And glory be to the One Great God-head if this ever goes down. Because without the Republican Party to squat on, Christian conservative groups like Focus on the Family will be left without a home. They’ll be relinquished to obscurity, forgotten and useless like a pager in a lost-and-found box.

Like The Beach Boys said: Wouldn’t it be nice?

I’ve always viewed the Christian conservative movement (not to be confused with Christian moderates) as that little creature in Alien. The one attached to John Hurt’s mouth, tail wrapped around his neck, ball-sack draping on his chin and his wormy tentacles drilling deep into his throat, leeching his energy and impregnating his stomach with its foul agenda.

And like the disgusting mouth-monster from Alien, the worms of the Christian conservative movement have gravely damaged the host party. Because of this infection, it’s got half the Republican Party thinking its genitals are dirty. It’s got half the party thinking it hates homosexuals. It’s got half the party believing that prayer, not action, will get you out of a jam. Clearly, these values-voters types are a danger to themselves and others.

Just look at the blog by James Hartline, one of San Diego’s most powerful Christian conservatives, who blamed gays for the SoCal wildfires. The post was called “They Would Not Listen and Now They Are Burning” and made this kooky-spooky claim that the wildfires “engulfed the land like a raging judgment against the radicalized anti-Christian California rebels.”

Can you believe this guy? He’s the Christian version of a conspiracy theorist. Every anomaly of nature is a message from God -- from recurring wildfires, to seven-year locusts, to a minor golf-course gopher infestation -- they’re all signs of God’s wrath against gays, and it just doesn’t get any more middle ages than that. And the scary part is that millions of people subscribe to their primitive concepts. Take this commenter from Hartline’s “Now They Are Burning” blog, who wrote: “A loving God would not wantonly destroy His people for no good reason. Rather, [the fires gave people time] to REPENT…. Just as AIDS is very loving in reality because it gives a person time to think about their eternal destiny before they die.”

See what I’m talking about here? You can’t reason with that sort of thinking. The kind of thinking that says AIDS is a loving gift from God doesn’t come from the human brain; it comes from a creature that has its tentacles shoved down your throat and its scrotum slapping on your chin.

Rise up, Republicans—eliminate the conqueror worms from your pale and sickly body!

Indeed, this would certainly be a good time for a revolt. They’re gonna lose the election, anyway. They might as well seize this moment to regroup, play a little musical chairs and restructure that party into something reasonable. Because, really, without Christian evangelicals sucking the nutrients out of their bloodstream, the Republican Party ain’t half bad: Individual responsibility, fiscal moderation, emphasis on states’ rights and the mother of all policy positions—downsizing government—these are the platforms that really stimulate my voting lever.

But when the morality squatters sunk their tentacles deep into the Republicans' gullet, it was all, “no homo” this, “no smoko” that and “no snorto” the other, and before you knew it, the Republican-controlled government wasn’t downsizing anymore—it was growing. Like Andre the Giant, it kept growing and growing and putting its hands all over our personal lives, groping us and choking us with its big giant fucking Andre the Giant hands.

So begone, beast from beyond. Go start your own political party. Call yourself a Religican or Christocrat, I don’t care. So long as you return to the place where a party like yours belongs in a modern world: in the margins. You should be in the fringes with all the other fringe parties, except even fringier; fringier than the Libertarian Party or the Reform Party. Certainly more than the Green Party, more fringy even than the Marijuana Party, which itself has been unduly fringified by the morality squatters. Hell, even the Guns and Dope Party, which seeks to replace one-third of Congress with ostriches, should be more mainstream than the Religicans. But in order for that to happen, Rudy needs to win.

Godspeed, Rudy. Win and be rid of the squid-thing. Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a country where gays and other folk needn’t live up to some arbitrary moral code invented by medieval shamans? Wouldn’t it be nice if live in a country where people who believe that AIDS is a loving gift from God don’t have a say in our laws or culture? Wouldn’t it be nice if prayer really did bring results? Because if it did, I would pray for Rudy, pray that he wins that nomination. So run, Rudy, run. Run like they run in The Beach Boys song:

“Maybe if, we think and wish and hope and pray, it might come true, run run….”

Ed Decker
10/31/07 (boo!)