Is The Bible Killing Kentucky's Civil Rights?

The Bible is killing us in Kentucky.

A book that’s provided immeasurable hope to many has been turned into a weapon of mass destruction by the very people it warned us about. The hypocritical and self-serving Pharisees and Sadducees who condemned Jesus to his death would themselves be aghast at the arrogant, front-row-praying heretics who are Kentucky’s elected Republicans, especially its state legislators.

The hungry children, the under-educated students, the families without clean water, the Middle School gay and lesbian students who want to kill themselves, the young Black woman cutting her hair so she can attend class, the pregnant high school junior, and hundreds of thousands of other Kentucky citizens lie dying in the coal ash slurry pit of hate the Kentucky legislature fills, on schedule, every time it meets.

Kentucky retreats further into this new tragic Dark Age every time this efficient and dangerously effective murder of crows assembles in Frankfort, while we sit and wait for better days, like the infamous frog in a pot, the water turning hotter until it boils us to death.

It’s the political equivalent of OxyContin. A little taste of bigotry here and there, and people feel safer. So, more of this dangerous drug must be even better, we think. When it’s sold as the will of God, how can it be bad? The Queer kids in school? That’s scary and wrong.

Teaching kids that - perhaps, just perhaps - slavery really was the cause of the Civil War? Also wrong. Until soon, anything other than the history taught in 1962 is “hurtful” to the white kids. And, that anything other than their very particular, very narrow, and dishonest interpretation of the Bible isn’t just wrong, it’s evil, and by golly I just happen to have another House or Senate Bill (drafted by some Foundation in another state) to save us from the Devil.

A legislator acting in good faith would ask questions like: How will this help people? Will this make people’s lives better? And, will this make our state a place someone would want to live? Instead, they ask (themselves, in the privacy of the grimly hothouses of their caucus rooms): How can I impose my beliefs - not even universally shared by people who believe in my Bible - on others? How can I maintain my privilege? And, above all, how can I be re-elected?

And it works. Look around you. Only this week rules were bent so a bill to fund private (religious) schools with your tax dollars could be heard before anyone but the most alert observer knew it was happening. Down the hall, a combination of laws were advancing “to make Kentucky safer” that experts agree won’t but will fill the jails and prisons of our state - which already, if it was a nation, would have the 7th highest incarceration rate per capita in the world.


The homeless will be jailed, too, if they’re not shot first by a business owner taking advantage of a cruel perversion of the already-murderous Stand Your Ground law. And even in counties in which there is a single Ob-Gyn offering basic medical care to women, that physician is looking over her shoulder for a sheriff or prosecutor because she offered basic and often lifesaving care.

The Republican Bible in Kentucky isn’t the source of comfort, or hope. It’s a tool for the imposition of a panicked ethos that stokes the fires of racism, greed, fear, and exclusiveness. I don’t believe in the Hell described by the Bible writers. I don’t need to, as I see a very real Hell all around me in this beautiful and tragic state I love. I hear it in the stories of the terrified young women hours or days away from medical care. In the stories from parents whose children couldn’t bear to live another day in a state in which its leaders condemned their very existence.

In the eyes of Black students who understand that the stories of their ancestors - and even theirs - could be illegal to tell. In the lives of those who live in needless poverty which remains unaddressed while their elected representatives occupy an entire session asking the wrong questions.

The Old Testament of the Bible, especially, is filled with blood. Blood that’s now being spilled daily in Frankfort.