Month: November 2023

I hope you had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. I know I have much to be thankful for and I am grateful that I was able to express everything with loved ones over a fantastic meal. I especially enjoyed watching my grandson Ryder enjoy his first Thanksgiving.

Last week, I shared the first of two letters I wrote to the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. This week, I share the second letter I sent to him earlier this month. My motivation for sharing these letters is to encourage my readers to exercise their free speech liberty to express their needs, desires, and expectations to government leaders who have the power to pass laws and institute policies that impact our lives.

Many have the attitude that they don’t bother with politics, but they forget that politics bothers with them every day and in almost every way. These next few years will bring about the biggest changes to personal freedoms, decency, and opportunities if the Republicans who secured the Supreme Court are able to win the presidency and the Senate and retain power in the House of Representatives.

November 18, 2023

Dear House Speaker Johnson,

This is my second letter to you since you became the Speaker of the House.  Since becoming Speaker, I have learned a bit more about your views on the role of religion in our government and I watched you endorse the candidacy of Donald Trump.  How disappointing.  Of course, you have the right to your religious beliefs, and you can endorse whomever you choose.  My concern is how those beliefs and your endorsement affect our Constitutional freedoms, given your position.

As I said in my first letter, I am a long time Christian.  I accepted Christ as my Savior on February 14, 1971, and have been a follower of Christ’ teachings since then.  I recall when the mission of the church was to share the good news of the gospel with those who were willing to listen.  We strived to live exemplary lives as lights in the darkness, full of compassion and generosity to those in need and without judgement and condemnation. Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves.  He taught us to be forgiving.  He taught us to welcome the immigrant.  He taught us to give to the needy.  And He taught us not to judge because vengeance and judgement belonged to God.  Our one job was to spread the Good News.

We had no political agenda until the church was infiltrated by men seeking to exploit our voting numbers for the purposes of their own power and greed.  They introduced the notion that abortion was murder by misusing Old Testiment scriptures like Jeremiah 1:5 to oppose abortion: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you: Before you were born, I sanctified you: I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” I read this as God predates our existence and that the womb is a place of formation of the human body or earth suit.  I say this because Adam did not become a living soul until he breathed the breath of life after his body was formed.  And in Luke of the New Testiment, it explicitly states that Elizabeth was in the sixth month of her pregnancy (after viability) when the baby leaped in her womb upon hearing the greeting of Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:36 – 41).  The Bible repeatedly describes this body as temporary, as dust, as in 2 Corinthians 5:1, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The fact that nearly 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage confirms for me that life does not begin at conception. And the fact that my girlfriend delivered a baby without a brain, but with a heartbeat, who never took a breath, solidified this fact.  I find it interesting too, that Jesus said absolutely nothing about abortion.  He talked about protecting children who were living and breathing outside the womb. And even if a miscarried or aborted fetus is a person as some believe, they should take comfort in the fact the soul of the unborn fetus is in heaven.  Religious beliefs differ, so we should let God be the judge of the person who got the abortion or the doctor who performed it.  They too, are equally entitled to their religious or non-religious beliefs to guide their behavior as they pursue their happiness.

The second thing these men introduced was a notion that somehow our country was special to God and would be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah if we allowed wickedness to persist.  They kept quoting, completely out of context, 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin heal their land.” This sounded ridiculous to me because Jesus only talked about individual salvation through belief in Him. He already laid out the temporary nature of this earthly kingdom.  He didn’t try to change the government to enforce God’s laws, he tried to change human hearts to ready them for the Kingdom of God. 

The third thing these men tried to do was convince us that this was a Christian nation and that the founders were all Christians.  I knew from history class that this was not entirely true.  Some were Christians, but others were deist, and still others were atheists. They tried to convince us that separation of church and state was a mythical concept.  However, the very first Amendment of our Constitution guarantees us the freedom of religion and prohibits the establishment of an official religion in our government.

In more recent years, politicians have mounted an attack on the LGBTQ community using the church.  I once argued with a pastor’s wife that no one chooses to be a homosexual as a lifestyle.  Just like no one chooses to be transgender for the fun of it.  Jesus never condemned homosexuality, although it has certainly existed throughout recorded history.  He did, however, call out religious hypocrites, religious show-offs, idolatry, rich people, financial cheats, and people who judge others. He replaced the Old Testament laws with the law of love:  love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  Let God be the judge.  Jesus made it clear that people need healing, acceptance, and compassion, not judgement and condemnation from other people.    

I am a Christian and I am also a patriot.  I am proud to live in a country where the preamble of our Constitution states that the purpose of our government is to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.  Those are the things I expect my Congress and executive branch to be working on. We have real problems with access to healthcare, crime, environmental threats, national security, and poverty.  These are the things you should be addressing. No one should be using our government to impose their religious beliefs on others.  That is against liberty and justice!

