Fundamentalists Infiltrating Local Governments: WaPo

[NachosFlandersStyle]

Long read in the Washington Post today about Ottawa County, MI, where a coordinated effort by religious conservatives resulted in a takeover of the county board of commissioners. Now services for 300,000 residents are on the chopping block on that basis of paranoid right-wing rhetoric. Here's a gift link for those who don't subscribe:

https://wapo.st/45fqyTk

From the article, which follows a health department employee:

Spoiler

"Alberda had already endured months of scorn from the new commissioners, who had publicly accused her of promoting abortion and sexualizing children. What she’d been doing was her job, which required her to talk about birth control, sexually transmitted infections, abstinence and consent. She met with high school students, migrant farmworkers, teens in juvenile detention and people struggling with addiction.

In her 21 years at the health department, the county’s teen pregnancy rate had decreased by 76 percent and is the fourth-lowest among Michigan’s 83 counties. The abortion rate for Ottawa County during the same period fell by 18 percent, according to state data.

The county’s successes, though, were colliding with the fears of many Christian conservatives that they were losing the culture wars; that their faith and families were under siege. The new board members and their backers saw Pride flags — which had become a common sight in stores along Ottawa’s Lake Michigan shore — as markers of a society that they believed celebrated sex, promiscuity and perversion."

Matt Trewhella, the Wisconsin anti-abortion nut, also makes an appearance. I've come to believe he's one of the must-watch figures on the far right today; he's got his hooks in all sorts of nasty stuff.

Spoiler

"The group’s leaders drew inspiration from Matthew Trewhella, a Wisconsin-based pastor who preaches a version of Christianity that focuses on using politics and the law to purify the community of evildoers and sin...In 2013, Trewhella self-published a book called “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which argues that low-level elected officials — “lesser magistrates” — have a sacred duty to oppose higher authorities who attempt to enforce immoral or anti-Christian laws....More recently, some anti-maskers and election deniers have embraced Trewhella’s views. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former president Donald Trump’s national security adviser and an influential proponent of disproven election fraud theories, has praised Trewhella’s book as a “masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist tyranny.”

Heather Alberda says she got into public health to counter the myths and silence that surrounded sex when she was a teen in a fundamentalist church, and now, for all her good work, her reward is elected officials accusing her of pedophilia. Really recommend the article and the others in the series; it's a good look at the way these views creep into local governments.

 

 

 

[Ozlsn]

On 8/24/2023 at 8:28 AM, NachosFlandersStyle said:

The abortion rate for Ottawa County during the same period fell by 18 percent, according to state data.

You might think this would lead to the "pro-life" conservatives pushing for more of this policy. But that wouldn't let them shame and scorn, so...