#theocratic state

[smashing-yng-man]

"But the Bible says!" Well, that's great. You know what else is great? It shouldn't matter what the Bible says about abortion, or literally anything else, on a political spectrum. The United States is not a theocracy. If you don't believe me, read all 4,440 words of the Constitution. Take your time.

[atheostic]

Theocracy of any kind is always bad, even if the religion/denomination in power is the one you agree with.

[theshoesofatiredman]

Abortion is fundamentally about bodily autonomy. Even if you believe, as I used to, that life begins at conception, it is a life still wholly dependent on the mother's body to stay alive. I don't think the state should have the right to demand the human body is used to keep another human body alive. It is too morally complex to be handled on anything other than an individual level, a case-by-case basis.

Additionally, if you believe in freedom of and from religion, then you need to make room for the people whose religious beliefs (or sincerely held non-religious beliefs) encompass the idea that human life does not begin until birth. We are trying to legislate based on the answer to a philosophical question (when does life begin?) and different people, while striving to be upright and moral, have arrived at different answers based off a wide variety of data points -- theological, scientific, sociological, etc. If you are a Christian trying to legislate based off a worldview where life begins at conception, you are imposing your religious worldview on other people. Please, I beg of you, resist the theocratic tendency to build power structures based off your religious views. A society free from theocracy is the society we should be striving for.

[defundthepolicedestroythegop]

Select excerpts from this thread:

1.

2.

3.

[kalifissure]

Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose. 

[premimtimes]

Is Nigeria ready for a theocracy?, By Osmund Agbo

Is Nigeria ready for a theocracy?, By Osmund Agbo

ISWAP Fighters “With President Buhari in the saddle and having alleged Taliban sympathisers in his kitchen cabinet, why should Nigerians not worry that the whole idea behind the repentance, surrender and rehabilitation programme for terrorists is part of the grand plan to conquer Nigeria? Why shouldn’t the rest of us fear that what is today a Federal Republic governed by a president might become…

[marylemanski]

I will be recording several podcasts this weekend, so I can roll some more out to you quickly soon. However, in the meantime, check out the ongoing list of Trump administration civil and human rights rollbacks by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights that I have been sharing. The original list is published on their website at https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks

PLEASE SHARE. We cannot elect people to office who support these policies, which are an aggressive attack on our rights and government institutions.

HERE IS A LIST OF HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS ROLLBACKS BY THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DURING THE SECOND QUARTER OF THE SECOND YEAR OF HIS ADMINISTRATION. During this quarter, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration’s cruel policy of separating child refugees at the Southern Border from their parents, among other attacks on immigrants. Mick Mulvaney fired all 25 members of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board. Republicans also began the process of making our country a theocracy by creating the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative, which “…requires all executive departments to designate a Liaison for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives to coordinate with a new Advisor to the White House” (Wikipedia). Republicans also attacked voting rights, naturalized citizens, education, the poor, the LGBTQIA community, consumer protections, victims of ethnic & racial discrimination, Medicaid recipients, fair housing, women’s healthcare, civil rights, the Affordable Care Act’s coverage of pre-existing conditions, policing reform, and announced the US withdrawal from the United Nations.

Here is the list…

On April 3, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos restored recognition of for-profit school accreditor ACICS, which the prior administration had terminated as a federal aid gatekeeper based on ACICS’s documented failures to set, monitor, or enforce standards at the schools it accredited, including the now-defunct Corinthian, ITT, and FastTrain.

On April 6, Attorney General Sessions announced that he had notified all U.S. Attorney’s offices along the southwest border of a new “zero tolerance” policy toward people trying to enter the country – a policy that quickly, and inhumanely, separated hundreds of children from their families.

On April 10, a federal official announced that the Department of Justice was halting the Legal Orientation Program, which offers legal assistance to immigrants.

On April 10, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to push for work requirements for low-income people in America who receive federal assistance, including Medicaid and SNAP.

On April 11, the Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that it will stop asking 16- and 17-year-olds to disclose voluntarily and confidentially their gender identity and sexual orientation on the National Crime Victimization Survey.

On April 17, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting S.J. Res. 57, a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s guidance on indirect auto financing. The sole purpose of the resolution is to undermine the ability of the CFPB to enforce laws against racial and ethnic discrimination in auto lending, which is why The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes it.

On April 25, Secretary Ben Carson proposed changes to federal housing subsidies that could triple rent for some households and make it easier to impose work requirements.

On April 26, the Trump administration announced it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation in 12 months for approximately 9,000 Nepalese immigrants.

On May 3, Trump signed an executive order creating a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative tasked with working on “religious liberty” issues across federal agencies. The order deleted protections for beneficiaries receiving federally funded services from religious groups.

On May 4, the Trump administration announced it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation in 18 months for approximately 57,000 Honduran immigrants.

On May 7, the Trump administration approved New Hampshire’s request to require some Medicaid recipients to work or participate in other “community engagement activities.”

On May 11, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released changes to its Transgender Offender Manual that rolled back protections allowing transgender inmates to use facilities, including bathrooms and cell blocks, that correspond to their gender identity.

On May 13, The New York Times reported that the Department of Education had “effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked” by reassigning, marginalizing, or instructing its fraud investigators to focus on other matters.