In this nation, all people are created equal and are supposed to enjoy the same rights.  We should be moving in that direction, not away from it.  I value your freedom of religion as much as my own.  However, neither of us has the right under our Constitution to impose our religious beliefs on others. You don’t believe in gay marriage, then don’t get gay married.  You believe abortion is murder, then don’t have one.

Your job as a representative is to uphold the Constitution and to ensure that the civil liberties of all Americans are preserved, even if you personally disagree with the personal decisions of Americans about how to pursue their own happiness.  That is between each American and his or her God, if he or she has one. You are responsible for saving your own soul and I hope you will remember that as you guide the House of Representatives.

As Americans, we have the responsibility to participate in our democratic republic. For now, we have the constitutional rights to free speech and to petition our government. I don’t want to ever lose these rights and so I wrote two letters to the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, to express my concerns and expectations. In this post, I share my first letter of two letters to encourage every reader to write his/her own letters or emails to our lawmakers at every level of government. In these perilous times, it’s going to take our collective voices to ensure our democracy for future generations of Americans. Here is the letter (absent two sentences that I removed because they were inappropriate to share on a public platform).

October 26, 2023

Dear House Speaker Johnson,

Congratulations on your new position.  It is a position that carries the weight of the country along with the hopes, health, and happiness of its citizens, and the preservation of the individual civil liberties of ALL Americans.  

My greatest fear is that you may not view all people born in this country or naturalized to be equal citizens deserving of the same rights to the pursuit of life and liberty.  You have taken positions in the past that lead me to fear that you think men should have more rights than women, that Christians should have more rights than non-Christians, that white people should have more rights than people of color, that sic-gender people should have more rights than non-binary people, and that heterosexuals should have more rights than homosexuals.  I hope I am wrong and that you support the notion of our founders that all men are created equal and endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

That said, I feel it necessary to share who I am and why your election as speaker is so concerning to me.  I am a married Christian female, a descendant of slaves (African American), a senior citizen, a cis-gender heterosexual mother of three productive citizens, the grandmother of three bi-racial grandsons, and a consistent taxpayer and voter.  I consider myself a fortunate person who had the extraordinary aptitude, resilience, energy, and determination to overcome the race and sex discrimination I encountered multiple times throughout my education, career, and daily life.  It would take a book to describe each of the battles I encountered since childhood and how doors were closed but I summoned the courage to find a window. I encountered far too many closed or limited opportunities.  One time I had to quit a high paying job because there was no other avenue to address the sexual assault perpetrated by my white boss.  He was a lot like Donald Trump! 

Too many legislators do not appreciate the exhausting fight it takes to overcome these obstacles to escape poverty in this country. They therefore have no understanding nor impetus to address the underlying reasons behind criminal behavior in high poverty areas. In addition, too many legislators do not appreciate the complications encountered in pregnancy.  I have never had an abortion nor a miscarriage, but I have plenty of female friends and family members who have. Each situation was sad and difficult.  I am a Christian who believes that life begins with breath (or the viability to breathe when born) as it says in Genesis that Adam became a living soul when God breathed into the body of Adam.  I believe that this body is just a tent, an earth suit that is formed in the womb to possibly house a soul and so I don’t grieve early miscarriages and abortions as if a person was killed.  Years ago, one of my Christian girlfriends gave birth to a baby without a brain.  It had a heartbeat.  It never breathed. The umbilical cord provided the oxygen and it was pronounced dead shortly after birth.  I realized then that a heartbeat is just a mechanical mechanism.  I recall when Republicans came into our church to sell the idea that life begins at conception as a political issue. Shame on Christians for buying into this political ploy that has no Biblical basis. And even if that is someone’s true religious belief, they have no right to force that belief onto others.  Like my friend, they don’t have to get an abortion, but let others who believe differently do what they believe is right for them.  God is ultimately the judge anyway.  I’m hopeful that you are actually pro-life, and not just pro-birth.

I am staunchly pro-life in the sense that I want our government to protect the lives of the already born  by making sure that the most vulnerable among us do not go hungry and have shelter, that all of us have access to healthcare, and that none of us are gunned down in the streets, grocery stores, churches, schools, concerts, bowling alleys, movie theaters, and dance halls because we fail to regulate access to guns. 

I’m hopeful that you are a Speaker who acts on the purpose of our government: to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.  In my mind, this means passing laws that actually deal with our border security, gun control, and our national security issues in the world including the middle east, Ukraine, and China.  It means providing affordable healthcare, infrastructure, gun control, a worldclass education for our all our children, affordable childcare for working parents, and a safety net for the vulnerable.  And finally, it means ensuring that all Americans enjoy the same civil rights regardless of their age, sexual orientation, gender, finances, or race.  It should never be more difficult to vote because you live in a poor area. 

