Right-wing D.C. prayer group pushing Trump administration's anti-sex agenda
Hat tip, Joe.My.God: Trump Cabinet Bible Study Group Pushes Legislators, Staff, And Lobbyists To Stop Committing Masturbation
Right-wing D.C. prayer group pushing Trump administration's anti-sex agenda
What separation of church and state? Religious right is pushing its dogma hard behind the scenes in Washington
AMANDA MARCOTTE
MAY 23, 2019 5:50PM (UTC)
Recently, a congressional staffer going about his business on the Hill encountered a couple of people who handed him a pamphlet with the scintillating title "Sexual Sin and the Aphrodisiac of Power." Sadly, this was not a post-#MeToo effort to discourage sexual harassment in the halls of Congress. Instead, the document implored "legislators, staff and lobbyists" to adopt a strict fundamentalist view of sexuality, which holds that there is no legitimate expression of sex including masturbation outside "the confines and commitment of a husband and a wife (a male and a female) in the bonds of matrimony."
Most urban dwellers, in Washington or elsewhere, have had these chance encounters with religious proselytizers trying to lure in the lost, lonely and emotionally vulnerable. But this was no random encounter with some true believer or doorbell-ringer. These folks were working for
Capitol Ministries, a powerful right-wing group that is laser-focused on founder Ralph Drollinger's goal of recruiting public leaders and leaning on them to impose the group's far-right views on a public that overwhelmingly rejects them.
Furthermore, the group has been quite successful so far. As the pamphlet indicated, sponsors of the Capitol Ministries Bible Studies includes seven members of President Trump's Cabinet, the head of NASA, and Vice President Mike Pence. According to Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way, who has been monitoring Capitol Ministries for years now, the group has weekly Bible studies for House members and senators, as well as one for Cabinet officials.
"[Drollinger] uses this really rare and privileged access he has by doing things like a Bible study with members of the Cabinet to tell these powerful public officials that the Bible mandates right-wing economic, social and environmental policies," Montgomery told Salon. ... This is evidence, he continued, that the Trump administration is the culmination of the religious right's takeover of the Republican Party over the last few decades."
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