Christian Fundamentalists Are the Real American Taliban

Now that America has taken on religious persecution in Afghanistan?and boasted about it from here to kingdom come, with our First Lady leading the charge?will we have the courage to do so right here in our own country? And what about in those other Islamic fundamentalist states? n During the week between Christmas and New Year's, while many Americans celebrated the fact that we'd liberated Afghans from the Taliban, our dear friends the Saudis beheaded three men because they'd allegedly engaged in homosexual acts. If the beheadings were anything like those of the past, the men were taken to a "Chop Square," which is usually located outside a mosque, where men gather after prayers and watch the event. An executioner lifts a big sword and lops off the restrained prisoners' heads. The decapitated body is then sometimes crucified. Such is the punishment for homosexuality and a lot of other offenses against Islam in the lovely desert kingdom. It doesn't seem that the U.S.'s increasing economic and military relationship with Saudi Arabia over the years has changed things a whit. Beheadings have in fact risen n the years since we saved the Saudis' asses?and the oil fields?from Saddam Hussein.

You probably didn't hear about these recent atrocities because, as usual, they were largely ignored by the corporate American media, and certainly by the U.S. government. The Saudi story that has been given much more media play since Christmas has been about how Saudi-led OPEC decided to cut oil production to boost oil prices. And that story of course underscores why the U.S. stays mute about Saudi Arabia's increasing human-rights abuses and its flagrant violation of a UN charter it signed prohibiting torture (in addition to beheadings, public floggings have been occurring in Saudi Arabia as well).

From the standpoint of U.S. foreign policy, we desperately need Saudi oil if we're going to keep consuming it the way that we do, so we have to play it cool. (Nine percent of U.S. oil imports come from Saudi Arabia, not a figure to sneeze at.) As most people know by now, the Saudi royal family is teetering on a volatile kingdom where rebellious Islamic fundamentalism is rife, to some extent due to the royal family's own repression and corruption. The crooked Al Saud family encourages such fundamentalism, in part to show the masses that it upholds the most stringent and controlling form of Islam, Wahhabism?while it continues skimming millions of oil income dollars off the top for itself. The family panders to the extremists just enough to ensure against being toppled?including allowing the extremists to thrive and then letting them go off to plot against the U.S., hijacking jetliners, destroying our buildings and killing our people.

As in Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak's government stepped up arrests of allegedly homosexual men at the same time that Mubarak supported the U.S. in its war on terrorism, cracking down on homosexuals is a way to show that you're still down with the fundies on the street, even as you're siding with evil America for practical purposes. Lop off a few heads in a public spectacle and it may keep the wolves at bay a bit. The Saudis either don't care about world opinion or know they'll get away with such abuses on the international stage because countries like the U.S., which at least publicly if sometimes tepidly criticize China for human rights violations, aren't about to say a damn thing to inflame tensions and perhaps interrupt that oil flow. From our standpoint, what are a few heads if it'll keep us barreling down those highways? (And don't get me wrong: I want to keep barreling down those highways too; I'd like to see us do it in ways that get us off corrupt, bloodstained Saudi oil, but that's another column.)

We can at least find comfort by telling ourselves that in the United States we of course don't do things like that. No, in the U.S. you would never be arrested and taken away for engaging in homosexual acts?except in 16 states, including Texas, sometime home of our compassionate conservative President, who governed there for eight years. In 1998, under George W. Bush's watch, two Houston men were arrested when a creepy neighbor called police, falsely claiming a break-in at their apartment. Police showed up, found the men having sex and hauled them into jail. (The men were found guilty of the charge of sodomy, had their case overturned on a first appeal, but then lost on a second appeal.) You may ask: Why on earth is there a 122-year-old sodomy law on the books in Texas? Why is it still considered a crime in Texas for people to engage in sex in the privacy of their own homes?

Well, for the same reason that Saudi Arabia slices off the heads of homosexuals: because some religious fanatics believe homosexuality is bad, and the powers that be kowtow to those religious extremists. They are the real American Taliban?the Christian Coalition, Gary Bauer, The 700 Club and Focus on the Family, the Catholic cardinals?forcing their way into politics and believing their religious beliefs should be the law of the land.

But George W. Bush, you might be thinking, couldn't possibly support such heinous laws?not our wonderful, compassionate president, who has recently caused his poll numbers to soar by taking on religious fanaticism in a foreign land. Not our president, whose own wife spoke out about the brutal religious persecution of women in Afghanistan.

Well, you are sadly wrong. As Texas governor, Bush praised sodomy laws, calling them a "symbolic gesture of traditional values." At the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, I had a chat with a Bush buddy, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court justice.

"I honestly don't think that Gov. Bush would believe that the [Texas sodomy] law should ever be changed," he told me.

Still, some might say that Bush, a seemingly reasonable enough man, can't really believe in such archaic laws, that his position is strictly for political reasons. But if that is true, then isn't he doing just what the Saudi royal family does, and just what Hosni Mubarak does, throwing homosexuals to the wolves to keep the wolves at bay a bit?and allowing those wolves to continue to thrive?

Our former president, Bill Clinton, kowtowed to the American Taliban early in his career as well. He supported the Arkansas sodomy law as state attorney general, and as governor of that state too. But as president, within a national party in which women, gays, African-Americans and others have made a lot of progress, he was at least able to stand up to the American Taliban on gay rights, abortion and other issues.

It is very different for a Republican president, however, as a member of a party that the American Taliban has occupied. More than that, it is born-again George W. Bush who, according to The Washington Post, is now considered the leader of their movement. "Pat Robertson's resignation this month as president of the Christian Coalition confirmed the ascendance of a new leader of the religious right in America: George W. Bush," the paper reported two weeks ago.

Religious intolerance breeds hate and violence no matter what nation it finds a home in. Our very own religious right inspires the thugs who bomb abortion clinics and kill gays on the streets. Now that he's vanquished Afghanistan's mullahs, will George W. Bush have the guts to take on the American Taliban?

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).