Did Donald Trump Destroy the Religious Right?

Ronald Reagan meets with the Rev. Jerry Falwell in the Oval Office, March 1983. They discussed whether or not Jellie Bellies were a "gay candy."

Ronald Reagan meets with the Rev. Jerry Falwell in the Oval Office, March 1983 to discuss whether or not Jelly Bellies were a “gay candy.”

There was a time in America, not so long ago, when thumping your dog-eared King James, warning about the threat posed by the queer-o-sexuals, and arguing that life began at the moment you noticed that glint in your girlfriend’s eye while watching Beach Blanket Bingo at the Podunkville Drive-In theater could transform you into a political kingmaker. From at least the late 1960s until the mid 2000s, presidents ranging from Richard Nixon, to Jimmy Carter, to Ronald Reagan, to George Dubya Bush ceremoniously kissed the totally not gay rings of Evangelical Grand Poobahs whose political clout ensured that so-called “Values Voters” would turn up at the polls to reclaim America for one VERY specific God.

But in the year 2016, America has a new God. His will is capricious. His hair is supernatural. And His wealth is so yooooge it would make King Solomon blush. This God is Donald J. Trump, and he appears to have rendered the once mighty Religious Right as impotent as a crew-cut Samson.

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America and Homosexuality: An Unfortunate Hate Story

A motley collective of passionate Californians, fresh from re-reading the Sermononthe Mount, practice loving thy neighbor.

A motley collective of passionate Californians, fresh from re-reading the Sermon on the Mount, practice loving thy neighbor.

America. It’s the land of the free. The home of the brave. The country that invented the bacon milkshake. If that isn’t freedom, then “freedom” has no meaning. But in the twenty-first century, this great nation faces many threats to its cherished notions of freedom: wage stagnation, income inequality, unequal pay, infrastructure collapse, money in politics, endless overseas wars, environmental degradation, poorly guarded nuclear arsenals, TED CRUZ!!! But, according to some conservative Americans, no threat is more threatening than the threat of two dudes making out (lesbians don’t count, because they’re what conservatives download at night after a hard day of protesting gay marriage at any given state capital).

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