I’ve had the song “Jesus He Knows Me” stuck in my head for a few days now. The song, originally by the British band Genesis, came out in 1992, though I’ve been playing the 2023 cover by Ghost.
“Jesus He Knows Me” is a take-down of for-profit evangelical preachers. You know, the ones who tell their followers that they can get closer to God by giving up their life savings. Meanwhile, the preacher gets closer to God in a private jet.
I just watched the Genesis video for the first time in probably 20 years on YouTube (preceded without irony by an ad urging men to trade porn for the Bible). It is much tamer than the Ghost video for the song, which is NSFW and most definitely intended to be offensive.
The song was timely in 1992 and it is timely now. One could argue it’s even more so now with evangelical Christians who have embraced fascism happily running the U.S. government and dismantling it at the same time. But in 1992, the Christofascist takeover was already underway.
In 1992, George H.W. Bush was President after spending eight years as vice president under Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who fully opened the door for evangelical Christians, giving them unprecedented governmental access and power. Prior to this, the whole “separation of church and state” thing was, well, more of a thing. Under Reagan, it became much less of a thing, though only for Christianity.
One of the lines from the song is, “I believe in the family with my ever-loving wife beside me. She doesn’t know about my girlfriend or the man I met last night.” This perfectly sums up the hypocrisy of Christofascism, which is so blatant and so obvious. And yet, millions of people either don’t see it or pretend they don’t see it based, in large part, on whether it personally benefits them.
And who benefits? White, heterosexual, cisgender men, mostly. White, heterosexual, cisgender women benefit, too, though indirectly. They are protected by existing under the umbrella of white male power. Whether that protection is real or perceived does not seem to matter when it comes to white, heterosexual, cisgender women voting against their own interests, such as abortion rights or when it comes to voting for men for president who proudly commit sexual assault. It’s a form of Stockholm Syndrome, really.
Nowhere is this more clearly on display than in the Supreme Court, which holds a 6 to 3 Christofascist majority. This means they can, and do, rule however the fuck they want regardless of pesky things like law or legal precedent or even basic human decency.
Take, for example, their recent decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor to allow parents to opt their children out of having any books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes used in their public school educations.
“One very likely consequence of Mahmoud is that schools will be very reluctant to teach any lesson that mentions homosexuality, transgender people or anything else that touches on queer sexuality or gender identity,” reports Vox. “Mahmoud is likely to impose a Florida-style ‘Don’t Say Gay’ regime on every public school classroom in America.”
In case you need a refresher, the “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibits teaching about LGBTQ+ stuff in Florida’s public schools.
The kicker is that parents can sue if their kids are exposed to the dangers of two people loving each other and/or living authentically. The Mahmoud decision will allow parents to sue even in states that don’t have Florida’s bigoted and restrictive laws on the books.
Justice Samuel Alito based his decision on some quite tortured logic.
“Alito argues that the books at issue are objectionable, not just because they feature LGBTQ+ characters, but because they suggest that certain aspects of queer culture should be ‘celebrated,’” reports Vox. “One of the contested books is a medieval fairy tale about a prince who marries a knight. According to Alito…this book is objectionable not because it includes a same-sex wedding, but because it portrays this wedding as a good thing.”
In other words, seeing gay love portrayed as positive is harmful to a child’s fragile psyche. Now, if after the prince and the knight said “I do” someone burst into the venue with an assault rifle and murdered everyone, that would presumably be a fine celebration of both first and second amendment rights.
Using this method we could make a book like “And Tango Makes Three” palatable to conservatives by having the two male penguins who want to have a baby together suffocate in an oil spill. Or how about rewriting “Mommy, Mama and Me” to be about social services “rescuing” a child from lesbian parents and placing that child into an overcrowded foster home like God intended?
At the end of the day, the Supreme Court “has decided that in order to accommodate one identity group — religious conservatives — schools should be hypercautious about teaching books that feature members of another identity group — LGBTQ+ people,” reports Vox.
And while the plaintiffs included Muslim parents, make no mistake, the same people who want to erase LGBTQ+ people want to erase Muslims, too. You don’t get spared by partnering with Christofascists. You just make them stronger just in time to come for you, too.
