First they came for the gays, but I wasn't gay and so did nothing. Then they came for the people in a persistent vegetative state, but I wasn't in a persistent vegetative state so I did nothing. Then they came for the liberal and moderate Christians, but I'm not even a Christian so I did nothing. How long before they come for me, next?

Andrew Sullivan writes about how many of those who voted for Bush did so out of national security concerns, confident that his radical domestic agenda wouldn't amount to much and didn't fear what the Christian Right might do:

My position was that the national security differences between Bush and Kerry were not so great as to risk the domestic Kulturkampf that the religious right would unleash if Bush were to win. Others believed I was "hysterical" and concentrating too much on the gay issue. I think events since the election have buttressed my case.

Gays could see this more clearly because we were so often the convenient target for the far right in the first term (although they have even more ambitious plans to curtail gay freedom in the second). But the religious right's agenda is far more ambitious than merely stripping gays of civil rights or even minimal privacy. It's about controlling the bodies and behaviors of all Americans to more faithfully conform to Biblical absolutes. Hence Schiavo; hence the need to purge the judiciary of any opposition; hence the abolition of a threatened judicial filibuster; hence the political alliance with the new papacy; hence "Justice Sunday."

These people are no longer merely one Republican faction. They control the GOP. We are now seeing that more clearly, while the war - understandably - obscured that a little. With Iraq less in the headlines, the domestic agenda of the new big government sectarian GOP is far clearer.

The Christian Right doesn't respect other people's liberty or privacy. The Christian Right doesn't respect the rule of law if it gets in the way of their radical, religious agenda. The Christian Right doesn't even respect democracy because a democratic system requires that one compromise and negotiate, two virtues that are anathema to religious absolutists.

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