I’m wealthy and I live in a wealthy area, and it has never taken me more than 10 minutes to cast a vote.  However, I’ve seen people waiting in lines for more than nine hours to cast a ballot. That is voter suppression!  And unfortunately, voter suppression happens mostly in Republican run states.  As a leader of your Party, I’m hopeful that you will seek policies that meet the expectations and needs of the majority of the American people so that it is no longer necessary to enact schemes to either win or try to overturn elections to stay in power.  I find your support of Trump’s 2020 election lies reprehensible, and you should apologize for your behavior to gain much needed trust.

And finally, as a Christian, I sincerely hope you end your support for Donald Trump.  By every measure, he is a person of low moral character, flawed intellectual acumen, and unpatriotic in his actions and rhetoric.  He is a horrible example to our children of what a human being should be and an embarrassment on the international stage. I hope you disavow all loyalty to him. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Juanita Hall    

I hope you, too, will take the opportunity to share your thoughts, experiences, and expectations with the man who has the power to ensure the lawful certification of the next election and to bring laws to the floor of the Congress to either protect or deny the civil liberties for all Americans. The address is:

Speaker Mike Johnson, H-232 The Capitol, Washington, DC 20515

:

A lot could happen before November 2024 that would prevent Trump from being elected to a second term. It’s what I’m praying for–some unforeseen circumstance or court decision that saves us from the perils of another Trump administration. But just in case my prayers are not answered, I spent some time thinking about what our country would have to endure should he be re-elected.

This week, I focus on the chaos that is likely to ensue as Trump enacts his stated agenda. From his previous term to his election promises, it should be no surprise where we are headed under his leadership. Trump wants to be a dictator. I predict that Trump will spend the year filling his administration with loyalists who aren’t necessarily experts or even competent, but with ruthless white nationalists who will do his bidding without hesitation. Like all modern authoritarians, he will fill election oversight posts with his loyalists to ensure any future elections are in his favor. He will need armed nationalists to carry this out and he already has them lined up.

Trump has said that he will pardon the January 6th insurrectionists and take revenge on his political enemies including district attorneys, the department of justice, disloyal judges, and the media. In his second year, having vanquished his enemies, I predict that he will unleash his army of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, armed white supremacist groups, sympathetic police and military members as well as any remaining government agencies to silence any dissenters, deport Muslims as well as non-white undocumented immigrants. Just this week, he promised a round-up and detention camps. He will end birthright citizenship and paths to immigration for people from “shithole” countries. He has already stated that he welcomes white immigrants from countries like Norway.

To fully accomplish his agenda, he will need to completely destroy our system of checks and balances. At this point, I predict that there will be a bloody last-ditch effort from brave patriots to stop him. This fight will test the resolve of Congress, the Supreme Court, the remaining military, and patriotic Americans to preserve our Constitution and our democratic republic.

Should this battle be won by Trump through intimidation and violence, I predict that the Evangelical right who supported Trump through it all will finally turn on him and they will be next on the chopping block. I think they were fully aware that Trump is not a true Christian, but they thought he was useful. They know that he lies, he cheats, he falsely accuses people, engages in name-calling, is cruel, and loves money and power above everything. But they supported him to get a conservative Supreme Court to overturn abortion rights and make this a Christian nation. I predict that once he has gained unpresented power over the media, the military, and the courts, he will fully abandon the Christian right as fanatics who serve no purpose other than to annoy him. When they observe his unwillingness to codify their religious beliefs into actual laws, like he is already signaling regarding abortion, they will finally wake up and see the idolatry that gripped them and helped propel him an authoritarian to power who now threatens even them. History tells us that religious morality is a thorn and threat to immoral authoritarian rule. And Trump is not a moral acter.

Trump wants to run the country like he runs his businesses–without ethics and as the sole decision maker. He sees authoritarian rule as efficient and admits to envying dictators like Putin and Xi. If he succeeds in gaining the power of a dictator, I believe the world will look on in horror as Trump dissolves NATO, allows Israel to massacre the Palestinians, allows Putin to take Ukraine and other countries, and hands Taiwan over to China. His new world order will put him on par with other world dictators. Using the threat of military might, he will build his wall and force Mexico to actually pay for it. I predict that he will gladly rule the nation with the same brutality as other authoritarians. He has always behaved as a bully and there will be no one to prevent him from acting out this time.

I predict justice will be meted out in the streets by uninhibited police brutality. Suspected criminals, refugees, and immigrants will no longer receive due process. The shortcut will mass deportation, murder in the streets, and kangaroo courts to lock people up as a means of obtaining free labor. For the first time, migration will be away from the United States, not to it. Citizens who are able will flee to other countries.

