Evangelical Christians: Oppressed minority or soon to be running a theocracy near you?

A sweet looking couple was found dead in an apparent execution while camping on a remote beach in California a couple of days ago. The man and woman were both shot in the head evidently while they were asleep. A picture of them accompanies this story on CNN.

I post this, because one of the prevailing theories is that this was a "hate crime", that the two were killed because of their "evangelical beliefs."

Have you spotted the little problem with this story? I thought you could! That's right, the campers were asleep on a remote campground and it is rather difficult to tell if someone is an evangelical Christian when they are sleeping. Our DNA testing just isn't that good yet.

Clearly this was a planned murder. It is unlikely that someone simply was wandering this remote beach with a gun hoping to find sleeping Christians to murder. The police say, at least, that it wasn't a robbery and that no sexual assault was apparent.

So a random stranger is ruled out. Someone knew these two and knew they were there. So the police figure that someone met these two, found out they were Christians and then stalked them till they were in a remote area, waited for them to be asleep and then killed them. That definitely qualifies as hate, but sure doesn't make a lot of sense.

My worry is that we, and more importantly, our nation's growing movement for a theocratic state, are being shown just how "oppressed" evangelicals are in this country. These two are the latest martyrs, even if a more sensible investigation rules out a hate crime.

Are the Christians really that oppressed? Well, given that they've got Bush in the White House and Asscroft at Justice, it's pretty hard to make that case. To say you are oppressed while running the country is a bit of a stretch. But read their sites...they make this stupid claim anyway.

The real story, of course, and the one story that makes me consider a Kerry vote, is that a network of rightwing Christian loons are extremely influenctial in the government these days. And Bush is one of them. I could go into this more, but, as usual, Maureen Farrel does an excellent job here. As I've stated before, perhaps imperialism abroad and fascism at home is preferable to imperialism abroad and Christian theocratic fascism at home. Kerry is against gay marriage, but none of his followers, after all, are calling for execution of homosexuals.

So, I will conitinue to weigh my concerns about this theocratic takeover, including whether it is a real issue or a diverting sideshow. Though, at this point, I'd have to say that, since whoever gets elected will be the fall guy for the horrible things that are going to happen in Iraq and elsewhere, I'm not sure I'd vote for Kerry even if I DID like him!