So, let's say you get what you want...

I started this a long time ago, and have only recently finished it. Being an atheist, I'm of course wide open to the criticism that I hate religion. Let me make it plain - I don't have religious beliefs. I don't believe in any of the supernatural claims. I don't really care if you do or don't - it's not my business. If you ask me why I'm an atheist, I'll tell you. If you ask me what I think about your beliefs, I'll tell you.

I have no special issue with people practicing their faith. Do it, if that's what you want, good on you. My issues are and always have been with the spill-over into the public sphere. When laws are changed to mollify organised religions, when bigotry is perpetrated so unaffected believers don't have to have their belief questioned. That gives me the steaming irrits.

So this piece is about Dominion Theology, aka Christian Reconstructionism, aka Quiverfull, aka something something God something. The tack I'm taking is - okay, get what you want, complete control over US society. What now?





So, let's say you get what you want...

The US is currently under assault in a culture war from hardline Christians. They want raped women to pay for their own rape kits, and be forced to bear any resulting children. They want science dismantled and thrown out of the classroom. They want the most evil and predatory politicians revered instead of civil rights leaders. The most extreme of these Christians are the Christian Reconstructionists, who count Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry among their number.

Christian Reconstructionism also goes under the name Dominion Theology. Its premise is simple - society must be re-ordered to conform to biblical teachings so that that society will be saved come the Rapture, when the rest of us sinners are hurled bodily into the lava lakes and the waiting arms of the torture demons (No! Not my pretty face!).

They're a demanding bunch, the Reconstructionists, even for born-agains, who are pretty demanding to begin with. In no essential order, you can usually claim as part of their agenda the following basic talking points;

• Eradication of the separation of Church and State. This involves making fundamentalist Christianity the state religion, and persecuting or disenfranchising non-Fundamentalist Christians, devotees of other faiths and especially atheists.

• Unhealthy focus on sexuality and women's control over their own bodies. This includes rendering all forms of homosexuality illegal, forbidding abortion, insisting on mandatory child-bearing no matter the circumstance of the preganancy, and generally rendering illegal all forms of sexuality or reproductive rights not explicitly condoned by the Bible.

• Focus on one model of the family. To be Christian and heterosexual is not enough. Women MUST submit wholeheartedly to their husband or father. The male is to be supreme and unquestioned authority over the female in all things.

• Rewrite history and throw away science. The culture war has long been underway in this regard. Martin Luther King is replaced by Ronald Reagan or Phyllis Schlafly, the Vietnam war is a godly crusade against satanic communism, where we never did anything wrong, certainly not the My Lai massacre or the deployment of Agent Orange or the use of napalm on civilians. Science especially is an evil to be conquered, particularly evolution, and increasingly any discussion of climate change. Some of the more lunatic fringe also want to do away with notions that the earth is round and orbits the sun.

Naturally, this shopping list is enough to make lefties, progressives, atheists, well shit, anyone with a brain and/or a conscience shudder briquettes into their underoos.

So, let's imagine for a second we give it to them. Seriously.

Eradicate the wall between church and state.

George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, all these men and the other founding fathers, were to some extent Christian. Some tended more toward the atheistic or enlightened thinker, such as Jefferson, while some, like Ben Franklin, were more deists than theists - believers in a remote God who set the universe working and then stepped away to play XBox for the rest of eternity. For the most part however, all were agreed on one thing - the nation could not and should not show favouritism to any one creed. It would spark dissent and cruelty. Thomas Jefferson in fact said something like (forgive me, the original source is not to hand) "The clergy believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Though he did keep slaves. The point however is simply this, these guys were in the thick of the Enlightenment, they broke free of monarchist and religious England to set up its opposite, a secular Republic.

For many decades Christians have been trying to con Americans into believing that the founding fathers envisioned and wanted a Christian fundamentalist nation. This of course is disputed by everything from the Bill of Rights to the Constitution to comments made and recorded by the architects of the nation themselves.

So, let them tear down the wall. What now?

Well, one of their major policies is, of course, to disenfranchise non-believers. This includes a lot of people. At one end of the spectrum you have atheists, then agnostics, moving up through Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Jews of all stripes, and even includes Catholics and other Christians not sufficiently fundamentalist at the opposite end of the scale.

Under a theocratic government, there is one national faith. In Iran, it is Islam, in The Vatican it is Catholicism. Those of alternate or no faith often face a rough time. It goes without saying that being anything other than a Catholic in the Vatican won't get you far. Christians and Jews in Iran don't get on well either.

