Blackwell’s Do-Minions

I’ve talked about Rod Parsley before, and I’ve talked about Kenneth Blackwell. These two are scary, scary individuals, and it’s even more frightening that the republican Blackwell is running for governor and is a good buddy of Parsley and is very much a favorite of the religious right. He’s one of the big supporters of Reformation Ohio, a “religious” movement to recruit voters and bring Ohio “back to Jesus”. I’m worried about their perceptions of bringing Ohio “back to Jesus” and I’m concerned about their collective predisposition toward legislating behavior.

Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultery, Gustave Dore

Blackwell is a contender for the governor’s seat in 2006 and his backers will definitely call in their markers if he wins. These people were behind the defeat of equal rights in 2004’s Issue 1, they claim to be the “moral majority”, and they claim to know God’s plan for this state and this country.

I’ve been thinking about this one for a while, and I’m not sure that Blackwell, Parsley and the rest of them are on the right side of the coin on this. I haven’t found anywhere in the New Testament that specifically says that everyone has to follow the same rules and laws, but I have found several spots that have said that Christians are called to follow Christ’s teachings. In other words, Christ’s law is separate from the law of the land, and those that follow him are called to follow Christ’s law _in addition_ to the law of the land. Christians are called to be set apart from non-Christians by following Christ’s law, not by forcing non-Christians to follow the same laws. This is how Christ called his followers to be examples for everyone and to be forces for good in a not-so-great world.

Blackwell and his dominionist buddies don’t see it that way. They prefer dogmatic colonization. They look at charity as an option and they look at other people’s lives with a critical eye that says “how can I change this person to be _more like me?_” Their ideology is a mixture of greed and fear, with an emphasis on an imaginary moral superiority. Unfortunately it seems that Blackwell may win the Republican primary, which means that he’ll be on the ballot and we’ll be hearing much more about him and much more from Parsley and the cadre of Reformation Ohio preachers.

This isn’t a merely a case of differing theologies. This is a situation where a group will attempt to impose a twisted theology on an entire state through law. It’s not about conservatism, it’s about radical religious groups controlling a puppet candidate who may become a puppet leader.

Why would this be a bad thing? With his past actions Blackwell has established that he’s going to promote his value system, even when it’s to the detriment of the voting public. It doesn’t exactly scream _Christian_, but then again Ken’s never taken the whole “Love thy neighbor” schtick seriously. When you enforce your beliefs on unwilling parties, you’re not practicing Christianity as it was originally taught.

Take the image above: Gustave Dore did a fabulous job depicting the downtrodden adulterous woman and Jesus protecting her from the “law-abiding” lynch party bent on enforcing a merciless law. If you [read the story](http://www.carm.org/kjv/John/john_8.htm), you’ll find a Jesus that is critical of those who would stone a woman who has supposedly commited adultery. He admonishes them to first judge themselves and determine whether or not they were fit to pass judgement on this woman, essentially saying that they weren’t morally superior to her and were in no position to judge her.

This story has a very modern translation, whether it translates to equal rights for homosexuals or the right to reproductive autonomy for women, or any number of issues that Blackwell and his supporters would like to force on us. Blackwell and his supporters want to mandate their particular brand of morality shows an intolerance toward other belief systems; they will go against the very ideals that created this country.

What would Ohio look like under Kenneth Blackwell? I don’t want to even think about it, but I’ve been forced to with the possibility that he will win the primary and the election. It won’t look pretty–it will put gays and women at a disadvantage, taking away even more civil rights. We’ll go deaf from the massive sucking sound of an even more powerful brain-drain as the young and college-educated flee for more tolerant states. Our educational system will plummet past mediocrity and fall into an even worse state than its present one. The only people that will benefit from filling the governor’s mansion with Kenneth Blackwell are the the Rod Parsleys of the state.