Just Us Sunday III: This Time, It's Ecclesiastical

Perhaps you recall last summer's Justice Sunday 2, wherein the usual megachurch malcontents aired their grievances at the horror of not being allowed to gum up the schools and public offices with quite so much praying and speaking in tongues. The highlight of that freak show was Screamin' Zell Miller, who stayed true to his pattern of one-sided straw-man tactics.

“Isn’t it strange that a government requires a ‘No Smoking’ sign around gas pumps to remind us of that danger, but then thinks we don’t need to be reminded of the danger of living a sinful life?”

No, goofball, what's strange is that they let you out of the house.

Well, those good times are back once again, as JS3 comes to Philadelphia to kick it old school with some old fools, like Traitor Jerry Falwell, Homo-Obsessed Tony Perkins, and Dog-Beater Dobson. Perhaps they'll have some more cartoon characters to warn us about.

At least they are blessedly brief about their mission statement:

Why: To educate people of faith on how the judiciary impacts their lives and to show how activist judges seek to end all mention of God in the public square.

Of course, they're more than happy to elaborate on that in their press releases:

The rallies have served to inform and equip conservative Americans about the need to reform the federal courts, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, which in the past four decades has legalized abortion, ordered the removal of Ten Commandments plaques and banned prayer in certain public settings. Conservatives fear the court eventually will take up a "gay marriage" case.

Hey, wait a minute, you forgot intelligent design! Jeez, and you call yourselves organized wingnuts. Seriously, do these people ever think about what (poor) women would be going back to if Roe and Griswold were reverted? Do they really think that allowing gays to have property and inheritance rights will affect anyone's lives? And what exactly is going to happen if we just have the public's business taken care of with taxpayer dollars, and let the public take care of their own spiritual needs?

That last one seems to be contradictory to their stated purpose of keeping big bad gov't out of their -- and our -- lives. Look, some of us don't think we should have to subsidize one brand of superstition above all others, and we sure as hell don't want to subsidize all of them. So the fairest thing to do is just let people do their thing at home and church. What the hell is so bad about that?

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, noted that the broadcast's theme, "Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land," is engraved on the Liberty Bell, which is located in Philadelphia just a short distance from Independence Hall.

"We are appealing to pastors to become involved before militant atheists and their judicial activist allies sandblast those words from Leviticus from the bell itself," Perkins said in his daily FRC e-mail.

The inscription is indeed from Leviticus (25:10, to be precise), but that does not necessarily impute specific religious meaning to it. This is another lame attempt by Perkins and his ilk to seize for themselves what belongs to the political history of this country. We're gonna move forward, with or without you, and if you want to have yet another weird little rally to show support for a guy who is on record as finding an imperial executive to be a desirable situation, knock yourselves out. Just don't come crying to us in 2009 when President Hillary gets all of the Grand Deacon's previous superpowers, m'kay?

So enjoy your little wingnutathon. The rest of us will be watching football, the way God intended it.