Where are the Court Evangelical Defenders of “Family Values” Today?

/ johnfea
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The Trump Administration separated 1000s of immigrant children from their parents.  If I am reading this article correctly, the administration does not know where these kids are located. They simply failed to write down where they sent them.  It will take up to two years to find them.

And where are the court evangelicals today?  They brag about unprecedented access to Trump.  Now is the time to use such access.  These men and women built their political careers around defending “family values.”  Why aren’t they lined-up at the White House door to demand that these families are reunited sooner?

Here is Tony Perkins, president of an organization called the FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL:

Apparently Perkins’s “religiously informed values” do not bear on “public policy decisions” about reuniting families separated by Trump immigration policy.  It seems like this might be something an organization called the FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL may want to take up.

I wonder how Perkins would respond if these were white middle class families?

First Baptist-Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress spent his Sunday interviewing a guy from Duck Dynasty:

I am sure this interview focused on family separation. 😉

Gary Bauer, a former president of the Family Research Council, is using his Twitter feed to spew anti-immigrant rhetoric:

Former “Focus on the Family” host James Dobson is wondering what “love” looks like:

Eric Metaxas was on NPR earlier today wondering if the American Republic has “lost its way’:

These court evangelicals, if they really believe in family values, should be screaming from the rooftops today.  Sadly, it’s not going to happen.

31 thoughts on “Where are the Court Evangelical Defenders of “Family Values” Today?”

  1. For the record, the vast majority of the little Austrian’s Party and their supporters were militant heterosexuals. The little Austrian’s Party was able to gain and keep Christian (Protestant and Catholic) support through transactionalism. He was able to convince them that he would restore lost national glory, instill law and order and advance family values. And, who were the common enemy? The liberals and the intellectuals. The gypsies and homosexuals. All the non-little Austrian’s Party politicians, police, military and judges. And, perhaps most famously, the Jews. And, everything was done in accordance with the law. At least up to a point.

    So tell me. when exactly did the churches step in to stop the atrocities? And I’m not talking about the few underground priests and ministers that stepped up and were likely hung or shot because they were acting against the laws of the state?

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  2. Jim in STL,
    Economic betterment is fine if it’s done legally. These border people are not doing that. Also Jim, it should concern you that these people are gumming up the system for those who do have valid persecution issues.
    James

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  3. They are allowed to make their case. They are still not illegal as long as they are complying with due process even if they are seeking “mere economic betterment,” which, I’ll add, has been the backbone of America since America was America and of the colonies since well before the colonies became America.

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  4. Jim in STL

    Seeking valid political, ethnic, or religious asylum is one thing. Our law makes provision for that. Seeking mere economic betterment is not a valid type of asylum; hence these people are seeking to break our laws. We don’t need more lawlessness here.
    James

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  6. Unicorn,
    I recommend you go back and forth some more study on the Austrian guy and his cronies. Ernst Roehm and certain other members of the Sturm Abteilung were militant homosexuals. The little Austrian ultimately had Roehm killed not because of his sexual proclivities but rather because of his reach for power and his economic radicalism.

    The National Socialist movement was decidedly anti-Christian. It isn’t fair to compare Biblical family values to pagan NAZI values.

    James

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  7. Jim in STL,
    Well, the solution seems pretty obvious. Help all of these people we can but the help needs to be
    done in their countries. It isn’t quite fair to allow lawbreakers at our border to receive greater attention than other impoverished folks in the world who respect our laws.
    James

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  8. I am not talking about merely improving slow bureaucracies. I am talking about treating human beings with dignity, respect, compassion.

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  9. “…the conditions in many parts of Africa and Asia are comparable or even worse…Why are you focused solely on Central Americans…?”

    Yes, this is not a zero sum game. My “focus” was in responding to your specific statements. One goal post at a time.

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  10. Good insight, Unicorn. The great leveler of death, which we all face, will eventually get the attention of the Chablis and Brie set who are currently attending monthly fund raisers for the Human Rights Campaign.

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  11. I can’t predict exactly what I might do to both provide food and clothing to my family, protect them if my own society is as permanently dangerous as a six week caravan, while attempting to keep that family together with me. But I bet it would be something.

