Among the trendier gripes about why liberals lack power in American politics is that there isn't enough tolerance for America's faithful. A big problem, Rabbi Michael Lerner recently sighed, is that "the Left's hostility to religion and spirituality has become such a major stumbling block to the chances that progressive forces will ever win enough power" to make a difference. So the new advice, from Hillary Clinton to the New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook, is: Stop making snickering remarks at Jerry Falwell's expense. Cheer the innovation of $2 billion in federal tax money carted off to religious groups last year. Drag the "Left Behind" series into your Amazon shopping cart.
And listen, I should add, to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative mouthpiece the Washington Times and self-proclaimed Messiah. Moon's warning to America is that we must have sex the way he entreats us, in the positions he has designated, or else forfeit our "love organs," as he dubs them, to the dark lord Satan.
We all know the Right wants to decide what we can't do in the bedroom. But no one ever seems to ask what the Right wants us to do instead. "After the act of love," read the instructions from the Rev. Moon's conservative Family Federation, "both spouses should wipe their sexual areas with the Holy Handkerchief. Hang the handkerchief[s] to dry naturally and keep them eternally. They must be kept individually labeled and should never be laundered and mixed up."
[... or maybe religion could be cast root and branch into the fires of history and we could get on with taking care of each other.]
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