Do you know about Sharron Angle yet? She is the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for the 2010 election challenging Harry Reid.
So, here’s a HuffPost article about a January 2010 exchange on the Bill Manders show. You can play the audio at that link, but here’s a transcript:
Manders: I, too, am pro life. But I’m also pro choice. Do you understand what I mean when I say that?
Angle: I’m pro responsible choice. There is choice to abstain, choice to do contraception. There are all kind of good choices.
Manders: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?
Angle: Not in my book.
Manders: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something [trails off]?
Angle: You know, I’m a Christian. And I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations. And we need to have a little faith in many things.
So — going to try to be exquisitely fair here: if a father holds his little girl down and rapes her, and she becomes pregnant, God could intercede. If he doesn’t intercede, that’s part of his plan. We would be sinning and subverting divine will if we allowed the girl to have an abortion. The proper response is faith in God.
Does that about cover it?
This. Woman. Is running. For national office.
She is the candidate of the more-conservative of the two main U.S. political parties.
Before I move on to the rest of my post, let’s get this vile piece of Angular detritus out of the way. It is too late to unspeak the words she spoke about rape and incest. That horse has left. There is no way you mess that one up that bad. It’s more absurd than saying, ‘Officer, when I said ‘Open the register and give me all your money!’, I meant to say ‘Do I have to buy something to get some change for the pay phone?’”
So, I’m setting my clock as of the timestamp of this post. The RNC has 48 hours to withdraw all support for Angle. That much is a given. A statement on the order of “We were unaware of the insanity of Ms. Angle, and we apologize for our previous support of her. The Republican National Committee does not oppose abortion in the case of rape nor incest. We disown anyone who argues otherwise, for any reason, including superstitious special pleading.” If they do not, they are complicit. If they do not, and if you are registered Republican, you must be publicly vocal about how abhorrent this is, and at least write a letter to the party, or you are complicit. That’s my line in the sand.
OK, now that I’ve established (to my satisfaction) that she is reprehensibly inhuman, or sociopathic, or both, my main point is done. But I want to take a look at something very interesting that fell into place while researching this post. I want to argue that this functions as a case study of when some religious conservatives choose to play the “illegally imposing their agendas” card. Let’s do a little quoting:
Here’s Sharron Angle’s official “About” page on her website:
She is proud of her past chairwomanship of We The People Nevada PAC
We The People used to have a web presence, but no longer. But that’s what archive.org is for. Stored on the archive servers 2005-03-11:
There is a strong movement by atheists to ban religious thought form the public square. This should be recognized as an attempt to establish atheism as the national religion. … The ACLU, NEA, and other organizations are examples of atheistic institutions trying to gain political control and an unfair advantage over Christian groups
So: atheists are trying to illegally impose their religious beliefs (“lack thereof”, actually, but when your only book is the Bible, everything looks like a faith), through political means, to the unfair detriment of some others, in a fashion that would set national policy.
One more. Also from the cached PAC page:
The radical homosexual movement and other groups seek to destroy the traditional family structure which is the underpinning of society. Their agenda should be opposed.
Gay activists (and, remember, the ACLU was implicated above) are trying to destroy the underpinnings of society. Their agenda should be opposed.
So, tying it together: silly, silly, silly me. You know how crazy-liberal I am? I thought one of the underpinnings of society was undoing the harm caused by fathers who rape their children. I thought that, given that We the People and I agree that “The establishment clause prevents the combining of the state with religious organizations”, that dictating the definitions of what family means — not only who can get married, but why it is OK to let a god mediate when a “traditional family” is destroyed by a villain from the inside — on the basis of what the god the person speaking happens to believe in is interpreted to desire — could be considered … pretty much nuts.
But that’s just me. I’m an atheist. I, therefore, am probably using this unfairly in an effort to make my lack of religion the official national religion, to the unfair disadvantage of these Christians. Who, of course, have no such desires. Unless they win.
(For the sake of rigor: I haven’t been able to determine [help?] what years Angle chaired We The People, and cross-reference it against archive.org caches of their “Principles” page during her tenure. Until I get this, it is just conceivable that this politician who thinks that abortion is not justified even in cases of child rape does not believe in a conspiracy of gays and atheists to destroy America. I think that’s unlikely. I expect you would think so, too. But let me know if it’s that’s the case. I’ll have to Google for another example. In the interests of efficiency, I’ll start with listings of Tea Party candidates.)
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