Why does the religious right demand government interference in matters of sexuality and yet eagerly block government involvement in matters of welfare? By eliminating government assistance, they hope to force the public to turn to the church.

When you’re in the Peace

Corps, you expect culture shock. But it’s generally not supposed to come from

your countrymen. Among many foreign experiences I had in Honduras a decade ago,

interpreting for a brigade of fundamentalist Christian doctors was perhaps the

most disturbing.

They set up their operations

in our dance hall, triage at the entrance and stations of doctors inside. They

brought enough free medicine to put Pfizer on notice and dispensed it

generously to the hordes who had walked up to four hours seeking a few moments

of attention to make up for a lifetime without medical care. This, of course,

seemed a right and noble thing.

But then I noticed that, in

addition to the expected diagnostic questions, the Spanish-speakers manning

triage kept asking “Es Ud. evangelico o catolico?” Tragically, only the first

answer got you into the queue. While I quickly rushed out to let my neighbors

know that they were all evangelicals for the day, I was horrified that these

good samaritans deemed this an acceptable way to ration their aid. Here was

public assistance with strings attached;

a foreshadowing of when church becomes state. This may have happened far

away in a “banana republic”, but our Banana Republicans seem determined to bring

this home to stay.

Weeks ago, readers of this

site were rightly fuming when Congress threw another $50 million down the

abstinence-only wishing well. Right-wing intentions to police sexuality by

restricting abortion, blocking access to birth control and opposing marriage

equality are well known. Equally clear are their desires to eviscerate social

assistance, visible through efforts to block a public option for health care,

privatize education by making public schools undesirable and cut assistance to

people in need.

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Much ink has been spilled and

many explanations offered for why the right seems determined to demand

government interference in matters of sexuality and so eager to block

government involvement in matters of welfare. They care a lot about who we’re

sleeping with but it’s on us to afford buying a bed.

This seeming contradiction has

been characterized, effectively in my view, as stemming from beliefs about the

very nature of the relationship between citizen and state. It is a relationship that can be and

indeed is often likened to that of a parent and child. If you believe that the

parental (read: governmental) role is to enforce a worldview of adherence to

authority, individualism and self-reliance, these inconsistencies — and let’s

face it the corresponding ones we hold dear on the left — make a bit more

sense.

But what if, while true, this

explanation is just part of the tale?

What seem like two

contradictory missions, one for government intrusion and the other against

government involvement may actually prove one coherent and effective strategy.

By eliminating (or at least drastically crippling) government assistance,

proponents of conservative ideology force the public to turn to the most likely

remaining source of aid: the church. Houses of worship have always been an

incredible haven for those in dire need — but now in too many communities they

are the only refuge.

Current conditions,

especially as state governments are ripping more seams in our threadbare social

safety net, mean a continuation of this trend. When public schools are too

horrible to consider, people enroll their children in the cheapest private

option: parochial schools. When food stamps, WIC and the like dry up, people

turn to food pantries almost always operated by religious institutions.

And as they spend more

time in certain kinds of churches and, perhaps eventually as a requirement to

receive this aid, they will absorb and then transmit the moral beliefs of the

religious right. When free clinics and non-profit health services can no longer

pay their rent or their staff — will churches become the provider of last

resort? We may find ourselves in triage struggling to assert religious beliefs

we don’t hold or at least aren’t interested in offering up as a pre-condition

for assistance. Some day soon it may not only become even harder to get an

abortion, you may need to declare your opposition to it just to get

bread.