The New Puritans in Congress have an agenda, and chances are you aren’t going to like it. We thought they just had it in for Gays and Abortionists. But wait! They are now including lots more of us in their campaign to make America “Holy.” The latest volley in the Re-puritanize America Campaign came from (for God Sakes!) a Democrat. It was during the now routine attempt to get a gay marriage amendment into the constitution when Congressman Lincoln Davis popped up with comments that included these:

“Adultery is an evil that threatens the marriage and the heart of every marriage, which is commitment. …How can we as a country allow adulterers to go unpunished and continue to make a mockery of marriage? Again by doing so, what lessons are we teaching our children about marriage? I certainly think that it shows we are not serious about protecting the institution and this is why I think the amendment should outlaw adultery and make it a felony.

…We should also prevent those who commit adultery, or get a divorce, from running for office. Mr. Speaker, this House must lead by example. If we want those watching on CSPAN to actually believe we are serious about protecting marriage, then we should go after the other major threats to the institution. Not just the threat that homosexuals may some day be allowed to marry in a state other than Massachusetts. An elected official should certainly lead by example."

Was he serious, or was he pulling our legs? We suspect it suddenly got pretty quiet in the Congress. Many of the members are divorced, and probably more have, at some point in their lives, dabbled in a little adultery.

Maybe it was just the latest example of out-of-touch-with-reality attempts by Puritan whackos in the Congress and elsewhere to try to impose their ideas of “Holiness” on all of us. It was so much easier for so many more Americans to accept the antics of these folks when they were just targeting Gay people and abortion, or going after stem cell research. It didn’t come too close to home for most Americans.

Now these nuts are moving to try to impose some kind of strained Puritan ethic that extends endlessly into our private business. Where will they stop? They won’t. (See our Commentary What Evangelicals Believe) There is no stopping place for a goal of religious zealot holiness. Let’s say we decided that, if we can’t beat them, we should join them. We could turn our backs on all of the “sins” we could think of, and embrace the faith. It wouldn’t be over. These folks aren’t happy until they have assigned a cohort in your walk with the Lord, whose job it is to police your pursuit of holiness.

You’ll need a nice “prayer partner” who can call you down in the name of Jesus, if you get out of line. There is even a new movement in fundamentalists Christianity that believes that if your “walk with the Lord” is as it should be, you won’t be fat. Millions are being told to lose their fat by getting a closer relationship with Jesus. The implication, of course, is that if you are fat, you are not as close to God as a skinny fundamentalist Christian.

The problem is that these cults are only rewarding if people can team up with God to repeatedly confirm they are holier and better than others. If the “others” get better, the holiness targets have to keep moving, and that’s what these folks do. We have said repeatedly in this commentary that what people believe as a religion is their own business. When they try to impose it on all of us through changing the United States Constitution, or deceitful and bullying kick-ass politics, it becomes the business of all of us.

Parts of the newly-aggressive legislative agenda are surfacing. The new Puritans are trying to do away with divorce, adultery, pornography, online gambling (except horseracing) and have already raided the federal treasury to the tune of over 2-billion dollars in “faith-based” programs that the General Accounting Office says are difficult to confirm as being in any way effective at doing anything. The next thing we know they will be passing a law against being over weight.

Americans have already voted on these issues. If we vote with our actions and our money, which we do, we have already proven by the millions that we like divorce, and adultery, pornography, gambling, and eating our way to poundage. The fact that we stay out of church by the millions on Sunday shows we aren’t big fans of faith-based programs.

Americans mostly would like peace and prosperity and to have the government stay out of our personal business. We rather like logic-based, efficiency-based, and democracy-based programs, and the new wave of nuts in Congress don’t get it. What we don’t like is faith-based programs where the biggest faith element is having faith that the slick preacher or politician who is controlling the money is going to do the right thing with it.

H. L. Mencken said a Puritan is a person who is worried that someone, somewhere, someplace is having fun.

Let’s get these idiots out of the Congress.