In Medieval Europe, the Catholic Church declared itself good, and anyone who challenged the power of the church was, naturally, declared evil. Not much has changed. Listen to any conservative leader and you’ll hear the same message being broadcast today.

In this episode, we examine how conservatives and populists have hijacked Christianity and forged it into a weapon. Think I’m exaggerating? Keep reading.

For those who find themselves in the crosshairs of conservatives waging Holy War, Christianity feels like a weapon of mass destruction. The relentless dehumanization of trans youth has caused an already devastating suicide rate to rise even further and has fueled more violence against young trans students in our K-12 schools. And Black and Native American trans women experience around four times the violence as their cisgender counterparts.

In addition to violence against the trans community itself, trans-affirming educators and allies are often targeted by radio hosts, influencers, and podcasters who make false accusations about them on social media and expose them to even more violence. It has led to death threats against doctors, and even bomb threats like the ones made against Boston’s Children’s Hospital.

Conservatives have been doubling-down on their massive media campaigns intended to incite fear and rage against the trans community and the so-called woke mob. These campaings not only bring out far right Christian voters, they bring out militant white nationalist groups as well. And where these groups go, violence isn’t far behind.

Violence like that ignited by torch-wielding white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville Virginia, largely seen as the coming out party for Trump’s white Christian Nationalist movement.

Violence like the lynching of Rasheem Carter in Mississippi, and the mass murders of Black shoppers in Buffalo New York. Violence like that against Black and Native American trans women, which occurs at a rate four times higher than their cisgender counterparts. Violence that has become so commonplace as to be relegated to back-page news, if it makes the news at all.

All of these events should have been a wake-up call for our country. Instead, we stayed asleep.

When will we learn?

Black Americans were shackled by dehumanization and legalized segregation for nearly 100 years after emancipation, and to this day continue to face systemic racism and the litany of injustices it breeds. A continuous indoctrination and reinforcement of lies became ingrained in American culture and institutions. Lies that were endorsed by most white Christian churches.

Segregation was not just physical or social alienation. An entire racial group was denied equitable access to voting, education, employment, housing and healthcare. This exhaustive segregation was meant to dehumanize and isolate, to destroy the spirit as well as the body and mind. Equality and justice were as far away in the 1950’s as in the 1850’s. And both times, it required bloodshed to make any progress.

Some people may be surprised to learn that the same forces fighting to suppress trans identities are also fighting to suppress Black identities. The same forces that deny the rights of trans people also deny the rights of Black people. The same forces that demonize and incite violence against trans communities also demonize and incite violence against Black communities.

Christian nationalism is the political-religious weapons factory behind those forces. It is a rebirth of the Religious Right. The same Religious Right that defied the Civil Rights Act and fought to keep their Christian universities as segregated, racist institutions well into the nineteen seventies. The same Religious Right that supports conservative leaders who openly court white supremacists and endorse restrictive voting laws. The same Religious Right that strives to eliminate Black lives from American history in our public schools.

As Steve Phillips adeptly points out in his recently published book, How We Win the Civil War, the allure of the confederacy and the glory days of white supremacy are like a drug. Trump’s MAGA movement is today’s drug of choice, the magic elixir for conservatives who seek to satiate their cravings for those glory-days.

Phillips writes, “It’s the logic-defying elixir that prompted God-fearing church-going Christians to put on their Sunday best, and take their children to witness Black men being hung from trees. And it’s the fuel that drove historic Republican voter turnout in 2020.”

Phillips speaks of creating a new social contract. One that at last honors the intentions of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, that all people deserve to be treated equally. And that all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The eradication of white supremacy from American institutions will be front and center in this new social contract, but it is not the only violation that must be rectified. The same states that fought against Black freedom and civil rights now lead the fight against women’s reproductive rights and trans existence. States like Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and of course, Mississippi, a state deemed the most inhumane in the nation by Black leaders in the nineteen fifties and sixties.

As reported recently in the New York Times, a barrage of anti-trans bills in Mississippi is making it impossible for trans kids to exist. Bills criminalizing affirming healthcare and erasing them from public schools. Mississippi outright denies the existence of trans identities, and unabashedly justifies its anti-trans legislation by drawing upon its racist past, stating, “Separate is not inherently unequal.” A reference to Plessy versus Ferguson, the 1896 ruling in which the Supreme Court upheld segregation. And Mississippi is not alone.

There are currently hundreds of anti-trans bills making their way through state houses around the country. In the states enacting these laws, officials are proud to share why they are making it a top priority to deny the rights of trans kids.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, for example, didn’t need many words to explain why she was signing anti-trans legislation into law,

“If the Good Lord made you a boy, you’re a boy, and if he made you a girl, you’re a girl.”

A firmly held religious belief is enough justification for those legislators to create laws that jeopardize my son’s life and would put me in prison. Possibly for life. We’re not far removed from when a similar rationale was used to justify genocide, slavery, and segregation of Black and indigenous peoples. In this, we are no different than the tyrannical Muslim theocracies that are governed by Sharia law.

Statements like this one from Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene demonstrate how normalized it has become to use supernatural claims to dehumanize and condemn others. On the House floor in 2021, Greene declared that her opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. equality is based on her belief that it will destroy God’s creation, saying,

“God created us male and female. In his image, he created us. The Equality Act that we are to vote on this week destroys God’s creation. It also completely annihilates women’s rights and religious freedom.”

I once again couldn’t wait to tell my son that he has the power to destroy God’s creation. Like any powerful superhero, he was nonplussed by that disclosure and simply shrugged his shoulders. I, on the other hand, was beaming and proudly telling everyone I knew that my son is a destroyer of worlds. Even though he likely got that power from his mom.

But it turns out the conservatives who are protecting God’s creation from my son were just getting started.

In his majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Alito proudly interpreted the Constitution through the lens of Catholic Canon Law going as far back as 800 years. Yeah, he actually referenced the views and morals from 17th and 13th century Christian doctrine. It won’t end there, as Justice Thomas declared that all past rulings will be viewed from this lens. The danger of allowing religious beliefs to be accepted as objective truth is painfully illustrated in the recent explosion of anti-trans rulings and legislation.

For years, experts and professionals have debunked every argument made by anti-trans conservatives. We have provided overwhelming evidence via peer-reviewed studies, documented assessments, and testimony from every credible medical and mental health organization. These arguments have thus far proven ineffective against a conservative ideology that can simply ignore facts and evidence in favor of religious doctrine.

The recent 2024 budget negotiations provide another damning example of how far conservatives are willing to go to erase trans identities, and to appease their far-right religious base. With a government shut-down only hours away, Republicans recklessly added dozens of anti-trans riders to the proposed stop-gap budget deal, risking a government shutdown in the process.

As reported by Katelyn Burns, the conservative budget proposals “included everything from barring federal funds from going to hospital systems that give puberty blockers to minors, to blocking federal funding for any form of gender-affirming care, at any age.” It threatened to roll back trans health care several decades. All but one of the riders were finally removed, but only at the eleventh hour.

Let that one sink in. An economy still emerging from a Covid-induced nightmare, stagflation, major crises in hot spots all over the globe. And conservatives are laser-focused on trans kids? For the love of God. Still think I’m exaggerating?

This is Peter Tchoryk. Sign up on this site to receive updates on the Scientific Rebellion. If podcasts are your thing, please check out our Scientific Rebel podcasts.