RINO, they may call you
I just call you sane
Soft on crime they smear you
I call you humane
They may call you socialist
Because you do your part
To seek a fairer, more just world
I say you have a heart
They say the end is coming
I say it’s just a start
Teaching honest history
Will do us harm they claim
Privilege and CRT
Might make us feel ashamed
Caring not for facts or truth
The messenger they blame
Call it what it is I say
It has another name
Outright white supremacy
Injustice is its stain
For years they’ve waged a culture war
That they intend to win
By any means that it may take
To achieve their ends
Masked by righteous rhetoric
To justify their sins
Aggressions and oppressions
Things Jesus’ Word condemns
Within their ranks the rightful place
For judgment to begin
Voter fraud is rampant
So goes their rally cry
Despite all facts and evidence
That proves that cry a lie
And yet beneath this banner
They’ve moved to justify
Voter disenfranchisement
Injustice amplified
Black, brown, and native voice
Purposely denied
Trans people have no place
In school or sports they say
Ignorance their currency
Their cruelty on display
Making it a crime to be
The way that some were made
Not by choice, nor by will
Yet such a price is paid
By those who’ve done no evil
On whom the burden’s laid
Cancel culture they decry
While all the while they yearn
For that with which they disagree
To purge from what is learned
Parental rights I do support
But books they ban and burn
This I cannot tolerate
It makes my stomach turn
Hatred and intolerance
Cloaked in faux concern
They wield religious liberty
To restrict others’ rights
In the name of freedom
Others’ freedom they deny
They invoke the rule of law
To break and violate
Calling upon justice they
Oppress and discriminate
Claiming truth and right
They lie and wrong to dominate
If you’re gay, so they say
Then you must surely turn
From being who you know you are
Or you will surely burn
Ostracized and demonized
They make you walk in shame
Driven oft to suicide
Made to bear the blame
Misunderstood and still condemned
For choices never made
Not allowed to live your life
Driven to your grave
Election integrity
Another bait and switch
They use to justify
So many actions which
Dispossess and disempower
The democratic core
The guardrails and protections
They undermine and more
Driving all integrity
Out our election system’s door
Originalism
A term that they use
To pack the courts with those
Who share their narrow views
Activist judges
Who preside and abuse
The rights of the many
For the privilege of the few
Dismantling law and precedent
At whim should they so choose
The powerful thereby gain
While the powerless typically lose
What gives them the right I ask
To arbitrate the truth
Judging and condemning
What others think and do
All the while within their ranks
Hypocrisy does rule
They must think God doesn’t see
Or take Him for a fool
But He will hold them to account
For words and deeds so cruel
For they do not judge rightly
Nor live the golden rule
Falsehoods told to fuel the fires
Resentment, anger, fear
Making the other the enemy
Of what we all hold dear
For the purposes of power
And greed that they revere
A tyranny of ignorance
Arrogantly worn
Fertile soil for evil where
Despotic dreams are born
D. Gee (March 2022)
Comments on the Context of this Poem:
It’s been a heck of a couple weeks of March Madness, hasn’t it? Oh no, I’m not referring to basketball, though I have greatly enjoyed the wonderful competition and surprise upsets that happened along the way in both the men’s and women’s tournaments. I’m unfortunately referring to a different, more malicious and malignant, madness that has been visibly manifest as a lamentable spectacle in the past few weeks here in the Divided States of America.
Does nobody else find it ironic that we have legislators at the state and federal level making a political spectacle out of condemning the teaching of factual history because it might engender (with good reason) feelings of sadness, remorse, and recognition of responsibility among those who really are the beneficiaries and perpetrators of injustice while at the same time passing laws that pile undeserved pain, shame, guilt, and stigma upon people of color and LGBTQ+ people who did not choose to be who they are and simply want to peacefully live their lives within a promised reality of liberty and justice for all?
We have parents of trans kids having to be fearful of being persecuted and investigated for child abuse in Texas (by the way, what about parental rights in this context?). We have other anti-trans and/or anti-gay laws being enacted into law in Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma. We have our own Arizona governor at the same time not being willing to admit that transgender people even exist — how ironic to sign a law against people you can’t bring yourself to publicly admit to existing? And at the very least, what a denial on the part of a “Christian” governor of simple human dignity and decency toward a group of people who do indeed exist and who are no less created in God’s image than he is.
