Christian conservatives have got playing victim down to a science. Gee, if only I could think of an example of someone who did that.

Courtesy of Salon: 

Religious freedom and separation of church and state have always been hated concepts to the religious right. Indeed, it’s fair to say that the religious right exists to fight any legal or cultural support for people who don’t want their narrow definition of Christianity foisted on them. From objecting to gay marriage to trying to wedge creationism in schools, the religious right exists as a political movement for the purpose of stripping away religious freedom and establishing their religious beliefs as the dominant organizing force in law, politics and culture. 

So why then are we hearing all these people who live their lives attacking religious freedom complaining all the time that “religious freedom” is under attack from liberals? Whydoes every religious-right publication and event echo the claim that right-wing Christians are somehow being stripped of the very right to religious freedom the right has worked tirelessly to take from everyone else for decades? 

The simple answer is they’re lying. Claiming the mantle of victimhood is so politically potent that religious-right leaders are going to do it, no matter how untrue it is, because, to be blunt, they’re not held back by any moral interest in honesty. Getting Grandma to think she’s going to lose her church is a great way to get her to sign her Social Security check over to your organization. 

The longer answer is that the religious right has concocted a new strategy to squelch religious freedom: By redefining “religious freedom” to mean its opposite. The hope is that by repeatedly using the term “religious freedom” when they mean “giving the Christian right power to impose their faith on others,” they can eventually drain the phrase of all its meaning and finally, after decades of fighting secularism, make it easier for the religious right to strip away individual protections for religion. In other words, they hope by saying that up is down long enough, the public and the courts will finally believe it. 

This attitude—that their “religious freedom” can only be protected if they get to foist their faith on everyone else—is nakedly obvious every year when the whining about the mythical “war on Christmas” begins. Needless to say, there is no war on Christmas. There is no effort whatsoever to prevent anyone from celebrating Christmas, buying Christmas presents, going to mass on Christmas, or playing that Manheim Steamroller record until you want to claw your ears out. Without fail, every example the right comes up with to prove there’s a war on Christmas is, in fact, something else: An attempt to recognize that not everyone is a Christian and respect that there are multiple holidays people may be celebrating in lieu of, or in addition to, Christmas. 

This belief that Christians, particularly right-wing Christians, are entitled to be acknowledged at the exclusion of everyone else and entitled to have their holidays held out as more important than everyone else’s cropped up immediately after Thankgiving, right on schedule this year. The National Republican Congressional Committeetweeted out a picture of a T-shirt they’re selling that says, “’Happy Holidays’ is what liberals say,” in Comic Sans font, of course. On the back it reads, “Merry Christmas.” The “joke” doesn’t make sense unless the viewer agrees with the premise that conservative Christians are better than everyone else, and in order to honor how much more important they are, all other holidays and faith traditions need to be hidden away, as if they’re shameful.

 You know it may seem as if these people are simply ridiculous and that the only appropriate response is to mock them, but I have to remind myself that these people are potentially dangerous, and that if they WERE to get their way in establishing Christianity as the state sponsored religion, that the social injustices and oppression would start piling up almost immediately.

That idea, which seems less and less likely as our population becomes less and less religious, is still one that keeps me on edge and my attention focused on the various strategies utilized by religious groups attempting to hold onto power or gain more influence over out education, politics, and media.

Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin may be driving around in a clown car, but there are more nefarious goings on in the shadows that their bulbous noses and fright wigs may distract us from noticing.