it.  But when the leaders of the Christian Right are speaking more frankly, we hear declarations that they have a God given mandate to seek and achieve that hegemony. And when they don't get their way, they blame the unspeakable on their failure to achieve the unspoken. And, of course, it is someone else's fault.

Authors Bio:
Frederick Clarkson is a Senior Fellow at Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank in Somerville, MA. He has written about politics and religion for thirty years.

He has written many ground breaking exposes. He was the first to report that elements of the Christian Right were encouraging the formation of citizen militias - five years before the Oklahoma City bombing propelled the militia movement into national consciousness. (Mother Jones). His 1991 undercover investigation of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition was the first to expose and detail the group's plans to take over the Republican Party. (Church & State). He was the first to report the alliance between Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon in advance of the Million Family March on Washington, DC in October 2000. (Salon.com)

He is the editor of Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America (Ig Publishing, 2008) and of A Moment to Decide: The Crisis in Mainstream Presbyterianism, (Institute for Democracy Studies, 2000); and author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, (Common Courage Press, 1997). The Humanist magazine called it "the best book yet written about the religious right." Church & State magazine called it "essential reading for anyone who cares about freedom."

He co-authored Challenging the Christian Right: The Activist's Handbook, (Institute for First Amendment Studies 1992; Ms Foundation edition, 1994) for which he and his co-author were named among the "Media Heroes of 1992" by the Institute for Alternative Journalism. They were described as "especially brave at taking on powerful institutions and persistent about getting stories out... journalists and activists who persevere in fighting censorship and protecting the First Amendment," and "understanding the Christian Right's recent strategy of stealth politics early on, and or doggedly tracking its activities across the U.S."

He and his work have often cited by major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. His radio appearances include NPR's Fresh Air, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation, as well as Democracy Now and the Voice of America. His television interviews include The CBS Evening News, ABC's 20/20, Fox, CNN as well as the BBC, CBC, and Al Jazeera, English.