It appears to me that the stated motivations behind the anti-CRT and anti-LGBTQ+ movements among Christians are predicated on “protecting our children from malicious indoctrinating influences” and “promoting the rights of parents to determine what should be taught to their children”. But here’s the truth: nobody in our public schools is trying to indoctrinate anyone’s children or to override/interfere with parental authority. That is a patently false fabrication that has been put forward by malicious actors both inside and outside the church to stir up anger, fear, and indignation among Christians and other social conservative. What schools are doing (as they should) is striving to teach accurate history and civics (including the facts associated with blemishes and injustices in our history and our present circumstances) along with mutual respect and tolerance to our children. I personally have no doubt that the vast majority of our schoolteachers have a very solid handle on how to teach their pupils in an age-appropriate manner and that they do so with great care. These laws are nothing more than divisive and discriminatory solutions looking for a non-existent problem to solve, but they play well on the political stage to the intended audience (while deeply injuring innocent children and families along the way).
Learning about historical and present-day injustice may mean that our kids get exposed to uncomfortable truths and/or the realities of differences between their families and their neighbors. As a parent of grown children who attended public schools, I was always glad that my kids got exposed to these types of things and saw these instances as opportune teaching moments about what it means to “be in the world, but not of the world” while ensuring that my kids learned why we might think differently and how to do so while being compassionate and respectful of others’ beliefs and differences. I saw this as a major aspect of exercising my parental rights at an appropriate and practical level, and I believe it greatly helped my daughters to learn to be critical thinkers and thoughtful human beings.
Here are a couple of other important truths that too many Christians may have never been taught or heard (or may have resisted/denied). The first truth is that people who identify as gay or trans did not choose to be that way. Study after study, testimony after testimony indicates that people who are gay or trans generally cannot recall a time in their lives going back to their earliest childhood memories when they did not experience attraction for their own sex and/or have a clear sense of their own gender identity. The second truth is that so-called therapies that have been attempted to try to “transform” or “heal” such people have utterly failed and have generally done great harm to the individuals subjected to these therapies. Now I recall when Exodus Ministries used to claim to have “healed” many people from being gay and that was looked to within the Christian community as a validating fact that to be gay was a choice, but ultimately the leaders of that ministry had to admit that they had been lying and deceiving themselves and others and that nobody had actually been “healed” or “transformed” as claimed.
For all intents and purposes, one’s sense of being gay or being trans appears to have been present for most people who identify as gay or trans from the very earliest ages of life (no indoctrination or recruitment or choice involved) and appears to be an immutable fact of their being — I would say their “created being” although almost certainly more factors than mere genetics that come into play (including hormonal, environmental, and epigenetic factors — all of which I place under the authority and sovereignty of God’s creative hand). So, are these people also “fearfully and wonderfully made”? (A universal truth of humanity expressed by a sinful King David in the context of a broken and fallen world.) I am convinced that I am, you are, and they are just as much as King David was. From the reading I have done, in the vast majority of cases even when a clearly grasped sense of being gay or trans may not have arisen until later in childhood or the teenage years, almost nobody recalls having made a choice in the matter but rather to have realized that this is who they authentically have been and are (though in most cases they had not wanted to be that way and had tried their best to act and be “normal”). This all appears to be well established even among conservative Christians who have taken the time to dig deeply into the matter (Preston Sprinkle is one of the more well-known and more thoughtful conservative pastors to have taken the time to examine this diligently and carefully — far too few pastors and influential Christian leaders have taken the time to do the same and, in their ignorance, have taught their people falsely and done great injury to LGBTQ+ people).
This does not mean that there are not cases where various factors may lead a group of teenagers to “choose” to explore being trans or gay or any other experimental behavior that can arise among a group of young people acting foolishly, but that type of circumstance is the exception and not the rule and should never be referenced as normative as is done all too often among social conservatives.
With regard to parental rights, it seems to me that Christian parents who advocate for and celebrate anti-CRT, anti-gay, and anti-trans laws such as those now established in Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas want special rights and preferential treatment at the expense of the rights of parents of children of color and children who may be gay or transgender and at the expense of the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being of those children who are being actively and unjustly harmed, ostracized, and stigmatized by such laws and policies. I indeed support parental rights, but that includes the rights of all parents of all backgrounds and beliefs held in balance and tension with one another and not just a narrow, privileged subset of parents.
