BY SIKIVU HUTCHINSON

Over the past few decades the universe has been very good for American religious zealotry. While right-wing conservatives were busy savaging the global sway of Muslim jihadists, secular liberal humanism has been under siege in the U.S.

Under George W. Bush the separation between church and state has all but evaporated, eroded by faith-based initiative subsidies that sucked up millions of federal dollars with virtually zero accountability.

The scientific community became the stepchild of health public policy and global warming was ridiculed as leftist fiction. Abstinence-only sex education became the standard in many middle and high school health curricula, defying research-based evidence that it was a dangerous sham.

Christian evangelical “mega-churches” flaunted their tax-exempt status, raking in thousands in contributions from geriatric retirees and other poverty-line true believers on money pits like the Trinity Broadcasting Network. And a New York Times poll indicated that it would be easier to elect an African American male than an atheist of any extraction. 

The election of Barack Obama seemed to signal a potential shift in the Christian fundamentalist regime. Yet although Obama has lifted the Bush ban on embryonic stem cell research, his “new” spin on the faith-based initiative swindle is yet another egregious concession to faith-based bigotry. Obama, of course, rode into office courting evangelicals, infamously appointing Rick Warren to give his inaugural convocation.

Ever the political triangulator, Obama shrewdly reached out to fundamentalist America in an attempt to improve the abysmal showing of Democrats among Christian fundamentalists in 2000 and 2004.

Obama has apparently recanted one of his campaign pledges to rescind the most objectionable feature of Bush’s faith-based policy—the provision that religious organizations can actively discriminate in hiring those who don’t subscribe to their faith. His capitulation to the most noxious elements of the religious right has elicited widespread criticism from secular-progressive factions of the coalition that elected him. 

Secular activists have long tried to reclaim public discourse from the Christian lobby and rescind federal entitlements to so-called mega-churches that have become cottage industries for products, marketing, cushy jobs and other perks to well-connected donors and congregants.

The influence of religious special interests on public policy and national discourse has its roots in the Reagan-Bush administration’s calculated overtures to far right propagandists such as the Moral Majority, the anti-abortion outfit Operation Rescue and Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition. Consequently, the notion that faith-based organizations, primarily those that are Christian and Jewish — as it is doubtful that Wiccan and indigenous African religions are dining so gluttonously at the public trough — should drive public policy on social welfare and be entitled to tons of federal funding was one of the Bush administration’s signature policy issues and calling cards to the Religious Right.

Now Obama has signaled that he is willing to further undermine the separation of church and state and give religious organizations a free pass to outlaw gays, non-believers and other heretics from their employment. 

The Orange County Board of Supervisors’ recent rejection of Planned Parenthood’s contract to provide services for health education is indicative of yet another dangerous incursion of religious dogma into public policy. After giving Planned Parenthood the boot, the O.C. Supervisors voted instead to award the contract to a faith-based family services outfit that counsels pregnant women not to have abortions.

Rising teen pregnancy rates, HIV/AIDS and STD contraction rates and sexual assault rates illustrate the critical need for secular health services for an Orange County population that is now predominantly Latino and Asian.

The denial of the Planned Parenthood contract comes on the heels of a national poll which concluded that more Americans are moving away from religion. If this trend continues, it may precipitate an urgently needed backlash against the regime, which has put a Middle Age stranglehold on 21st century innovation and public health and wellness long enough.