The march toward theocracy

The Alabama Supreme Court on embryos as "children." The bullying and death of non-binary teen Nex Benedict. Alito's screed against marriage equality. Project 2025. And more.

If anyone needs convincing that dark jokes about “The Handmaid’s Tale” sadly never get tired, they only have to look back at this week.

Over the last seven days we saw more signs of the march—the determination by an array of forces—toward a Christian theocracy in the U.S., one with the same characteristics of theocracies in the Middle East and elsewhere: government policy and laws dictated by religious tenants, accompanied by an embrace of violence to enforce those tenants.

A Christian nationalist movement has surged into power in the GOP in a matter of a few short years—after predictions back in the early 2010s that the evangelical movement was dying a slow death and had less influence in Republican politics—all supercharged by Donald Trump as a transactional president.

Today, the current speaker of the House believes that God has spoken to him, anointed him, and dubbed him the new Moses, who will soon have his “Red Sea moment.”

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So as jarring as it is, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Alabama Supreme Court ruled this week that embryos are children, a ruling that shut down IVF clinics in the state and caused chaos and turmoil for couples who are in the process of creating families. Nor, in context, should it be shocking—if horrifying—that the chief justice, Tom Parker, wrote in his decision:

Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.

Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.

This was all brought on by Trump, as President Biden quickly pointed out in slamming him. The justices Trump put on the U.S. Supreme Court tipped the balance and overturned Roe, which allowed the theocrats on the Alabama Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision to deem personhood as existing in a tiny frozen tube and further strip the reproductive rights of citizens. Other states with theocratic high courts will follow suit.

The majority of Americans support abortion rights, making it an issue that is costing the GOP in elections. IVF, however, has near-universal support by the American public. Trump’s advisor and pollster Kellyanne Conway, warning Republicans about how the overturning of Roe would impact them, went to Capitol Hill with poll results last year showing 86% of Americans support IVF. This Alabama ruling, and how it ties back to the GOP and Trump, is a disaster for Republicans.

That’s the good news: democracy can save us from theocracy. But not if the authoritarian forces get the fix in first, using gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the Senate, and other avenues that don’t reflect majority representation by the people. And remember: theocracy is about ruling from the minority, imposing a harsh, violent reality on the majority.

It inspires citizens who follow the theocratic dictates to use violence on others, emboldening them, and it relies on law enforcement to take the side of the theocrats. The terrible death of a non-binary student in Oklahoma, Nex Benedict, which received national attention this week, bore that out.

The 16-year-old student died on February 8, the day after reportedly being attacked and beaten by students in the girls bathroom of their high school in Owasso, a suburb of Tulsa. Nex apparently went into the bathroom with another student who is trans and, according to the Daily Beast, “encountered three older girls, and a physical altercation ensued.” Nex suffered a blow to the head and fell to the ground. No one called an ambulance, and Nex—the victim—was suspended for two weeks.

The police have claimed that the death—coming the day after Nex was taken by their mother to the hospital and discharged—was not the result of the head injury. The state Medical Examiner’s Office, however, hasn’t officially reported the cause of death.

According to Nex’s mother, Nex was bullied for months. “I said ‘you’ve got to be strong and look the other way, because these people don’t know who you are’,” Sue Benedict told The Independent.

The bullying began months after far-right Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill that required all public schools to only allow students to use restrooms that adhered to the sex listed on their birth certificates.

We don’t yet know exactly what happened to Nex Benedict, as more details need to come out. But what is clear is that an atmosphere of hate, inspired by religious extremism, ensued. That state-sanctioned atmosphere encourages violence—vigilantism by those carrying out the moral decree—and emboldens authorities and law enforcement to support those who engage in that violence rather than the victims of hate. That is how theocracy works.

This same week, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a five-page screed once again attacking the Obergefell marriage equality ruling of 2015. It is clear that Alito and Clarence Thomas are pushing the other conservatives on the court to overturn that ruling—and they’re not going to stop, not until they get what they want.

The statement by Alito was issued in a case the court declined to hear—unanimously, including Alito—brought by the Missouri attorney general, a Christian nationalist.