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  12. Come to think of it, wasn’t there this one party in 1930 Germany (led by this Austrian guy with a funny mustache) who before their coup-from-within presented themselves as Guardians of Traditional German Family Values (then expressed by the term “Blood and Soil”) against the homosexual decadence of Weimar Berlin?

    “Blood and Soil” was NOT invented by the NSDAP; it was already in general use as the name of a nostalgia genre harking back to a Simpler Rural Past — sort of a Little House on the Prairie Mom and Apple Pie auf Deutsch, a mythic refuge from WW1 and its Versailles Treaty aftereffects. (Much like the Nifty Fifties according to Ozzie, Harriet, and Donna Reed is to the Defenders of Godly Family Values in the top title.)

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  13. In the words of the prophet Alfred Yankovic:

    In one of his two non-fiction books (Danse Macabre, a personal history of the horror genre), Steven King makes the same point in regards to Fifties “I Was A Teenage…” horror movies. That obsessing on such First World Problems is “a sign of a society that has beaten the Survival game”.

    Problem is, when all the problems you have are “Lack of Self-Actualization” at the peak of Maslow’s Heirarchy, the survival wiring in your hindbrain still comes into play and those First World Problems hit you as Matters of Life or Death.

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  14. Unicorn,

    You have obliquely touched on a salient point. Economic refugees don’t have the luxury of worrying about some of the boutique libertine issues which seem to obsess North American liberals.

    James

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  15. Jeff,
    Well, there are a lot of things our governments can do better. Have you ever tried to use the Veterans Administration Hospital System, for example? What about the lines at many local departments of motor vehicles? Government at all levels has a reputation for inefficiency. As someone who has spent many years in the Washington area, I have seen it first hand.

    The border processing people are swamped by all of the illegals who are gaming the system. Does it bother you that legitimate political or religious refugees are forced to wait unduly in line because the system is clogged with economic improvement seekers?

    If you want to increase your taxes to hire added agents at our border, Jeff, that might be a solution. Our country is already over twenty trillion dollars in debt. Personally, I think charitable organizations working in Central America could do a better job.
    James

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  16. Jim in STL,

    Yes. The conditions in certain Central American communities are not up to European or North American standards. I am sorry that is the case, but the conditions in many parts of Africa and Asia are comparable or even worse. I’d like to see us aid the people in those regions, also. Why are you focused solely on Central Americans who suffer economic want? Have you ever seen the conditions in sub-Saharan Africa or parts of southwest Asia?

    James

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  17. Jeff,
    You are correct that the world has seen many legal migrations where children were included. The situation with the people at our border is not comparable. Earlier immigrations were done legally. The current illegals are gambling on our weak laws allowing them to slip into our country and to disappear. If an honorable man wants to support his family, he will leave them with relatives and wire money back home.
    I don’t know you personally, Jeff, but I doubt that you would bring six children unduly into the less-than-pristine conditions on an unregulated caravan of people who have already shown a predisposition for lawlessness.
    If these people were victims of religious, political, or ethnic persecution, their petitions for asylum would have validity. Economic opportunity is, however, the motivation. While we cannot condemn individuals for wanting to better their economic lots, there are legal ways to do that.
    James

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  18. Dehumanizing is dehumanizing. Period.

    Could it be they are fleeing even more dangerous and desperate conditions? Yes, it could be.

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  19. James, I am a father of six.
    I can easily picture scenarios where I would have taken them on a dangerous trek.
    I seem to recall some folks in the late 16th to early 17th century? Heading east in creaking little ships? To the eastern coast of the American continent.
    It is true for many that didn’t turn out well. And the motivation of some was questionable. But many thought that risk was necessary and the purpose justified that risk.

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  20. James, what about the fact our president and many of his supporters can’t seem to distinguish illegal from legal immigrants?
    People who come to the border points of entry and work with government agents in applying for asylum are not illegals. To hear the president tou wouldn’t think he gets that.
    I do think whatever the situation the United States can do better with families with children than they are. No matter how they came to be here.

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  21. Justin,
    I don’t believe children were put in inhumane cages. The establishment press has fostered that myth. I am whitewashing nothing. Do you believe everything you read in the New York Times is accurate?

    James

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  22. Jim in STL,
    No one can compare Jewish victims of persecution in their own native countries with illegal immigrants who are volitionally breaking U.S. law and are NOT subject to religious persecution. The Jews were mistreated as citizens of their respective countries. That is not the case with the illegals at our border.

