07 June 2006

A straw in the wind?

The power of the Christian Right, what Andrew Sullivan calls the Christianists, may have peaked. In Alabama, former chief justice Roy Moore was defeated for the Republican nomination for the governorship. Nearly 2/3 of the Republican voters voted for incumbent Governor Riley, and thus against Moore.

Moore had made his desire to put the Ten Commandments in public buildings central to his campaign. It doesn't seem to have motivated too many of the Republicans in Alabama, however.

What accounts for this shift? It can only be the continuing unravelling of the Christianist Shrub administration which, in the face of corruption scandals, the mess in Iraq, the crises with Iran and North Korea, and the spectre of inflation from high oil prices, has decided that the threat to American stability comes from gay marriage. This is the kind of thing that makes Kafka seem like Hemingway.

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