An Open Letter to the Republican Party
The Sensuous Curmudgeon writes an Open Letter to the Republican Party:
My fellow Republicans:
As our party is going though a much-needed period of introspection, please consider that there was a time when this party stood for the Constitution, the rule of law, national defense, free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, balanced budgets, and individual rights. We still honor those principles; but those who now govern have no concern for or even understanding of such matters.
While the other party has been winning elections and undermining everything we have traditionally valued, what issues dominate our political discourse? Our party has been talking about sex and religion.
When we say “sex,” we mean topics like abstinence, promiscuity, homosexuality, pre-marital relations, contraception, sodomy, nudity, pornography, masturbation, same-sex marriage, sex education, abortion, and morning-after pills. Does that list sound familiar? It should, because those are the issues that too often dominate your campaigns.
Except for late-term abortion, where the other party has an extreme position that could be exploited (except that it’s lost in a sea of other sex-related issues), there is absolutely no reason to discuss such matters as part of our party’s policies. The Constitution doesn’t give the federal government any authority over those issues. If they need to be addressed, it should be done only at the state level.
When we speak of religion, we mostly mean the current movement to insert religious doctrines into public school science classes, especially creationism and its love-child, intelligent design. It seems to us that this is a latter-day substitute for prayer in public schools, which is essentially a dead issue these days, but still a hot-button item. There are other religious issues, like objections to certain areas of biological research.
Our obsession with creationism and blocking biological research has earned us the reputation of being an anti-science party, which is a burden our adversaries are delighted to exploit — notwithstanding their Luddite opposition to nuclear energy, oil exploration, aerospace technology, etc. Aside from that, religious issues should not concern the national government — especially when we have so many vital matters — our traditional principles — that must be addressed before the republic is lost forever.
[…]
An inordinate emphasis on sex and religion makes hypocrites of half of us, and fools of all. More importantly, it will permanently marginalize the party, while the opponents of our traditional principles triumph.
[Cue applause from the Secular Torquemada…]
