If you wonder sometimes whether the Rightwing "really means it," you need only to look at this story of the experience of gay people in Wasilla, Alaska, created by the Human Rights Campaign. It tells the tale of what happened to their small town, like many others in America, after the Sarah Palin's of the world started taking over local and state governments and imposing their brand of crazy on the rest of us.
Whether Sarah Palin is qualified or not, I for one am truly frightened by the possibility that she might be Vice President of the United States. These people are a threat to liberty and our values as a nation. I have often considered the gay community as very representative of the American community, in the sense that our community is a microcosm made up of individuals from many different ethnicities and backgrounds and ages and genders. Thus, we have to deal with these diversity issues in a more direct fashion: it is essential to forming relationships and networking and cooperating with our gay and lesbian brethren. So, in a sense, what happened to the gay community in Alaska is a glimpse into what will happen the day when this brand of Rightwing religiosity truly takes power in the way they so crave. If you want to see into the dark future, then just look at what happened in Wasilla when they succumbed to this. And that's what the election of Sarah Palin meant in the larger scheme of things. If these people ever truly take power, they won't stop at banning books about gay people. The gay people will be actively persecuted. They won't stop at making rape victims pay for rape kits with contraception. There will be no contraception. Abortion will be outlawed on the federal level: by defining "life" and the vesting of a "right to life" as beginning at conception. There will be no devolution to The States. If the right gets what they really want, Roe will be overturned and abortion outlawed by federal constitutional command (and they won't care if they get there via a 5-4 vote). There won't be abortion "safehaven" states in New York or California. Their view will be imposed everywhere, all at once.
As a former Southern Baptist who grew up in the Bible Belt, I can tell you that this impetus is not limited to Alaska, as you no doubt know. Given that background steeped in this particular grain of our culture, I cannot overemphasize what a threat to our liberty and our American way of life these people (many of whom are my own relatives...) and their views represent. And for some of us, their hatred and ignorance could well mean our lives.
I worked for a brief time as a local beat reporter, and as such once attended a DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) graduation "event" for fifth graders in a small-town school. A state judge who spoke there that day and stated that those who didn't "believe in Jesus" would be lonely outcasts from the community in the future. Indeed, that's the grand plan. The state's top firearms and drug enforcement adminstrator at the time (and I'll note that this was under a democratic state administration...) was also quoted as saying "This is Mississippi, and I don't care what the Constitution says. Here we believe in God!" The crowd of parents and fifth graders applauded both officials.
You see, it isn't just enough to overturn abortion for them. It isn't just enough to isolate, demean, and depersonalize their opposition. They are on a religious mission to "save" America, both actually and in a religious/spiritual sense. Thus, those of us who oppose them are thus trying to "destroy" America. By our opposition, we single ourselves out as both traitors and followers of the devil/anti-christ. (Obama has already been declared such by some religious wingers... Perhaps that partially explains Sarah Palin's vindictiveness towards her opponents, both personal and political. It may well be that this is why John McCain demonizes his opponents and cannot now look at Barack Obama.) Ultimately, those who don't go to church on Sunday will be held suspect. If you are hungry, then the (federally backed) church-run food charity will require you to thank Jesus and listen to His Word. If you don't, then you won't "deserve" the bounty of the Lord. If you starve to death, you will just be a dead outcast/troublemaker who refused God's goodness from His Followers.
There is a religious commercial on TV in Mississippi that basically says, "Go to church this Sunday. Your children need and deserve it." Thus, in their view, not taking your children to church on Sunday deprives your children of their God-given right to learn about Jesus Christ. Implicitly, you are a bad parent for not taking them. In the future Rightwing Utopia, you could well be adjudged to lose custody of your children on that basis. They already do it to lesbians and gay men whose children's custody is brought before a court in a divorce. Why not bias decisions towards the non-liberal, non-freethinking parent? The children will be taught in rightwing christian schools that teach creationism, safely isolated from your disruptive, traitorous views.
Quite simply, we must find a way to fight this growing menace. We might stop them this year and elect Barack Obama. But that alone will not turn back this dark tide. In our history, we witnessed lynch mobs and the like across the South. If we aren't careful, if we aren't vigilant, it may well be that the lynch mobs return, and when they do, we who value freedom and diversity and distain religious orthodoxy and oppression will be the ones in the noose, all across the country from Mississippi to Alaska.