The thing to do with these Folks, if you want to remove them from your own life and from the body politic, is call them on their weird sexual habits. They seem to believe that their opinion about my sexual life should be relevant and potent. I do not even talk to my Mother about my sexual life. My sexual life is private and not subject to religious review.
Religious Authoritarians suffer from a paraphilia (perversion) that seems to be a combination of voyeurism, exhibitionism, and sadomasochism. Think about what they do. They carry snuff porn around shopping centers. The snuff porn is offensive even to women who are opposed to abortion.
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
They sing, dance, pray and pinch people outside the offices of women's health care providers. They shout things like "The blood from your crotch will rise up and kill you, you Whore!" And yet, one does not find these Folks picketing fertility clinics, which discard thousands of embryos monthly. Those embryos are not attached to a woman they can stalk and insult and intimidate. Takes all the fun out of picketing, if you are a pervert or nuts.
Watch these Folks in action. The first video is long and the narrator's contempt for the protestors is obvious, and it is still worth watching to get a flavor of the real American Circus. To quote Vonnegut: And so it goes.
The second video has the 'regular guy' protestors, for the sake of fairness. They do not think I should be using birth control and they picket a women's clinic that does not even do abortions to let me know they hate condoms. Tell me, do you want ANY of these people in charge of your sex life and body functions? Or those of your Daughter, your Wife or your Mother? Do you want them assassinating your gynecologist at the women's clinic? Why can women not walk unmolested down any street in the USA?
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
Fetus Sniffers, my term for the really earnest category of Religious Authoritarians, assassinate and maim people they don't agree with. And they assert that God approves.
http://www.armyofgod.com/
I do not get it. If a strange person came up to me on a bus and started talking to me about my sex life, tried to show me weird pictures (think Alvin Greene in the library) and pinched me, he would get arrested. If the strange person did that in a public thoroughfare, a boardroom, a meeting, or a public building, the strange person would get arrested. Could an exhibitionist (or assassin) of ordinary stripe avoid arrest by pleading "You can't touch me or stop me, Cop, because I am religious! Stalking that woman while I show her the penis (gun) is what God wants me to do."
When I discuss this issue, I feel like the kid who has to keep pointing to the Emperor's nakedness. Religious Authoritarians do not occupy the moral high ground. They have not clothes on. Point it out. Okay, rant over now.