Why yes, yes it has been. And by a right wing Texas mega-church pastor, Robert Jeffress, who was interviewed (i.e., given a platform to speak hate) on Fox News by Bill O’Reilly. Oh but that’s only part of the story. In the Good Reverend’s own words:
There’s going to be a future world dictator, before Christ returns, who’s going to usurp people’s personal …rights. …He’s going to wage war against God’s people, he’s gonna change God’s laws and he’s going to do it without any opposition. And my question was, how’s he going to be able to pull that off? And my thesis is, people will have been conditioned long before the Antichrist comes to accept governmental overreach. And that’s what you’re seeing with President Obama right now.
Government overreach? Hmm. You mean like Bush’s screwed up, unfunded Medicare Part D Drug Plan that the ACA worked to fix by lowering costs? Or a war against a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 because “Shock and awe baby!” But I digress.
What are the terrible examples of government overreach to which the good pastor refers. Cuts to unemployment benefits? Proposed cuts and/or the elimination of Medicare and Social Security. Cuts to the EPA, the FDA, the CDC, OSHA and any other agency that helps protect Americans at work and at home? Damn, I guess LBJ and FDR and all those other Democrats (and a few Republicans – you know from the before Newt Gingrich version of the GOP) who helped pass the legislation that made our food supply a little safer, our health a little better and clean-up our air and water were agents of Satan, as well.
Oh, but it’s not just government overreach. You see Obama is persecuting Christians thorough both the ACA and his support for the (wait for it) “Gay Agenda.” Because you can’t properly set the table for the Anti-Christ until Christians are not permitted to legally discriminate against LGBT people.
The pastor said he’s based his conclusions on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which has extended health care coverage to millions of Americans, and the mandate requiring health insurers and employers who offer health insurance to cover some contraception costs.
“President Obama is without apology the most pro-abortion president in history, but what’s even worse, Bill, is we are being conditioned to accept that government has the right to persecute people of faith,” [Jeffress] said. […]
He said that Obama had targeted Christians and other religious people for his support for same-sex marriage, which the pastor said was destroying family life.
Guess we know what all those good Christian folks are going to be hearing from the pulpits of their monster churches this Fall come election season. Same as it ever was: “Vote Republican or go to hell!”
Was just reading that Target is dropping health insurance for its part time workers and giving each of them $500 a year to help with obamacare premiums. So we’re now one step closer to a true national health care system. I imagine this sort of thing will happen a lot going forward. Since their workers tend to be a bit younger, that should help the averages.
Most of those folks will likely be eligible for decent subsidies. Add the $500 and they will likely be able to get far better insurance – and far more choices – in the exchange.
But of course that won’t matter if the antichrist posesses them via the obamacare web sites and forces them to repeatedly abort themselves. Or something like that.
Yes and look out for those $666 premiums.
An 18 year old in Birmingham Alabama making $16,000 can get a silver level insurance policy via Obamacare for $45.00 a month, that has a deductible of $500 and an Out-of-Pocket max of $750.00 a year.
Which means that the 18 year old won’t have to worry about going bankrupt from one trip to the ER, or for any illness like an appendectomy.
Obamacare is truly evil.
He said that Obama had targeted Christians and other religious people for his support for same-sex marriage, which the pastor said was destroying family life.
At least here in NY, legalized same sex marriage hasn’t changed things much, if at all. Extremists still suck as much as they ever did.
Wondering whether the pastor’s thoughts are that the LGBT congregations tithe less than a straight family. He’s obviously a person who prefers to listen to those who cross his palms with silver than those who actually live according to the Christian faith.
Still my favorite: “Religion is God’s weakest link”
I suspect the story meant “due to his support” – or “for their opposition” – but I digress. What intrigued me about that passage was the mechanism. I keep hearing that argument, but it’s never spelled out – it’s assumed. How, exactly, is same-sex marriage “destroying family life”? Are gays recruiting heterosexuals? (And if so, why are they considering gay life superior to a good, Christian heterosexual nuclear family?) Do “gay germs” make straight couples sterile? Does an angry God take it out on America by destroying American families, along with all the hurricanes and tornadoes and locusts He sends? Does this dude think out gay people would be reproducing with opposite-sex partners more if only gay marriage were not legal?
Most likely I suspect he’s thinking that as society legitimizes gay relationships, some people will stop repressing their sexual orientation, abandon their miserable hetero marriages, and start living a life truer to themselves – which, as ignorant douchecanoes everywhere well know, cannot possibly include children or a stable family, because Ewww. And this whole scenario, clearly, is terrifying to people like him, probably due to their cowardice in dealing with their own stirrings. Every time I see a quote like this, I think: “Projection!”
I don’t think they’ve thought it out, but equal marriage does provide a model for equal marriage, if you know what I mean. there is no “godlike” head of household whom the wife is commanded to obey. could be very troublesome especially if the “subordinate” wives observe the equality for themselves
The lack of an obvious patriarch to run the household is a good point – but as with so many things in Wingnuttistan, “I don’t think they’ve thought it out” is also very, very likely. 🙂
I wonder about their mechanism too. And I wonder what they think the mechanisms were that led to multiple decades of high divorce rates, you know, back when life was good because we all lived in Mayberry. And how now it is armageddon time for family life because of same sex marriage?
Did you catch the study that just came out that looks at what factors explain why divorce is higher in AL an AK than in bluer states? It turns out the RW evangelicals are themselves are the problem:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/divorce-study_n_4639430.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
Why are we not surprised?
Christians are like egg-sucking dogs, and the only solution (I have tried them all, up to and including tying a dead chicken ’round its neck till it rots off) to an egg-sucking dog is to take it out back of the barn and shoot it.
No fear.
Congratulations! You’ve coined the 2014 cycle slogan for the Teajahdis.
OT, but youse [NJ second person plural] have no doubt heard that Cory Booker wasn’t attending Christie’s inauguration and thought it had to do with Bridgegate. The real reason is he knew he’d be busy digging his constituents’ cars out of the snow.
I never quite know what to say when I read stuff like this. I simply cannot relate in any way to a mind set / world view that entertains such bizarre fantasies. When it gets this crazy, it seems to be to be bordering on mental illness. And yet, otherwise rational people seem to indulge this stuff all the time. Personally, I don’t trust anyone who claims religious belief no matter their politics.
It isn’t just that this nutjob is spewing his religious bilge from a “megachurch” in Texas, but that he is given a national forum for his craziness on Fox “News”.
Elmer Gantry would be thrilled.
Jeff simply stating that Obama actions is different from the law of God and will of God.
My sense is that this nonsense is going to be limited (for once) to only the politicized entrepreneurial churches and not be a general evangelical phenomenon like some other “values” issues are.
The notion that Obama is the most pro-abortion President in history is worse than a lie. It’s a perverse and sick joke. It was only when the extremists like Todd Akin opened their mouth that anyone in either party began to counter the de facto rolling back of Roe v. Wade.
Jeffress is just spouting what brings the money into the collection plate from his self-frightened congregation.
It’s not so much what the folks are going to be hearing but how they are going to hear it this time around. Will they figure out that they are being lied to?