April 4, 2024
A Fitting Coincidence
by Debbie DiMicco

The outcry of Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans over the coinciding of Easter with the Transgender Day of Visibility is yet another example of far-right intolerance and disparagement of anyone who is different. The concept “Let us love one another.” [John 4:7] is absent in all of this shrill and divisive rhetoric.

While Trump hawked bibles (only $59.99!), Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign press secretary, called for “an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America,” as though all Christians believe transgender persons have no right to exist in our country. House Speaker Mike Johnson jumped in, asserting that the Biden White House “betrayed the central tenet of Easter.” What tenet? “Give justice to the weak, maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute?” [Psalms 82:3]. “Be kind to one another?” [Ephesians 4:32]. “God shows no partiality?” [Romans 2:11] ] “Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner?” [Proverbs 14:21] “Judge not that you not be judged?” [Matthew 7:1]

MAGA outrage flies in the face of Jesus’ message, yet that seems to be the trend in Trump’s Republican party, embracing Christ’s name, while disdaining Christ’s message. Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today, reported that pastors who quoted from the Sermon on the Mount were met with criticism, with congregants rejecting Jesus’ words as “liberal talking points” and “weak.” It seems that “Love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12:31] is passé - unless that neighbor is just like you.

The coincidental calendar conjunction was low hanging fruit for Trump, Leavitt, Johnson, and their ilk to further their political agenda of hostility and exclusion, all while dripping in specious righteousness. Just like Mike Johnson’s insistence that the Bible is his “worldview” and “owners manual.” It seems the version of the Bible that Johnson and his cronies are reading is missing a few important pages, but that’s what you get when you switch from King James to the abridged “MAGAs Notes” version.

Whatever. Trump, Leavitt, Johnson, and company are wrong. The coinciding of Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility is not a betrayal. It is serendipity. It is fitting. And the unstrung fury it has engendered simply shows that while these right-wing extremists proclaim themselves Christian, their actions and words show that they are anything but.

Link: https://newtowndemocrats.org/blog/A-Fitting-Coincidence-30/

March 29, 2024
The Kitchen's the Thing
by Debbie DiMicco

In Senator Katie Britt’s conservative Republican rebuttal of Biden’s State of the Union speech the biggest message was in the background: the kitchen. Whether she decided this, or was simply an unwitting dupe, the kitchen motif was a blatant tell of the conservative Christian Republican party’s view of women and where they belong.

This is precisely why Biden cautioned the nation against the danger of old ideas, and what this MAGA Republican party seeks to embrace. Britt spoke of being at a crossroads, where the choice is to move forward or backward. Yet the kitchen backdrop speaks for itself, even as Britt would have us believe that the MAGA Christian conservative platform to roll back laws that grant voting rights, women’s freedoms, even health care access, is somehow a step forward.

Biden’s predecessor has already helped MAGA and Christian conservatives take several steps back to the kitchen, weakening the Voting Rights Act, overturning Roe v Wade, and now, the absurdist ruling that embryos are people, too! Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has written that striking down Roe v Wade should also open up the high court to review the right for married couples to buy and use contraception without government restriction, and to review same sex relationships and marriage equality. Britt was oblivious to the irony as she urged in hushed tones that Republicans “want families to grow,” referring to IVF, but not to their commitment to ban access to abortion.

Britt, in her catastrophizing of the world under Biden, spoke of the threat of China, again missing the irony as she warned that if the CCP conquers the minds of the next generation, it conquers America. But apparently it’s just fine if it’s MAGA doing the conquering. In this vein, Britt dredged up 20 year old story of a sex-trafficking victim at the border to hang on Biden, all while supporting a MAGA presidential candidate who has been found liable for sexual abuse. Britt warned us that we are at a crossroads, that it doesn’t have to be this way.

She’s absolutely right. We can move forward and continue to fight for equality, the right to vote, the right to health care, the right to choose, as Biden and Democrats propose, or we can take a giant step back as the setting for Britt’s speech patently shows, into the kitchen, where the only choice open to women is what to make for dinner.

Link: https://newtowndemocrats.org/blog/The-Kitchens-the-Thing-29/