keeping AN EYE glued ON

Are you female, gay, non-Christian or (Goddess forbid) all three?  

If so, be smart and keep at least one eye glued always on the hard Christian Right, for they just can’t wait to crumble you into tiny bits.    

For your reading ease, I have snipped away all but the major meat of an article posted today in The Daily Beast called “The $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy You Haven’t Heard Of”:  

Are you female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state? Get to know The Gathering, a shadowy, powerful network of hard-right funders meeting Thursday in Florida.

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... [I]f you’re female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state, your life has been affected by it.

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The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders.

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[T]he people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest. They’re probably behind that, too.

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The Gathering is as close to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” as you’re likely to find.

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What is The Gathering?  ... an annual event at which many of the wealthiest conservative to hard-right evangelical philanthropists in America—representatives of the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Green, Maclellan, Ahmanson, Friess, plus top leaders of the National Christian Foundation—meet with evangelical innovators with fresh ideas on how to evangelize the globe.

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 [The Gathering is] a global vision that involves the eventual eradication of all ...  belief systems that might compete with The Gathering’s hard-right version of Christianity.

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The Gathering was conceived in 1985 by a small band of friends at the Arlington, Virginia, retreat center known as The Cedars, which is run by the evangelical network that hosts the annual National Prayer Breakfast. This stealthy network is known as The Family or The Fellowship.

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A lot of these issues are pretty unsurprising: fight the gays, fight abortion. But ... research also shows that these Christian Right funders are behind a lot of climate denial.

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Yup. Over the last decade, the NCF has pumped over $140 million into groups that oppose action to curb climate change and portray concern over global warming as part of a satanic conspiracy to impose a tyrannical “One World Order” or “New World Order.”

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... the story of the politicized religious right is one of the biggest untold stories of our time. It’s the story of how a covert political movement, driven by a well-organized, -funded, and committed minority, has perturbed the political arc of the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation on Earth—and how it has subverted the national dialogue.

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I'm annoyed at the basic dishonesty of religio/political phenomena such as The Gathering that lay claim to the Christian tradition but ignore its underlying mandate of truth-telling.         

Go HERE to read the whole article.