Don't laugh, the Christublicans are coming 

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It may well be the most remembered press photo in U.S. history.

We all got to choke over it: The "perfect man," Donald J. Trump, surrounded by a throng of Christian-Evangelicals, their eyes closed in prayer, holding hands and glowing with sanctimonious expressions on their faces.

The Evangelicals saw that photo-op as putting their God in charge of America's future—by uniting His appointed President with a few of his most committed disciples. We choked, because the pairing of such presumed opposites was an unbelievably offensive sight—the zealots looking as if they'd just seen Jesus, Himself, while Trump's smile betrayed recall of his titillating affairs with Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal and a string of others.

The reality was that those flings had brought out the religious side of Trump, inspiring his worshipful words, "Oh, God, I'm coming."

To anyone with a normal sense of religious fervor, there could not have been a more upsetting contrast—piety and gross un-holiness, joined together. I'm thinking that the most knowledgeable of those Christians must have been silently reciting Jesus's New Testament words: "And I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness."

Though a bit out of context, that interpretation makes perfect sense—that the "good" should exploit evil in accomplishing God's purposes, whatever they are.

In its bid for greater political power, it seemed at first that the wacko-Christian-Right-Republican-Fascist Corps was only aiming at taking away the rights of women; and rightfully so! After all, wasn't it the women who screwed everything up the first time around, when Eve offered the apple to a naïve Adam?

Let's face it, if that little, tasty event hadn't happened, there would have been no carnal "knowledge," no risk of pregnancy and therefore no purpose in overturning Roe v. Wade. Living in a state of eternal, clueless bliss, we would have dined on the non-forbidden fruits, vegetables, bagels, lox and sushi while basking in our lounge chairs under eternal sunshine.

Even if the Christian God could have come up with a non-sexual method for creating offspring, His bounteous protection of human kind would have avoided the need for society, divergent tongues, political affiliations, greed and rules—a sort of heaven on earth, wherein people would live in a simple sort of affluence forever. There would have been no place for dirty jokes, prostitution, contraception, racy books, bank accounts, prisons or, for that matter, religion. Our version of the Fox News channel could have been covered by hosts of cherubims and seraphims, intermittently playing their golden harps while anchoring the daily news.

Ah, yes—the could'ves and would'ves. We would have definitely been looking at a totally different world today.

And yet, the supposedly Jesus-centered evangelical extremists of the GOP see no end in sight for spreading the word of God throughout America. Just to eliminate any confusion on their real goals, please don't presume that the failure of SCOTUS in reversing Roe v. Wade was the end of the nonsense. These nut-jobs—many of them in the so-called "Bible Belt" states—have announced dozens of new bills that aim to curtail the freedoms we've previously enjoyed, and they're dead-set on criminalizing abortion, risqué comedians, drag queens and authors who dare to step outside their unreasonable boundaries.

It's only the beginning of a sickening trend to create an American theocracy, to keep the women and the minorities "in their places." This is not at all what the founding fathers envisioned: There was to be strict separation between churches and state, something that would have largely avoided the widening schism between the zealots and the better-balanced Americans.

If you think SCOTUS screwed the women—forgive the expression—there's a lot more in store.

The Christublicans are coming, and they're going to do their best to see that women and minorities lose most of their God-given freedoms of choice.

Obviously, it's only right to punish the bad guys—the LBGTQ community, the seductive-apple-promoting women and the presumably cursed "seed of Cain" are at the front of the list. The Christublicans are reveling in the taking of new territory: Books are being banned; becoming "woke" is going back to something that only alarm clocks can do; the poor are being kept that way, since poverty was something Jesus highly respected; drag queens are being silenced from their sultry routines; the poor, many of whom are Black, inner-city unfortunates, will be kept in their supposed place; and women's reproductive rights will continue to be spat upon.

If that's what it means for the Christublicans to triumph, then it's a sure thing: Only the devil will gain, rejoicing in having taken the God-given essentials of personal choice away from our nation.

But for the billions who invested in that "apple" stock, the payoffs will continue to be rich. The promise of "knowledge"—voiced by the serpent who first led Eve astray—turned out to be lots of fun and very (re)productive. Sure, the world would have been an absolute bust had it not been for the wiles of women. What could possibly have been substituted for the most joyful of sins?

The author is a retired novelist, columnist and former Vietnam-era Army assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife, Carol, and the beloved ashes of their mongrel dog.