I just saw the movie The Handmaid’s Tale, and I highly recommend it! It presents a frightening future, where the religious right takes control of the government and the US becomes just like the middle east. In this future, pollution has made most women sterile, but the few that can actually reproduce have no choice but to do it. They have to procreate because they have been “chosen by god” for a special mission, and those who refuse and try to run, or otherwise sin against the state are killed by hanging.

It seems farfetched, but like all good science fiction, it serves to illustrate a point. The fact that religious conservatives want to outlaw abortion, contraceptives, and recreational sex illustrates clearly that they see people as instruments to the will of the god they believe in, not as individuals, and that they are willing to use the power of the state to enforce that will. If we ever allowed them to be in power, that is exactly what they would do. The middle east is a perfect example of what religious conservatives want, and if you think christian conservatives could not do that if given the chance, remember the middle ages and the inquisition. A “country under god” is barbaric, whether the god in question is allah, jesus, xenu, or any other god people care to invent. The reason is the same, religious conservatives are people who never learned to distinguish reality from fiction. That’s why they don’t see a difference between a scientific theory like evolution, and an arbitrary claim like intelligent design. Letting somebody with such a cognitive impediment make the rules is a recipe for disaster.