For God and guns, against gays
Lincoln wouldn’t recognize the Republican Party in his native Kentucky
county
By Berry Craig
[1-11-06]
HODGENVILLE, Ky. – The Republican Party chair in Abraham
Lincoln’s native Larue County says she’s in the GOP "because the Republican
Party Platform stands for and or supports my Christian beliefs."
Kim Jefferson says Honest Abe’s party is right on the
Three Gs: God, Gays and Guns. Pistol-packing piety is big in the Bluegrass
State.
"The Republican party platform is pro-life, it is pro 2nd
amendment and it is for marriage between one man and one woman the way that
GOD intended it to be," Jefferson wrote in the Kentucky Republican Voice, a
Bluegrass State online newsletter. "It is also for prayer in schools and it
supports the Boy-scouts. The Democratic party does not support the above
statement."
Hence, Jefferson added, "…I and many other registered
Republicans are giving a mandate to the Republican Party of LaRue County,
the Republican Party of KY; and the National Republican Party to stand for
those issues."
Lincoln, the first Republican president, was born near
Hodgenville, the Larue County seat, in 1809. His birth site is a national
shrine.
The county GOP plays up Lincoln, Kentucky’s most famous
son, on its Internet website,
www.laruegop.com. "I Pray You Live Long and Prosper and Please Vote
Republican," is Jefferson’s greeting to visitors from cyberspace.
Lincoln went down in history as one of America’s greatest
presidents. He led the Union to victory in the Civil War and fought to end
slavery.
It is impossible to say for sure what Lincoln would think
of his home county’s GOP chief. The Railsplitter President was not a
"born-again" Christian. Though he was spiritual, he didn’t belong to a
church.
Lincoln probably wouldn’t have said he joined the GOP
"because the Republican Party Platform stands for and or supports my
Christian beliefs." His opposition to human bondage led him to the GOP,
which was founded on anti-slavery principles in 1854.
Anyway, I doubt Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut
Republican, knows Kim Jefferson. But he evidently meant GOP holy warriors
like her when he told the New York Times that the"Republican Party of
Lincoln has become a party of theocracy."
Also in the Times, the GOP’s John Danforth, a
former Missouri senator, warned that"Republicans have transformed our party
into the political arm of conservative Christians." An Episcopal priest,
Danforth added, "….While religions are free to advocate for their own
sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to
hold together as one people a very diverse country."
Religious Rightists – "The Christian Taliban," a sociology
teacher at my school calls them –mostly rule the Republican roost in
Kentucky. But the GOP of Lincoln and Liberty – and liberalism – is all but
gone almost everywhere, according to Jesus is Not a Republican: The
Religious Right’s War on America, an anthology edited by Clint Willis
and Nate Hardcastle.
"The Religious Right in recent years has allied itself
with the Republican Party," Willis wrote in the book’s introduction. "The
party’s leadership in turn has allied itself with the most powerful
institutions among us – in particular, the huge multinational corporations
that increasingly shape and even dominate our culture and our lives.
"Together, certain Christian fundamentalists, Republican
politicians and corporate leaders have worked hard to impose their versions
of Jesus on the rest of us; they exploit the name of Jesus, making it a
marketing tool for power and profit….What do I mean when I say Jesus is not
a Republican? I mean that Jesus as I imagine and know him would not support
policies that profit the strong at the expense of the weak."
Come to think of it, "policies that profit the strong at
the expense of the weak" sounds like slavery fan Jeff Davis, not the Great
Emancipator.
– Berry Craig is a professor of
history at the West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah.
He and his wife, Melinda, are members of the Witherspoon Society.
