A Grand Declaration of War
Challenging Contemporary Religious Moralization and the Crusade Against Female Reproductive Rights
This essay is in response to the current augmentation of unsolicited religious moralizing, which I believe is a product of the contemporary rise in Christian nationalism and its pernicious effect on legislation. This is evidenced by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as well as the proliferation of initiatives like Sanctuary Cities for The Unborn and 40 Days for Life. This essay is a grand declaration of war against this unconstitutional imposition of religious morality upon pregnant women. Such imposition infringes upon their rights as free Americans. This essay will take a deep dive into examining the psychological underpinnings and moral origins of this malignant ideology.
To understand the instinct behind this psychological drive to moralize, one must cultivate the historical sense. Since the dawn of civilization, there has always been what Friedrich Nietzsche defined in On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) as the priestly psychological archetype — one who has no other means of gaining power than by moralizing others. In every society you will find this type, all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. The priestly type in his most mendacious form emerged with the rise of the Abrahamic moral framework. He belongs to the so called improvers of mankind. The pioneers of the aforementioned pro-life movements can be defined as such due to their observable patterns of behavior. We’ve all seen their drones with their picket signs outside of Walgreens.
The priestly type finds himself inept, or at best mediocre in most other aspects of life. He must gain power in some other way. His one natural talent lies in his penchant for psychological dissimulation and spell-casting, which he employs to bewitch the psyches of his fellows. He reaches into his bag of “shoulds” and “should-nots” and weaponizes these arbitrary value judgments to ignite the abominable conscience of shame in his audience. Shame is the primary power source of his weaponry. It is a means of social control, but it is an illusion. It’s a fabrication.
There is no natural law in all the cosmos that imposes these arbitrary value judgments. They are the smoke and mirrors of religious and political demagogues. They call down the ultimate authority, God, who is beyond reproach. Through this appeal to the unquestionable authority, these holier-than-thou moralizers can rationalize and justify all sorts of moral cobweb-spinning as “God’s will.” It would be an understatement to call this a slippery slope.
It is crucial to be wary of those who seek to kindle shame in their fellows for not adhering to an arbitrary set of values. Moralizers like the self-proclaimed 38 year old virgin and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn initiative, Mark Lee Dickson, have gained momentum thanks to the recent rise of Christian nationalism.
Their contemptible rhetoric is an enemy of all reason and individual autonomy. It is profoundly intellectually dishonest in that it circumvents rational discourse by attempting to appeal to the emotional biases and metaphysical needs of the public, manipulating its unconscious emotional structure. Shame is a psychological weapon, and these sorcerers are adept at wielding it. What they forget, or rather eschew, is the fact that this country was founded on the separation of church and state — as manifested in the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment — despite House Speaker Mike Johnson’s deliberate distortion. This is a secular nation. If they think that we free spirits will roll over and let them impose their morality upon us, they’re sorely mistaken.
Moreover, via the Free Exercise Clause, these demagogues can worship whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. What they are not free to do is to impose this religious morality upon their fellows. We free spirits — unfettered by the constraints of dogma and convention — don’t try to force our secular ethos of rationality onto these religious drones. We would never be so presumptuous as to try and tell them how to think. We are much more evolved than that. They can go to church as often as they like. No one is forcing them to shop at Walgreens. We aren’t outside their church with picket signs protesting the innumerable historical atrocities that have been committed in the name of God.
Why would any intellectually honest person want to impose his morality on his fellows? Why would he experience the need to do this? He wouldn’t. The priestly type is intellectually dishonest, and the power gained from the imposition of his values fuels his narcissistic supply. It gives him power. The psychologically vulnerable are drawn to the emotional appeals of the demagogical moralizer.
It is a sad state of affairs that we are even having this conversation in 2024. Alas, cockroaches tend to survive anything. Religious moralizing is an infestation that can only be mitigated; there will always be those who seek to draw power to themselves by moralizing others. Pro-life conservatives are trained to believe that life begins at conception. This arbitrary, irrational belief, dressed up in the formal wear known as “faith,” is an unquestioned, unexamined tenet of their religious doctrine. Modern day priestly moralizers designed these machinations, committing the laughably obvious, premeditated manipulation of elevating an unconscious embryo to the status of a human child. Through this distortion they achieve the necessary ammunition to impose their religious code upon their fellows, regardless of how unscientific it actually is.
Insidious organizations like 40 Days for Life are attempting to extirpate reproductive medicine from the market, specifically the medication misoprostol, which the World Health Organization Model List has deemed an essential medicine due to its wide-ranging applications in reproductive health. This deliberate obfuscation of modern medical science would be amusing if it didn’t carry such tragic implications. Many pro-life conservatives equate even the use of the Plan-B pill with abortion itself. There is no room for nuance. It doesn’t have to make sense. Rationality is entirely eschewed.
Priestly Abrahamic moralizing played an integral role in the extirpation of all the scientific and intellectual achievements of the ancient world. Humanity was plunged into the Dark Ages. Emergence into the Enlightenment marked a valiant, hard-won victory for mankind, ushering in the Age of Reason. The repugnant behavior of organizations like 40 Days for Life is a primeval step backwards. They encourage an evolutionary regression, trading reality for magic and voodoo.
That brings us to the deepest abyss of our current dive: the inherent contradiction in the religious dogma that underlies this particular brand of moralizing. The contemporary conservative American push to obfuscate the Establishment Clause — culminating with individual states assuming the power to impose Christian morality upon pregnant women — conveniently dispenses with the unnatural trinity of virulent Christian dogma: the virgin birth, the immaculate conception, and original sin. Through the coalescence of this three-part impossible standard, humankind is assigned a befouled nature: humanity’s very essence is deemed impure from the outset. Mere mortals cannot possibly compete with the purity of their divine ancestors: they are abominably shackled to carnality. Paradoxically, pro-life conservatives posit that life — endorsed as sacred and divinely manifested — begins at conception, however innately sinful conception may be. Reason is demagogically besieged by a fiendish morality — fairy tales meant to scare you into behaving submissively.
Studies show that over 60% of Americans support female reproductive rights, including the right to abortion. We free spirts aren’t submissive servants of faith. We’re pioneers of reason. Morality is not absolute. Years of philosophical and psychological study have shed light on the mutability of morality. We higher-order human beings think for ourselves, affirming our own values. We dispense with the drone-thinking. We hold fast to the spirit of the Enlightenment. We are not going to be moralized and intimidated into mindlessly abnegating female reproductive rights by virtue of the phantasmagoria of divine punishment. The United States is a secular nation. Let’s not move backwards. Don’t feed the trolls and eventually you’ll starve them out.
