The half truth and nothing but...

I have argued here that the Religious Right is inherently dishonest. The smart ones know that they can't be honest with the public. They admit their full agenda. I've seen the fundamentalist Christians use this strategy in several countries. They are deceitful.

Here is an example. Now it's an old one but it illustrates the point. This is from something I wrote a few years ago. But it is an example of where one fundamentalist minister openly told people how to be deceitful. Rev. Richard Angwin was, and probably still is, a fundamentalist Baptist minister. He was active in the Religious Right. When he moved to the Minneapolis area run the Temple Baptist Church. And one of his first activities was to get the local gay rights ordinance repealed.

Angwin succeeded and then travelled the US to teach other fundamentalists how to push their political agenda. Well he was in my area giving these lectures on two different days. The first day I went to take notes. Rev. Angwin knew me and he knew I disagreed with him. So he had me thrown out of the meeting. That required a back up plan. So the next day, at the second seminar, I had a friend attend and tape record everything. And here is some of what Rev. Angwin was telling his born-again crowd.

Angwin stressed how important it was that the fundamentalists NOT tell the public their entire agenda. Instead he wanted to concentrate on homosexuals because if he stressed his moral plans for everyone they would not accept his politics. He said he didn't just want to strip homosexuals of rights but had to hide the rest. "Don't say, 'I hate cigarettes, liquor, card-playing, wine, women, song and dance..." Now you may think he's just being amusing. I knew Rev. Angwin. He really did think smoking was a sin, drinking was a sing, playing solitaire is a sin, rock and roll is a sin, dancing is a sin, etc.

He told his fellow fundies "A loof of the people who voted for me are the same bigoted idiots who go out and have an affair on their wife at the same time. You can't get on a chair and say why you're against card-playing and how you're going to shut down all the movie houses and that type of thing. Or how you'd like to run all the Lutheran pastors clear out on their ears, you don't want them around."

Those are verbatim quotes from Rev. Angwin which I just happened across while cleaning out some files.