Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:43:18 -0700
From: Lisa Rogers <eqwq.lrogers-AT-state.ut.us>
Subject:  the Christian Coalition and the NOI, again


>>> Chris, London <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>  2/13/96, 01:57am >>>
Yes I was aware that there is a great difference between the USA and
England in church attendance. I can only assume that it is partly a
dynamic in the superstructure of its own and partly linked to the
extreme mobility  in the USA - the average person moves every 7
years? - and hence the need for community.

Lisa: I disagree.  "Community" can be found/created in a lot of
different ways.  Why religion?

CB: Christian oppenents of the Christian Coalition may be in the best
position to  explain what comes over as *positive* in the Coalition
message. 

LR: I don't claim to be a Christian.  I wonder what you think
"christians" are likely to find "positive".  Part of the "message"
that is "appealing" to some "christians" is gay-bashing, male
supremacist, blame the victim crap, plain and simple.  In order to
find something "positive" in the the "christian coalition" you have
to find the separation of church and state to be bad, secular
government and education is bad, any "assault" i.e. challenge to the
"traditional" family, [daddy work, mommy stay home, mandatory
heterosexuality for all] is bad, etc. 

On the news last night, some insane Republican wants to put the
"fault" back in "no-fault" divorce.  It's a contract, hse declared,
for life.  Right.  It's the only contract where they don't tell you
what the terms are right up front, and they can change the terms
anytime without your permission.  Contract indeed.  

CB:  My guess is that it is a spiritual and social reaction to
anomie, the atomised nature of bourgeois (buergerlich) civil society.
Thank God Farrakhan is keeping the blacks away from them.

Lisa:  Chris, Chris, have all my posts been lost in the mail since
October?  Or do you just disagree?  FARRAKHAN IS THE SAME THING. 
Christian white right is very much the same as Islamic black right. 
Patriarchy, capitalism, racism and religion, make a tetrapod God of
our dominant ideology, all interwoven in mutual support of each
other, forming an unholy alliance in the interest of greater, deeper,
multi-faceted oppression of body, mind and labor power.

I don't think anomie is enough.  A turn to 'religion' per se does not
necessarily need to take the oppressive and intolerant form of the
christian/islamic rightwing in the US.

Lisa



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