I recently had the opportunity to view the Center for Arizona’s Policy you tube video titled “Standing with Arizona Policy”. For those of you that don’t know, The Center for Arizona Policy is a very powerful Christian lobbying group in Arizona that skirts the rules for 501(c)3 organizations with great skill. They were recently responsible for the passing of House Bill 2564 and Senate Bill 1175, effectively tightening abortion laws. This post is a rebuttal to some of the more, provocative statements in this video.

The video can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDe_WBLp78I&feature=player_embedded

What follows are timestamps and quotes from the above video.

0:25 “Awake and Arise”
Keywords used to link to the organization Awake and Arise. This organization follows the teachings of the “Prophet” Patriot Ezra Taft Benson. Also a reference to “Awake Arizona”, A conference recently held in Mesa by the group “Bridge Builders” Cindy Jacobs who ran the conference, bills herself as ''Prophetess to the nations.'', co-founder of Generals International an organization devoted to training in prayer and spiritual warfare. She has written several book the most popular of which is "Possessing the Gates", on Militant intersession. Vocally anti gay and is quoted name checking Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. “We’re not going to give Satan any rest,” she cried. “We’re not going to give city councils any rest. We’re not going to give legislatures any rest.”

0:39 “ How threatened our religious freedoms is in our nation today and in our state”
Exactly whose religious freedoms are we talking about here? The Constitution and Bill of rights of the United States of America very clearly protects everyone’s religious beliefs. I suspect that what they are talking about here is there “right” to impose their dogmatic religion on the rest of us. I challenge them to show me one example of how their religious “rights” have been infringed upon. Can you say the same for the Islamic population of Arizona?

0:47 “”We are trying to protect religious freedom in courts. But also pass legislation that pro actively preserves our rights”
Once again their rights, as all of ours, are already protected in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This is a classic example of the use of buzz words. They are intentionally using phrases like “protect religious freedom” and “preserves our rights “, in order to gain a reaction. Not only is it misleading, but it is false. It was used here to get a knee jerk reaction from fellow Christians.

1:06 “As long as there are differences of opinion we will always have somebody bringing something that is anti family to the legislature”
Differences of opinion lead to anti family? Let’s clarify; differing from their opinion will always lead to anti family laws being passed. Scare tactics.

1:19 “We virtually look at every bill that’s been introduced in the legislature to see if this is going to impact our families, is this going to impact our religious freedom”
Again they are using the phrase “religious freedom” as if Christianity in this country is somehow threatened. And once again I need to point out that their rights are already protected. So if they are not taking about rights what are they talking about? They have demonstrated that they wish to pass legislation that reinforces their dogma, with no regard to any other belief system. They don’t want religious freedom; they want to change the law in this country so that we have no religious freedom, only their religion.

1:54 “What is seen at times in the legislature is the idea that parents don’t know what’s best for their children”

2:38 “We work to make sure that home schools and private schools wont be regulated”
So, no school standards? No standards for homeschooling? No, sure they want standards, their standards. I suspect that this is a result of the science vs. religion debate. The United States ranks 29th out of the 47th most industrialized nations in the world when it comes to science education by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It measures student literacy in science, math, and reading (focusing this year on science) among 15-year-olds, and is an often-cited reference for policymakers sounding the alarm bells about the state of education in the United States and its implications for the ability of Americans to secure jobs in a global economy.

2:43 “Parents have the right to opt their children out of school activities that are offensive to their religious or moral beliefs”
Let’s make no mistake; they are referring to the Evolution/ Creation debate happening in schools right now. Evolution is science, creationism is religion. I have no problem teaching creationism in a religious studies class; please keep it out of science classrooms. You don’t teach astrology in science do you? Do you teach geology in theology? Accepting the world as the evidence shows us, even if conflicts with their scripture are rational and sane.

3:09 Abortion
I won’t go into the ethics’ of abortion here. Instead let’s look at some legislature that this group just had pass in our state government. The House Bill 2564 and Senate Bill 1175, create a 24-hour waiting period to get an abortion, require physicians to perform the procedure, and require that parents provide notarized consent for their minor children to get abortions. All right, but it also states that pharmacists and other health-care professionals can refuse to provide contraception. What? It is a focus of this group to promote abstinence-only education instead of traditional sex education among teens. No less than three studies in the past five years were done to determine the effectiveness of abstinence in teens. All the studies showed that those taking the virginity pledge engaged in intercourse just as often as those who did not take the pledge . Pledge takers also were found to be less frequent users of condoms and other forms of birth control. Therefore, those youngsters who took the virginity pledge were not only just as likely to have intercourse; they ultimately were more likely to take part in sex in an unsafe manner.