The case revolved around a lesbian who sued her employer for discrimination. Her attorney, during jury selection, turned away jurors who admitted to being antigay based on their religious beliefs. The judge allowed it—as would be the case with any juror admitting bias—and prosecutors objected.

But the Missouri courts, including the Missouri Supreme Court, turned away the argument. So Bailey took it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which also declined to hear the case—but not without Alito putting out his five-page statement saying he voted to decline to hear the case only based on technical grounds, and warning that the case “exemplifies the danger” of the Obergefell ruling:

Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be labeled as bigots and treated as such by the government.

Alito, who of course led the charge on overturning Roe, reflects the thrust of the theocratic drive. Citizens have the right in a democracy to believe whatever they want about homosexuality, however wrong-headed. But where the law provides, they cannot discriminate against others based on those beliefs, whether or not they claim the beliefs are grounded in religion. It’s the same for discriminating against someone based on race or because they belong to a minority religion.

In the states, Christian nationalists see Alito and Thomas sending a clear message—and they’re hoping to get marriage equality back to the Supreme Court. In Tennessee, the governor signed a law on Wednesday that allows public officials to refuse to solemnize same-sex marriages:

The measure, HB 878, is less than half a page-long and simply states that public officials “shall not be required to solemnize a marriage.” Those who can newly refuse include judges, county clerks and government officials. The law went into effect immediately on Wednesday.

Since the measure doesn’t say that same-sex couples can be denied a license, some advocates saw it as a stunt because couples can go anywhere to have their marriages performed. Still, it’s another message that gays and lesbians are second-class citizens who government officials have a right to refuse interaction with. Per CNN:

Camilla Taylor, deputy legal director for litigation for Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal advocacy group, said that the law is an effort to “roll back recent progress by the LGBTQ community.”

“Tennessee House Bill 878 would be patently unconstitutional,” Taylor said in a statement to CNN. “Public officials don’t get to assume public office and then pick and choose which members of the public to serve.”

And it opens the door as well to turning away interfaith couples and interracial couples. Once you say government officials don’t have to serve people based on religious beliefs, where do you draw the line? This, again, is theocracy.

And that’s what Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for autocracy embraced by Trump allies and the Trump campaign—before it began distancing itself after much media attention—is all about. This week, journalist Anne-Christine d’Adesky came on to my SiriusXM program to talk about her exposé about Project 2025, having formed the group StoptheCoup2025.org.

She traced Project 2025’s money back to the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo—who installed all the conservative justices on the Supreme Court—and focused on his and Project 2025’s connections to the extreme, secretive, right-wing sect within the Catholic Church, Opus Dei, which is currently waging a battle against the more liberal-minded Pope Francis:

According to Leo watchdogs, his Catholicism is the key to his political activism. Leo is a knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Catholic lay organization with 12th-century roots. Leo is also linked to Opus Dei and sits on its board.

…In October 2022, the Washington, DC, branch of Opus Dei bestowed its highest honor on Leo, the John Paul II New Evangelization Award, for his long support of their work. In presentations to a Benedictine school, Leo described his faith mission as a battle with “barbarians, secularists, and bigots” that represents nothing less than war with the devil. “Woke liberals” are the earthly enemy, in his view…

According to Leo watchdogs, Project 2025 can be seen as part of Leo’s spiritual ‘Work'— his ongoing personal pastoral mission—to remake America as a Christian nation, under God’s rule. That is the long-term vision, one explicitly embraced by several Project 2025 authors. As a former Leo confidant put it, “Opus Dei believers do not only disagree with the separation of church and state, they believe in church over state.”

So, Project 2025 is not just a plan to cement autocracy and dictatorship in the U.S.; it’s about theocratic autocracy.

All the signs—and the plans—for theocracy are here, as the GOP is saying the quiet part out loud. But as I stated earlier, the good news is that democracy can save us from theocracy.

That means we have to get off the diversions about the president’s age and other issues—even vital issues about foreign policy, which people should of course voice opinions about while still keeping in context. The reality of a Trump presidency and a GOP House and Senate will be disastrous for everyone. Winning in November is gravely important right now.