The United States is, however, a lot bigger and a lot more multi-cultural than either of those two theocracies, so you're not dealing with a situation where the majority can punish a minority with impunity, you're dealing with a minority trying to govern or punish a majority, like Apartheid era South Africa, but religious instead of racist.

So what do you do with your unbelievers?

Disenfranchise them from all rights of citizens. So, yes, take away any legal protections they may have, any right to vote, or indeed be represented by government at all. But you'll still have to tax them, otherwise you'll run out of revenue pretty quickly. 'No taxation without representation'. Now who said that I wonder? The other thing is, and I'm not sure if you know this, but people generally don't like to be forced to work hard, pay you money and get nothing out of it, so expect to see them racing into Mexico or Canada, hell even Cuba! as fast as they can.

Forcible conversion. Ah yes, Catholic Spain's famous response to the Jews during the early days of the Inquisition. You could give all non-believer citizens 6 months to convert or lose all of their rights, or threaten incarceration, deportation or execution. We'll get to that lovely trio in a minute. In the meantime, how well do you expect that to work? You will need to create religious police to 'test' the faith of converts. Plate of charcuterie anyone? At least the pig farmers will do well out of it all.

Deportation. What a simple solution, just say 'You've got three months to get the fuck out of my country.' They have to pay for it themselves! You don't have to spend a shiny nickel! So maybe some Sikhs and Hindus will go to Sri Lanka, India or Pakistan, or maybe not. Maybe some Muslims will go to any of the primarily Islamic nations, or maybe not. Maybe Jews will go to Israel, or maybe not. Maybe people will just prefer to go to a country with a similar culture (before you fucked it all up that is). You know, a place with donuts and soap operas, so maybe Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland or the United Kingdom. If you have European background or family, maybe Poland, France or Germany. Of course, people from Mexico, who've been busy being treated like crap and doing all your menial jobs, may just decide to go back. Wherever people go, you're causing a massive diaspora regardless. Just don't expect other nations to be too happy that you've just lumped them with thousands of immigrants to process is all I'm saying. Some countries might send them back too, so what are you going to do then?

Incarceration. Lock everyone up unless they convert. What a great idea! Oh no, hang on, that's a crap idea. The US already has one of the largest per capita prison populations in the world. And you're going to quintuple it? At least? As long as you can figure out how to pay for all the extra prisons and infrastructure you'll need. How long are they sentenced for? Life? Can they get paroled if they convert? You go away, work that out and come back to me.

Execution. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out eh? Well done, that's certainly a simple solution. Bear in mind you'll be killing anything upto half the population. Let's see, as of July 2009, the US census listed the population as 307,006,550 people, which divided by two is 153,503,275. Wow, that's really ambitious. I mean the Third Reich only killed what about 10 million all told (including disabled, gays, freemasons etc, as well as 6 million Jews), and Stalin, boy he tried hard but still only netted 20 million in the purges. You're aiming for 153 million and change. You'll need a numbering system I guess. Better talk to IBM, I hear they have experience in this kind of thing.

Okay, so obviously there's some nuts and bolts to work out there. Let's just focus on changes to the law. Now, one of your big concerns is that the law just isn't Christian enough right? Now, I've heard some of you say that the Bible would make an adequate replacement for the entire body of US law. Why Rick Perry said quite recently that you should get rid of all forms of government regulation. So why not? Throw everything out and use the Bible as the official arbiter on all legal matters. So, what does the Bible say about Coal Seam Gas regulation? You'll get back to me? Okay. Ah, nuclear powerplants? How about air safety? Highway maintenance? How about taxation? Oh there is something? Oh, I see, well, convert the dollar to shekels and goats first and we'll sort that out later.

Essentially doing that will make you unable, at even the most basic level, of interacting with the rest of the world. The first airliner that explodes on a foreign runway, will be the last one you're allowed to send. Your nation will descend into chaos, but at least some things the Bible is clear on right? Yep, f#cking and women and f#cking women.

Unhealthy focus on sexuality and women's control over their own bodies.

At least the Bible is really clear on a few things, like that gays are bad and evil and women should do what the f#ck they're told by their man. Right? Well, among moderate Christians this is highly debatable.

Sadly we're not dealing with moderates. We're dealing with extremists. The Reconstructionists, like most fundamentalists are avowedly homophobic. Some, as with alternate belief above want conversion, others want disenfranchisement or deportation, while others want execution.

