Indiana Governor Mike Braun, about as four-square a Trumpian politician as could be, a businessman with strong roots in traditional Indiana conservative Republicanism, didn't want him. The state party insisted, and Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith was on the ticket in 2024.
Mr. Beckwith is an unabashed Christian nationalist; as far as he's concerned, the rules of the Bible -- his faith's version of the Bible -- ought to be the laws of the land.* And there he is, one notch away from the state's top executive office.
When you get one of these fanatical fellows in high office, there's not a lot to be done other than watch them closely and sue if they get over the line. They've got a tendency to overestimate the popularity of their positions and to overreach.
In Indiana, there's a pretty good watchdog, and they publish what they observe.
And Nehemiah Scudder? He's always lurking.
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* Although, shockingly, that doesn't include just about all of the Old Testament stuff about what foods one should eat and how they should be prepared, or details like the prohibition on wearing cloth woven from two kinds of fiber. Shrimp cocktail and polyester blends are still on the menu, boys! Women making their own decisions, not so much. The picking and choosing can be quite selective, and the end result has more in common with a fictionalized far-Right version of 19th-Century or 1950s America than Bible times.
Update
6 months ago
6 comments:
I have never read Heinlein. Perusing your link in this post just gave me the chills. Scary how something written so long ago still strikes a chord with current events.
Here are my comments about your comments under the asterisk: The Old Testament laws about food, blood, etc. are in the Christian Bible for historical reference, but do not apply to Christians (yay...pork chops!). What is possibly the first divergence between ancient Judaism and Christianity was in about AD 50, when the early church declared Gentile converts did not have to be circumcised as Jews had been.
The Bible is not just a book, but a collection of books, all with different genres (history, allegory, music, etc.) It must be properly interpreted to make sense. This is where the Christian Nationalists fly off the rails, cherry-picking biblical passages to suit their political position. Much of what they are for goes against the teachings of Jesus...for example, the horrible mistreatment of illegal aliens is definitely NOT what Jesus would do.
I'm hardly a Bible expert, but the majority of Biblical laws deployed against LGBT people and women, including dress and attitude codes, come from the Old Testament, just like the ones I mentioned. In some cases, they are based on remarkable misinterpretation of the stories -- the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, for instance, are far more likely to have been extraordinary and violent inhospitability than homosexuality. So there's a pretty blatant willingness on the part of some Chiristian sects, particularly the more culturally conservative ones, to look to the older law when it suits them and ignore it when it doesn't.
Heinlein's an interesting fellow, very much a child of his formative times (call it 1900 - 1927) but always trying to reach beyond them. His best work is very good indeed, though in later life, he became too big to edit, with all the good and bad that entails.
I have a hard time with the fact that the world is so heavily influenced by that portion of the population who adhere to the "teachings" of various alleged deities and their mutually-conflicting rules for us,
It's also funny that the Bible is more openly against the ostentatious greed, hetro infidelity, and lack of charity towards one's neighbors that's a big part of the current MAGA culture.
But, ignoring core principles is MAGA culture these days.
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