    As far as men who bring their families onto these dangerous treks, how can you defend them? I certainly would not subject my children to such conditions. Could it be they are cynically using the children as pawns in a bigger game?
    James

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  23. James:

    The Flores Agreement limits the amount of time a child can be held in administrative immigration custody. Family separation is not required. Family separation was a policy devised by the Trump administration designed to send a message to those fleeing the deplorable conditions in Central America. That message is that if you come to the US, you’ll never be free on the streets of the US, and you’ll never see your kids again.

    Family separation was intended to replace “catch and release” where folks who applied for asylum at the port of entry, were allowed into the US to permit the processing of their asylum claims. While they waited, they were allowed to live and work in the US. Some were granted asylum, most claims were denied, but unless they ran afoul of the criminal justice system, nobody was ever deported.

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  24. James,

    You called putting children into cages or separating them from their parents and losing track of them “administrative and logistical problems” and that says a lot about what you are willing to whitewash to justify your political preferences.

    Justin

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  25. Every day I drive by a sign in a residential window that says “Is this what they meant by family values?” and it makes laugh a little; it makes me furious; it makes me feel sad. From porn-star payouts to racist assaults on actual families it’s clear that court evangelicals have sold themselves into the service of worldly power.

    I grew up in a house that believed the family-value language from the right-wing pundits. Now I realize it was all hollow posturing, calculated to enrage people who don’t see the bigger picture and don’t know better than to trust those who confirm their biases for profit.

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  26. It is wholly credible that parents will take great risks to attempt a better future for themselves and their children. It has always been this way since the dawn of humankind. You brand them all as illegals which is just another way of dehumanizing them, much the way the Jews were branded in Europe since the dawn of Christendom and culminating in 1930s-1940s European atrocities. You may as well go all the way and brand fleeing and desperate migrants an invading force of vermin.

    A core principle of the American experiment is the rights of individuals as spelled out during the Founding (really, it’s well documented) even if those principles are generally aspirational we’ve made great strides in some 240 years. The founding documents speak in the language of broad principles and of “the people” and at that time, and well into the era of passing laws against “others” entering the country, it was understood that influx into the country drove opportunity and prosperity (not necessarily the view of the native inhabitants that were slaughtered or forcibly moved into barren lands). But much as Nazi Germany began passing laws making the Jews non-human and illegal we have been creeping toward making a good part of humanity nothing more that illegal thugs and disease carriers and killers and rapists in an attempt to make ever more punitive and eliminationist laws and restrictions.

    All those reaching the border and seeking asylum are legal applicants and fully human – and one might argue that they are God’s children – and probably in most cases of Christian belief. How do people, purported Christians, read Jesus as a nit-picking legalist attempting to terrorize the stranger and to make maximum misery and pain for the afflicted? Truly baffling.

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  27. It is truly heartbreaking. I’ve seen the trauma of family separation first hand as a foster parent. Our church just hosted a whole weekend seminar to equip foster parents to deal with the manifestations of trauma. It permanently alters the neural connections in their brain. All of the children will be negatively altered. For US.

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  28. John,

    I just wanted to point to the selective outrage of the NYT.

    As far as the court evangelicals’ silence, I would guess that they simply don’t want to fault the border security officials for following the law. Isn’t separation mandated by the so-called Flores Agreement? Maybe one of the readers on The Way of Improvement knows something about the details of the agreement and can comment on it.

    James

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  29. James: We can debate why this is happening. The fact is that thousands of young children are separated from their families right now and pro-Trump evangelicals are saying nothing.

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  30. It is incredible that we see thousands of irresponsible parents who knowingly place their children into illegal and dangerous situations. Why does the agenda-driven New York Times center its reporting around inevitable U.S. Government administrative and logistical problems instead of faulting the countries and/or individuals who are bankrolling and encouraging this assault on American borders? After all, if these illegal immigrants had not attempted to violate our laws in the first place, there would be no family separation problem. Isn’t it wiser to stop a problem at the root?

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  31. Where are the Court Evangelical Defenders of “Family Values” Today?

    Cheering on their Triumph.
    “WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! DEUS VULT! I WIN!”

    And anyway, “Family Values” applies ONLY to Pelvic Issues(TM).
    (stage whisper “Homosexuality… Abortion… Homosexuality…”)

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