This is just sad, stupid and short-sighted, for two major reasons. The first is, perhaps obviously, even if the Bible tells you that women should be subservient and that gays are evil, why should anyone else believe that or follow you? The Bible is not a universal authority, and especially not your interpretation of it. Tell women they're to do everything a man tells them, and be raped or caned otherwise, and you know what? They might not agree with you is all I'm saying. You will face dissent from people who disagree with your hardline take on the duties of a woman. In every generation there will be women who rebel against this teaching. No-one likes to be born into slavery.

Second, are you ready to conduct the massive generational war against your own people this entails? Even if you deport, imprison or execute every GLBTI man, woman and child in the US, are you ready to conduct the same systematic purge in ten years? Twenty years? Thirty years? Because you can't stop 'gayness' by getting rid of everyone who is gay at that moment. It's like saying you'll prevent blondeness by getting rid of all the blondes. That'll work fine until the first blonde kid is born after your blonde purge. Kids will be born who, after they start forming notions of their own sexuality, will be gay. You will have to chase them down generation after generation after generation.

There will be women who get sick of risking illegal backyard abortions, there will be gay men who ask themselves 'Why do I have to live in secrecy and fear?' You will need to wage a constant war against your own populace. Given that you're doing all this to impress your fictional saviour, do you really think - if he was real, and not just a fiction - he would be amused by the constant bullying, violence, oppression and scorn you are pouring on your citizenry? Maybe he would be impressed. After all, if he made you in his image, he must be an ignorant psychotic zealot too.

Can I also point out that generally your lot have a very bad track record of having aggressively anti-gay closeted men in your movement? I mean, let's be honest here, a virulently anti-gay politician that turns out to be hiring rent boys and hustlers is such a common occurrence it's almost a joke. What are you going to do when a high-tier supporter gets discovered in flagrante delicto, buried nuts deep in a male prostitute's @$$? If you've just spent years herding every gay man in the United States into a jail cell, onto a plane or into a noose, don't you think it'll look a teensy bit hypocritical to let this one guy be?

There's also the matter of isolating what you're going to do with the rest of the GLBTI movement. I mean, sure maybe you'll be able to identify out gays and out lesbians, but not the closeted ones, or ones in denial - like those people you put through those ridiculous and ineffectual 'cure' programs. Then there are bisexuals. You know all those years you called them 'sneaky' bisexuals? Well, guess what, they're like the James Bonds of the GLBTI movement. They're undercover all around you and you'll never find them! Mwah hah hah! Of course any TG people going through the hormones/surgery change will have to be shitcanned right? I mean aren't they defying God's model for what a man and woman should be? Of course they are. Now explain Intersex people, who are born not distinctly male or female smart-ass? Did God make them like that? Then what's your problem? Or are you saying that God bungled this one and you know better? Your Bible did not know about and could not predict what we now know about sexual identity and orientation. The word of God is woefully inaccurate. Besides, if you're taking Leviticus as your source for why gays should be persecuted, I hope you're going to be as consistent with men who trim their beard, people who eat shellfish, and people who have skin conditions that do not clear up quickly (like a bad case of acne or eczema). I mean I'd hate to think that this whole anti-gay crusade was because you're a stupid, bigoted scumbag, not because you're just uninformed or inconsistent.

Anyway, can I ask what your deal is, with who people f#ck, and how they do it? I mean isn't it none of your business? Don't you routinely say Jesus died for our sins? Isn't it up to God to decide what to do with those who displease him? Aren''t you being a little bit presumptuous?

Focus on one model of the family.

One of the continuous currents that run through this belief system is the subservience of women to men. A wife must bow to her husband, daughters to brothers and to their father.

Now if your male figurehead is a wise, compassionate and caring individual maybe this wouldn't be much of a chore. He's cool right? So where's the big problem? Well, what if the male figurehead is a complete bastard, cruel and ignorant? Well, I guess you're screwed then right?

Any system that assumes one parent has all the answers is like any system of exclusivity. It works well when everything goes with the flow, and turns into a shambolic disaster when it doesn't.

How far is this preferential treatment to extend? Are women to be prohibited from taking employment or winning property? Are daughters to be kept out of schools, or even denied any form of education whatsoever? I'm sure there are some (admittedly seriously deluded) women who would be cheering 'Yeah! Take my damn rights away!' but I can't imagine they're a sizeable percentage. So what are you going to do with women who won't follow your model?