We continue to see GOP legislatures and governors proposing and enacting laws in many states (including my own) that undermine and subvert the integrity of state election processes and restrict voting access in ways that primarily impact and disenfranchise disadvantaged groups and people of color. In true Orwellian fashion, I guess all people are created equal, but some people are more equal than others?
And how about using the Senate confirmation hearings for the imminently capable, competent, and qualified candidate for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as an opportunity to propagate and weaponize baseless lies about CRT being taught in schools (clue phone: it is not)? Or to pose other false rhetorical questions with no legitimate relevance to the confirmation process as a means of grandstanding around artificially constructed hot button issues for personal and partisan political gain (and at the expense of the honorable Judge Jackson)? Or to knowingly make false representations of the role of public defenders in our judicial system and twist Judge Jackson’s honorable role as a public defender and her extensive and laudable record as a trial judge in an effort to smear her as being “soft on crime” and to make not so vague references to bogus ugly conspiracy theories the far right has constructed to attack those more liberal than themselves (meaning the vast majority of Americans)? Nonsense.
With respect to one angle of attack that was employed in Judge Brown’s hearings and as someone who actually had the opportunity to get to know two former prisoners who were held for years in Guantanamo Bay without due process, who deserved fair representation, and who were finally exonerated and released but then forced to live the rest of their lives in exile from their homelands and families, I am aghast at the inhuman and anti-American nature of these attacks. To argue that this is just fair play, political tit for tat relative to what Brett Kavanaugh experienced is a false and invalid comparison in terms of facts, nature, and substance and speaks extremely poorly of the character and behavior of the GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They knew exactly the game they were playing at the expense of an honorable woman’s career and reputation and clearly didn’t care. Shame on you Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, et al. Thankfully not one of you pathetic and rude human beings can do anything to prevent her well-deserved confirmation.
We live in a pluralistic society (and world) comprised of all different kinds of people. This is the place and time in which God has placed us. The days of Old Testament theocracy are gone. We live in the New Testament age, and I see nothing in the New Testament indicating that we should be trying to promote or establish any type of theocratic system of government. But that does seem to be what many Christians have been hankering for in their support for a culture wars mentality, Trump/Trumpism, and what has rightly been referred to as Christian Nationalism. That is not the way of Jesus and is not the way of the New Testament church. Paul called on Christians to “live at peace with everyone, at least as far as it depends on you” and to “look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others”. I’m not seeing a lot of that happening these days among a large swath of conservatives in general and among Evangelicals in particular.
Since when did the Bible teach that Christians are to judge, condemn, persecute, and punish non-believers and anyone else who may live according to other beliefs and convictions? By my reading, that is the job of the Holy Spirit and not of the church. If God behaved that way toward any of us, we would be absolutely undone.
Why are so many in the church walking in the ways of the Pharisees and so obviously (for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand) forsaking the ways of the Lord? What ever happened to the command to love our neighbor as ourselves (with neighbor defined by Jesus himself to include all “others”)? Seems to me that far too many in the church today have a funny way of showing it. You can be sure Jesus would have counted people of color and LGBTQ+ people among his neighbors, and he would have been hanging out with them way more than with most pew-sitters.
Since when were Christians called to live by might and power rather than by the Spirit (somehow, I must have missed that new bit of revelation)? I am grateful that such attitudes, words, actions, and behaviors are not representative of all believers and that I know God has always preserved a faithful remnant among His people throughout history. May that remnant become more prominent and visible in the days ahead!
I personally think that those who call themselves Christians but adhere to and support (and even celebrate) politicians, policies, and practices that create, enable, and/or perpetuate falsehood, injustice, hatred, enmity, malice, slander, and inequity should tremble in fear and consider the very real possibility that one day when they say “Lord, Lord”, they may very well hear “Depart from me. I never knew you.” The openly unrepentant, recalcitrant, rebellious resistance to love, grace, and truth that is manifest among far too many Christians at this point in history is a cancer on the church and her witness in the world.
As one who admittedly is imperfectly striving to faithfully follow Jesus of Nazareth as both Lord and Savior, I uncategorically reject and repudiate any and all churches, politicians, pastors, policies, practices, words, and actions that serve (actively or passively) to denigrate, defame, dispossess, and/or disempower my fellow image bearers, whether they live, believe, and/or worship as I do or not.
It is in the context of the present darkness of this other “March Madness” that I felt inspired to write this poem.