5:00 Marriage-“The goal of our opponents- is to so redefine marriage as to marriage means nothing”
Lets see, The United States leads the world in divorce, with 4.95 per 1,000 people divorcing. There is no evidence that gay marriage has any different divorce rates than straight divorces. The law in this country has already reduced the religious concept of marriage to effectively a civil union, protecting the rights of both parties. It has taken it out of the hands of religion. The argument that allowing gay marriage will reduce their concept of marriage to mean nothing is absurd. It already means nothing according to the statistics. Perhaps they need to look at why the divorce rate is so high in a purely straight population.

6:23 “one man married to one woman is absolutely crucial. We see the effects when you don’t have that in society, we see it in the jails every day”
What the hell is this? I’m not sure what they mean here. Perhaps they are trying to say that homosexuality leads to more crime in our societies? There are no very compelling statistics here, but it is fairly clear that this is an inflammatory comment targeting fear.

7:00 “The truth Project” -“To help us think more critically”
Focus on the Family has launched "The Truth Project," a curriculum designed to reintroduce Christians to a biblical worldview of science, law, and other fields of knowledge. Even other Christian groups have attacked the Truth Project as a mis use of scripture. If anything the, last chapter, on science, shows such a lack of BASIC understanding of science that it is hard not to laugh out loud at some of their assumptions. The largest hole in their approach is that all they say is evolution is wrong. Not so much why creation is right. Not to mention, they never give scientific proof for their reasons.

http://www.planetisaac.com/2009/04/truth-project-science-critique.html
http://hopwoodhopper.blogspot.com/2009/01/wariness-of-truth-project.html
http://mrhackman.blogspot.com/2007/09/truth-project-part-1.html

7:48 “In all these areas and many others we see a great conflict between good and evil and if Christians do not rally to support and encourage those who are trying to bring an influence for good in civil government they leave a vacuum and the influence that is contrary to the standards scripture, and contrary to the purposes of God in the world, and contrary to the advancement of the gospel, that influence is going to become stronger and stronger.”
Ah there it is the truth. To them this is a war between good and evil. Let’s take a look at some of their goals as stated in this last bit.

They wish to conform government to the “standards of the scriptures”. I’m sorry but do we really need a law that puts those of us to death that works on the Sabbath? (Exodus 35:2) Or perhaps destroy everyone in Iraq? (Deuteronomy 7:1-2) or reinstitute slavery? (Ephesians 2:18). The Old Testament clearly gives a mandate for these and other atrocities. They have stated repeatedly that they believe in the bible as the “infallible” word of god.

They want to conform the government to the purposes of God. Who’s god again? And who exactly speaks for God? The Prophetess Cindy Jacobs? The same woman who held a prayer vigil at the stature of the bull on Wall Street to bring her wealth?

Advance the gospel in Government. Again, to what end?

In this video one can find endorsements from Az Representatives Kirk Adams and Steve Yarbrough, State senator Linda Grey, US Congressman Trent Franks, and US Senator Jon Kyl.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights of these United States are very clear about this.
Thomas Jefferson wrote “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
And John Adams wrote and codified into law within the Treaty of Tripoly "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

I am deeply offended and disgusted by this not just from an intellectual viewpoint but from a moral one as well. It seems to me that this was designed as a scare tactic directed toward Christian moderates. Not only is it rife with inaccuracies, it is filled with sensational buzzwords and is intentionally misleading. This is the worse form of propaganda, trying to manipulate through fear.

If you will, remove the religion from the argument for a moment. Pretend that they are purely a secular organization trying to change policy. What are we left with? One could argue, a radical group that wants to dismantle the Constitution and replace it with their form of a fascist state. Why would that be tolerated in our society? It would not, and yet moderate Christians do almost nothing to prevent this insanity.

This isn’t an argument over the existence of god or even of religion; this is one group trying to impose their dogma on the rest of society with no regard for any other belief system or reality. I have to question whether society would be so tolerant if this was a secular group, or I dare say an Islamic one?