Hypocrisy of the Christian Right

by Julia Eaton

The Christian Coalition along with the Right-wing Republican Congress has been going on for quite awhile now about "family values" and good morals being shoved down the throats of the average American citizen.
In the face of their agenda, I'm wondering if they've taken much time to actually think about the simple logistics of what they are trying to enforce in our government.
First of all, as Republicans, I was under the impression they wanted to take government out of the people's life. They would like less government spending to go for welfare programs and medical programs for the elderly, disabled, and for children. They think that these things need to be paid for by each individual or by the individual's family. Yet then they step up and say that the government should have the right to censor materials that the people can be exposed to. Aren't they essentially saying, in other words, that the government should get to decide how you live your life, but it won't help you out if you're in a jam? A blue-collar family is expected to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to get sufficient medical treatment for their little boy with leukemia, but they aren't considered capable of deciding what materials this boy can view on tv and the internet or what he can listen to or read? I do not find that to be a very fair or productive government.
I also must question their wish to enforce virginity on the youth of today. Teenagers are going to want to have sex - just as teenagers always have wanted to. Somehow the Christian Coalition and the Republican Congress think by denying education to these kids on birth control or AIDS and other STD's, the kids will automatically not have sex. Obviously, they are not very in touch with the teenagers of today (or even yesterday). They deny these teenagers the education they need to know how to protect themselves during sex, then they condemn the teenage mother as trying to "scam the welfare system" by having children so she doesn't have to work. They also would have it that abortion be illegal, so that a young, pregnant mother not only does not have the education on how to not get pregnant, she has no choice whether or not to carry the pregnancy to term. Yet, by being pregnant, many young women today will be ostracized for being a single mother - possibly on welfare. It's a Catch-22 for today's young women the way they have things set up.
Back to the censorship issue. I have heard reports that the Christian Right would even like medical and sexually educational material to be censored for the mere reason that it refers to "dirty" parts of the body. Yet they have no problem with letting their children read the Christian Bible. Having been brought up Christian, I am well aware of how violent the stories in the Bible are. And there are more stories of incest and perversion in the Bible than in many of the books and music the Christian Right wants to censor.
Not everyone in America (by far) is a Christian in these terms. I wonder if anyone in Congress has bothered to remember the simple fact that in this country there is to be a seperation of Church and State. To try to shove their definition of Christian values down the throat of a religiously diverse nation is just a blatant show of the fear and need for control that the Christian Coalition is run on. My values are moral and fair - but they are not of a Fundamental Christian nature. And I do not want it to become illegal to not have their brand of Christian values - it is a promised right from our forefathers that we are all free to have our own religion.