Women should not be allowed to vote, according to the cult to which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth belongs:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently shared on X an interview with Moscow Pastor Doug Wilson, a key figure in the Christian nationalist movement who argues that women should be subordinate to men – even to the point that they should not be allowed to vote.
The movement has been emboldened by the re-election of President Donald Trump, and the CNN report Hegseth shared details the ongoing effort among Wilson and his allies to gain political power.
And the episode contains another important lesson: That the essential part of Christian nationalism is right-wing nationalism, while Christianity is a secondary, accidental feature.
The point is to gain power for a reactionary kind of political and cultural view – hence the movement’s constant insistence on the submission of women to men; the sympathy for the Old South, even to the point of defending slavery; constant attacks on gay and transgender people; occasionally downplaying the Holocaust and so on – and Christianity is a pretty cloak to wrap that foul project in.
This explains their consistent embrace of individuals who relentlessly exhibit personal debauchery – so long as they have political power – people like Hegseth and Trump.
To recite the obvious: Trump has been found liable for sexually abusing a woman, has bragged about his ability to sexually assault women at will, faced complaints about leering at teenage contestants in the locker rooms of beauty pageants, has cheated (often ostentatiously) on all three of his wives and faces numerous other credible allegations of sexual misconduct.
Hegseth, Trump’s moral clone, has faced credible allegations of sexual assault and admitted cheating on the mother of his children with five different women. His former sister-in-law has alleged he abused his next wife. His drunken escapades have become notorious.
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” wrote one of his critics. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”
When the idea is that only families, led by a husband, can vote, Hegseth dons the demeanor of a pious Christian and declares, “All of Christ for All of Life.” But the moment his marriage requires him to be faithful, his Bible hits the floor just before his pants.
We are all poor sinners, it’s true. But doesn’t it seem strange that the Kingdom of God would be brought forth by the most degenerate among us? Maybe it’s worth thinking about false prophets and the idea that “you will know them by their fruit.”
The Christian nationalist movement’s embrace of people like this can be understood in much the same way as the massive hoard of pornography found on the outwardly pious Osama bin Laden’s hard drives after his death: It shows that terrorism was his primary commitment, and his religion was a situationally dispensable secondary matter.
In the CNN segment, Wilson argued that working for a theocratic takeover of Idaho government is nothing but tending “our little corner of the vineyard.” Asked if Muslims in Idaho should have to live by Christian law, Wilson responded: “If I went to Saudi Arabia, I would fully expect to live under their God’s rules.”
But Idaho is not Wilson’s little corner of the vinyard.
What the Christian nationalist movement proposes is not a return to Idaho’s older and better days. It is the imposition of a new and fundamentally alien order. The equality of women, even if never perfectly realized, has been deeply threaded through Idaho’s history and tradition from the very beginning.
Unlike in many eastern states, the right of women to vote was not a late development in Idaho’s history. Only six years after Idaho’s 1890 founding, the right of women to vote was enshrined in the state Constitution – with the overwhelming approval of the then-all-male electorate – making ours the fourth state to protect universal suffrage.
That is our heritage.
Two years later, in 1898, Permeal J. French became Idaho’s first female constitutional officer when she was elected state superintendent. After that, Idaho has always had at least one woman in statewide office or Congress, except for a brief period between 2013 and 2014 between the resignation of State Controller Donna Jones and the election of Superintendent Sherri Ybarra.
That is our history.
The point isn’t for America or Idaho to be Saudi Arabia with a different religion. The point is for America and for Idaho to be free.
If Wilson doesn’t like that, maybe he should find another vineyard. Maybe the aforementioned Saudi Arabia, where it’s illegal to be gay, where women can’t vote, where institutions quite like slavery persist, where most of what Wilson and his cohort want for Idaho is already accomplished.
Sure, there may theological differences, but what’s a minor philosophical disagreement between friends, especially when they agree about pretty much everything else?