On May 18, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it would be publishing three separate notices to indefinitely suspend implementation of the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule.

On May 21, Trump signed a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which repealed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) guidance on indirect auto financing.

On May 21, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting S. 2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.

On May 22, the Trump administration issued a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) designed to block access to health care under Title X and deny women information about their reproductive health care options.

On May 24, Trump signed the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, which will undermine one of our nation’s key civil rights laws and weaken consumer protections enacted after the 2008 financial crisis. The law rolls back more expansive Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data requirements for banks that generate fewer than 500 loans or lines of credit each year, thereby exempting 85 percent of banks and credit unions.

On May 24, the Department of Education announced that it does not plan to implement rules designed to protect students in online degree programs from being taken advantage of by schools that load students up with debt but offer useless degrees, and instead plans to delay implementation of the rules and rewrite them.

On June 6, Mick Mulvaney fired all 25 members of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board.

On June 8, a Department of Justice filing argued that the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional. The brief was signed by Chad Readler, a Justice Department official who Trump nominated (and Senate Republicans confirmed) to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

On June 11, Attorney General Sessions ruled that fear of domestic or gang violence was not grounds for asylum in the United States.

On June 11, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director L. Francis Cissna announced the creation of a denaturalization task force in a push to strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship.

On June 11, the Department of Justice announced that it would delay implementation of a permanent program for collecting information on arrest-related deaths until Fiscal Year 2020, a full five years after the Death in Custody Reporting Act was signed into law and two years after DOJ last published its near-final compliance guidelines.

On June 12, the Department of Justice sued the state of Kentucky to force it to “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the registration records.” This voter purge lawsuit was filed one day after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s voter purges in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.

On June 18, Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, announced that the United States was withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council.

On June 27, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 6139, the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.

PLEASE VOTE AGAINST THIS ONGOING PLAN TO OVERTHROW OUR GOVERNMENT. VOTE THEM OUT!

[strawberry-crocodile]

Just for outsiders to Three Houses discourse, I need you all to know that the discourse takes the form of a fundamental disagreement on the nature of the most important character of the story, the conflict she causes, and the setting that created it.

Also understand that the main goal of Edelgard, the character you may have heard called a fascist, is separating church and state and abolishing monarchy, and about half the fandom is convinced she is a villain and her war is unjust.

[a-typical]

Cards Against Humanity

“Dear customers living in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming,

Today, we are releasing some new packs. But while the packs were being printed, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and your state immediately turned itself into a dystopian forced-birth hellscape.

So we’re donating 100% of profits from orders to your nightmare-state to the National Network of Abortion Funds, plus $100,000 right now, to help the people most fucked over by the Republicans in your state government. We don’t need your money.

We also wanted to know what on earth the people in your state were thinking, so we asked them a few questions. You will unfortunately believe what we found.

For the love of God, don't forget to vote.

—Cards Against Humanity”

[be-a-fagdyke]

Source: Instagram

[tomorrowusa]

Even though the percentage of fundamentalist Christians has declined in the United States, the influence of Christian nationalists has increased.

55% of Republicans have Christian nationalist views. That includes House Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson who thinks our planet is just over 6,000 years old.

Poll: Most Americans cool to Christian nationalism as its influence grows

Republicans (55%) are more than twice as likely as independents (25%) and three times more likely than Democrats (16%) to hold Christian nationalist views, the survey found. Majorities of two religious groups hold Christian nationalist beliefs: white evangelicals (66%) and Hispanic evangelicals (55%). Both groups are strong supporters of former President Trump, other polls have indicated. Between the lines: Christian nationalism is a set of beliefs centered around white American Christianity's dominance in most aspects of life in the United States. Many Christian nationalists believe the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation. Many also believe U.S. laws should be based on Christian values and that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. What they're saying: "It's really a claim for an ethno-religious state, and so there's nothing democratic about that worldview," Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios. Jones said some Christian nationalists view political foes as evil or demonic rather than as fellow citizens with different opinions, and see them as needing to be conquered.

We saw an example of Christian theocracy in the Alabama Supreme Court Decision on in vitro fertilization. The 2022 SCOTUS Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling was theocratic in spirit.

If you think the US should be governed by the Constitution rather than by fundamentalist extremists, Vote Democratic NOT Theocratic.

[lenbryant]

Another take on Ohio’s Demon Guy. Education system, you have failed us.

[phoenixcatch7]

Did y'all know bayonetta is assumed to be roughly 8 foot tall, or nearly two and a half metres (lmao???) and YET men in Vigrid are literally a head taller than her??? Tf kind of basketball genes -

Also women are a head shorter. Which is hilarious but she is wearing stilettos.

[machinavocis]

and lo,

as if in recompense for the 10 years i have spent suffering under the admittedly-polite authoritarian boot of Mormon Booze Communism

the universe has seen fit to place our tucson apartment at the exact, one-quarter-mile-each-direction, midpoint between two different bars.

[geekeryisafoot]

"We were three gods in a prius" ASHSKAGSKGKEH

[testure-1988]

There are all these "Had Enough? Vote Republican" signs all over my town.

..yeah, I've had enough of Republicans.