One of the familiar and idiotic claims we see from the religious right is that God is “lifting his hand of protection” from America for … well, fill in the blank — homosexuality, abortion, feminism, you name it. In fact, we heard it during the founding period from ministers warning against the passage of the Constitution, which they viewed as a godless document. Here’s Gary Bauer’s version:

Bauer: As a society I think if we continue down this road of the destruction of a million innocent unborn children over a year we really do risk God taking His hand of protection off of our country. That would be tragic; it could very well mean the end of the American experiment in liberty under God. I always look at that issue, if somebody is wrong on that, they might be right on taxes, the size of government, national defense and so forth but if they are wrong on this I have found over the years that they end up in many cases being unreliable on those other things. So I would recommend that as being key.

Second of all this issue about the definition of marriage, marriage has been between a man and a woman in Western civilization for several thousand years, every state that has voted on this issue wants to keep it a man and a woman, but there is absolutely no doubt that if the wrong people are elected or re-elected this coming November we are going to have forced on us either by the courts or by these politicians a fundamental redefinition of the meaning of marriage, which I think would have just devastating impacts on our society…

Once we get a court ruling from a Supreme Court that says that under some provision in the Constitution that we’ve never thought authorized this we’d have to allow same-sex marriage, there would be no constitutional grounds that that court could say we’re going to keep illegal multiple marriages or group marriages or polygamy or a variety of other types of marriage that exist in other parts of the world and increasingly exist in Western countries in Europe where there are large Muslim populations, so this will follow as surely as night follows day. Anybody that thinks it will stop just with same-sex marriage either doesn’t understand the law or doesn’t understand that demands of secular forces that want to redefine American society.