No, seriously what? Because unless you're going to take up some of the exile/imprisonment/execution options above, you're going to lose a lot of women really quickly. Really, the only answer to this is perhaps one that our dominion theologist friends won't admit - violence. Rapes. Beatings. Torture. How else do you force someone to do what you want when they don't want to play along? But you won't admit that will you? While you're saying that it's all about being 'saved' and adhering to the words of the 'good book' - all nice and fuzzy. But we both know what lurks underneath that demeanour don't we Mr Reconstructionist? A hungry, slavering desire to rule with a bloody fist sheathed in an iron glove.

It's not like you can convince anyone with half a brain of the benefits of a life of ignorance and menial servitude. Honestly, do you think any women are sitting there right now, going 'Hmm, while a job and freedom and all the benefits decades of feminist struggle have netted me are good, hmm, maybe I'd prefer to be locked in a house, treated like a slave by a husband and our sons…'

Yeah, no.

It is kind of mad to assume that women will want to fall into roles of subservience. Who would? I wouldn't, you wouldn't. Only the completely bonkers would.

See, we've all seen what you want in bits and snippets already. We've seen Rick Perry and his maniacal attack on women in Texas, we've seen you demand women buy their own rape kits, we've seen you reject abortion even in cases of rape or incest. We've seen the all-out attack on women's health and safety carried out in the name of a narrow interpretation of what you think your fictional deity would say about a medical procedure that is about a million times safer than anything that happened in the days of your Saviour. We've seen the messianic glee with which you bomb clinics and kill anyone who tries to help a woman control her own reproduction. So forgive me if I don't think you Dominionists can be entirely relied on to show compassion to anyone, let alone the women you covet as slaves.

Rewrite history and throw away science.

It's an extremely powerful thing to control what kids learn. You can shape or mangle the thoughts of a generation. So, it should come as no surprise that hardline Christians pursue control of textbook content. Many grotesque changes have been made over time. History is constantly rewritten, with leanings to religious domination sneaking into the mouths of the US' founding fathers, where historically none were to be found.

The most dangerous is the widely known attack on science. Under particular attack is evolution, because it is seen to conflict with the Biblical book of Genesis. Evolution also contradicts the origin of the world as recounted in the mythology of Tolkien and the DC Comics Universe in case you were curious. This shouldn't be a surprise. Genesis is myth - what people thought way back when, when they had no capacity to comprehend what even a high school kid can grasp in minutes today. The Dominionists want to throw evolution away, as well as climate change, and in some circles, the whole notion of science.

Would this kill us as a species? No, probably not, but we could end up in another slump of ignorance like the dark ages. There is a ferocious opposition to thinking seething beneath the attacks made on science. It is part and parcel with the belief that the badly-edited accretion of tales, myths and symbolism that is the Bible is somehow like God's dictaphone, recording precisely what God him/her/itself said. So shut down the labs and research centres, shut down science and throw it away. Do it, go on.

Because what you will have to live with is a nation of dullards. You will be outstripped culturally and intellectually. It will happen very quickly too. It might only take a decade or two, but one day people will wonder how the erstwhile leader of the free world became quickly like rural Afghanistan. Your only source of learning will be a badly translated accretion of homilies and stories that has no bearing on life in the 21st century at all. The only thing your holy book could teach you, is the one thing you have resolutely shown you will not adopt - an attitude of harmony, forgiveness and tolerance.

So, do it, throw away science. Your brain drain will be immense. Do you think very intelligent people will want to stay in a nation, that is collectively throwing kindling down at the base of a stake and looking for the nearest person in a white lab coat? Hell no.

You won't be able to innovate or develop. You'll stagnate in a mire of stupidity. Don't forget the purges you might have to routinely employ as well, if one of your faithful stumble onto forbidden teachings in pure innocence. Some loyal and faithful lamb who independently stumbles onto evolution or heliocentricism or round-earth theory or AGW. What are you going to do then? Burn him? Torture him? Force him to recant? Look how well that worked out for the Catholic Church and Galileo.

Don't grab the wheel if you can't drive.

The world you will create if you have your way is a broken, miserable oddity. The fact is, you need the intelligent, the enlightened, the progressive, more than we need you. We give you something to base your civilisation on, just so you can attack us. It is the intelligent, the explorers who make new discoveries. It is the truly compassionate that gave you the feminism and integration you use to claim female and black members, members who, if we hadn't intervened, would have been shut out of your jihad. You, however, dwell in the past. You imagine slights to your lunatic beliefs and launch massive retaliations on the innocent over them.

You are on the wrong side of history. If, however, you want the future the way you say you do, then I hope you're ready to deal with the reality of it. I'd hate to see you launch a global pogrom of hatred just because you haven't thought it out.