Kentucky legislators have passed a law they say protects "religious freedom" and have forwarded it to Gov. Steve Beshear.

This morning, Americans United joined other groups in the state asking Beshear to veto the bill.

This week we have an abbreviated and belated version of As the Right Turns.

President Obama has appointed the first woman to head the perennially scandal plagued U.S. Air Force Academy.  Perhaps Maj. Gen. Michelle Johnson can lead the Academy out of the era of anti-democratic religious supremacism and bigotry.  The latest such unfortunate episode involves the Academy's promotion of a homophobic web site, JewFAQ, operated by an Orthodox Jewish layman.  The site declares among other things, that

"The sin of sexual relations between men is punishable by death (Lev. 20:13), as are the sins of adultery and incest."

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has demanded that the Academy remove the link.  MRFF wrote:  

Additionally, it includes a speciously hideous comparison of the originating cause of homosexuality to that of kleptomania. This disgrace is an open slap in the face to all lesbian, gay, and bisexual USAFA cadets, faculty, and staff. Additionally, the website contains the absurd and perverse notion that males who masturbate should have their hands chopped off."

Additionally, the website states that women's social status under Judaism is that they are "separate but equal," a statement that typically stipulates the polar opposite of any modern, democratic conception of "equality."

George Weigel, who has frequently appeared on the NBC Nightly News as a "Vatican analyst" in the run up to the Conclave of Cardinals that will select the next pope, has served as a  consultant on Catholic issues to NBC since 1999.  But what NBC does not tell us -- is that Weigel is no ordinary expert.  He is one of the leaders of today's Catholic Right.

Sixty-five years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of its most important church-state decisions.

The 8-1 ruling in McCollum v. Board of Education ended a practice in the Champaign, Ill., public schools of allowing ministers to come onto the campus during the day to offer sectarian instruction.

The decision is important because it marked the first time the high court ruled that the public schools could not be in the business of promoting religion to students. It paved the way for the 1962 and '63 rulings striking down official school prayer and Bible reading.

In several recent posts, I've sought to highlight a few points about the theocratic dominionist movement in the U.S.  In The Next Denialism about Dominionism, I discussed the campaign of denialism and the smearing of those of us who have written about dominionism. In that post I wrote that "denial about dominionism" is in its way, "as preposterous and pernicious as denial about climate change."

When U.S. military leaders announced that openly gay men and women would be permitted to service in the armed forces, Religious Right leaders went ballistic.

They asserted that the move would destroy military cohesion and leave our fighting force less able to do the job. Of course, that didn't actually happen. One year after the change, military leaders reported that the new policy was working out fine.

Bruce Gourley, Executive Director of the Baptist History & Heritage Society, maintains a helpful web site, Church/State Separation, A Historical Primer.   He writes:  

America's historical commitment to freedom...  has taken an unexpected turn in modern America. In short, the closing decades of the twentieth century to the present have witnessed an intense effort, spearheaded by many conservative and fundamentalist Christians, to discard our nation's heritage of church state separation in favor of government favoritism of certain expressions of faith, and hence a curtailing of religious freedom for all.

Constructed upon phony history, this theocratic-leaning quest makes a mockery of America's religious heritage and endangers the very foundations of American government and freedom.

Merrie Olde England wonders whether they have a "U.S. style Religious Right."  The considered answer of Theos, a think tank focusing on religion and society is kinda, sorta, but not really.  But intriguingly, it quotes a 2012 report by the think tank Demos about something that will make some dedicated American secularist heads explode:  

...Faithful Citizens, which argued that British people of faith are, "more likely to hold progressive political values on a number of important political and economic questions at the heart of twenty-first-century policy."  While acknowledging that correlation does not necessarily indicate causation, the report also went on to argue that, "our findings also confirm prior research and contradict the common assumption that religious citizens are more inclined towards conservative causes than non-religious citizens."

In other news:  Warren Throckmorton, the conservative debunker of David Barton, caught the traveling salesman of Christian nationalist bunk telling tall tales in Big Sky Country. After debates in the Louisiana and Montana legislatures over teaching creationism in the public schools, Barbara Forrest is wondering which state has "sillier" state legislators. Bill Moyers interviewed Zack Kopplin, a student responsible for the Louisiana debate over a bill seeking to repeal public school instruction in creationism. Moyers reports Kopplin is dedicated to "fighting the creep of creationist curricula into public school science classes and publicly funded vouchers that end up supporting creationist instruction."

You could say that this has been the winter of David Barton's discontent.

Barton, a Texas-based pseudo-historian who for years has made a living telling gullible Religious Right audiences that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation and church-state separation is a myth, has run into quite a streak of trouble lately.

Have you ever found yourself in disagreement with the political positions of the Catholic bishops? If so, you're anti-Catholic.

Has it ever occurred to you that the church hierarchy didn't handle the pedophilia scandal very well, and have you voiced that opinion? You're anti-Catholic.

The wedding of Bible and bullets might seem a strange couple, but its image has gained momentum in the Religious Right.  Texas Conservative politicians have a long history with the NRA which appears to be the most favorable alliance politicians are linked to.  Some are taking the relationship to guns to a new level.  There are some who state the Second Amendment allows them to hunt.  Others line up behind the Amendment saying it provides protection from criminals.  A third group even declares it will be necessary to be protected from the Federal Government.

As The Right Turns is a new more or less weekly feature in which I will offer a few observations about the comings and goings of the Religious Right. It will usually appear on the weekends. -- FC

If your taste runs to rightwing windbaggery in 140 characters or less, Rick Warren's Twitter feed is hard to beat.  

@RickWarren: Liberal theology cannot sustain a local congregation. It kills churches. In fact, it only survives due to tenured academics.

@RickWarren: Liberal theology has never created any university. It just sucks the life out of those that were started by Bible believers

Over at Eyes Right, the blog of Political Research Associates, I have posted an update on the continuing adventures of Rev. Samuel Rodriguez.  For all the talk about the agenda of the Lamb of God (as distinct from the smelly old donkey and elephant duo) there is still no mistaking that Rodriguez, even on his signature issue, immigration -- is still a Religious Right Republican.

Last year, yet another leader of the Founding Generation of the Religious Right, passed on.  Unfortunately, most of the media missed the breadth and depth of the significance of the life of Sun Myung Moon. I tried to fill-in some of the blanks at the time, but there is much more to be done. Still, we get occasional glimpses of his global reach and ambitions. One of these is the story of a travel journalist who journeyed through a Paraguayan jungle to reach the remote place where Moon had sent some of his followers to create a Garden of Eden. This story, which was published in Outside magazine, provides an unusual portal into some of the goings-on in the post-Moon empire. It also is a scenic route reminder that there is still so much more of the story to tell.