I predict that companies and farms will experience severe work shortages, surviving on the free labor provided by a greatly enlarged prison population. It will be the re-introduction of slavery. I predict that charities will strive to assist the poor and infirmed as there will be little to no government assistance offered. Trump has never been a policy person and he pays little attention to detail, so without a fully staffed and functioning government, normal services will be disrupted if not halted altogether.

I haven’t even touched on the harm to the environment that will occur as he deregulates every safeguard, allowing for short-term financial gains across multiple industries that will put the planet in peril and make clean air and water difficult to sustain. I predict climate scientists and environmentalists will be silenced as research funding is prohibited. In fact, anyone who disagrees with him or criticizes him will be silenced. That’s what authoritarians do.

I’ve painted a very bleak picture. It’s actually more of a nightmare and I sincerely hope I am wrong. But more than anything, I hope none of us has to find out. We have the opportunity to stop this from happening at the voting booth in 2024 if the courts fail in the same way Congress failed to stop him. Of course, he is also elderly and has poor eating habits so nature could run its course to save us. But if all else fails, I recognize that the world is looking on and realizing that a second Trump administration is a clear and danger to the planet and to people across the world. I imagine the European Union and NATO are watching closely and I wouldn’t be surprised if they acted in concert to eliminate the threat.

As of today, Trump is ahead in four key battleground electoral states that will determine the presidential election regardless of the popular vote. Unless something changes, we may well be saddled with another Trump presidency that will likely be rife with indecent behavior, corruption, revenge seeking, unscientific and unsound public policies as well as a loss of basic civil rights and constitutional freedoms for millions of people based on White Christian nationalism, xenophobia, homophobia, racism, misogyny and a distain for education.

Someone said that even if Trump were to lose in 2024, he will again claim that he won and with Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House, he might well be successful this time in stealing the presidency. That will be the end of our democratic republic and help usher in the theocracy that Mike Johnson and many Republicans desire. Before anyone casts a ballot next November, citizens must understand that the Christian right wants to enshrine several cultural and legal changes that align with their interpretation of the Bible.

First, and foremost, they want their views and values to become the law. Having spent a good amount of time in a white evangelical church when it started to become politically active, I know their values, mindset, and distorted interpretations of the Bible and the Constitution. I recall vividly how Bill Jones, a prominent church member, introduced the notion that this was a “Christian” nation, founded by Christians and for Christians escaping religious persecution. He kept saying that there was no such thing as a separation of church and state and how it was made up by people who hated God. We all discounted his ideas as ridiculous and began to view him as a political fanatic. But fast-forward forty years, and we have the new Speaker of the House and several Republicans saying the very same thing.

In this series, I will reveal some of the values, mindsets, and interpretations of the Bible they wish to force upon the American people through political power, culture wars, and violence if necessary. At the center of their mindset is the role of women in relation to men.

The views of the evangelical church place men in positions of authority above women. They characterize women as lesser beings who are weak, indecisive, emotional, irrational, and in need of supervision and protection. The role of women is to get married and to be a submissive and supportive wife and mother. Her God-given duties are limited to that of sex-slave wife, homemaker, and sacrificial mother. She helps make his ambitions possible as his “help meet” and any personal ambitions she has are confined to narrow lanes that further serve the family and never conflict with her husband’s ambitions.

I learned firsthand that women were expected to overlook, forgive, pray for, and suffer through the cheating, the laziness, or even the mental or physical abuse of their husbands. For a time, my self-esteem was wrapped up in being the perfect wife, mother, and homemaker. But unlike most of my white female church friends, I not only had a college degree, but I grew up in a family filled with strong independent working women. So, with my working mother’s insistence and my husband’s approval, work outside the home was an option for me that I often opted for. However, even when I worked full-time, none of the home responsibilities and childcare were shared by my husband.

I don’t think it is a surprise that an educated, confident, and capable woman will eventually reject this lifestyle when her husband proves unworthy. And I was one of them. The first time my husband cheated with our housekeeper, the pastor told me to forgive him, saying he felt threatened by my job and so it was really my fault. The second time, a different pastor advised me forgive, not only the ongoing infidelity, but the STD that came along with it. It was only when my unrepentant husband decided that he wanted to stay married and continue his affair that I decided independence was far better than the subservient doormat I had allowed myself to become under the guise of being a good Christian wife and mother.

As an educated woman with work experience and self-esteem, I had the luxury of making the choice to leave. Many do not. I recall reminding my pastor that I had read for myself that divorce with the prospect of remarriage in the case of infidelity was acceptable according to the Bible. I was free and after I filed for divorce, I left that church and its oppressive teachings behind. I vowed to never again marry under the same conditions. And I didn’t. The words, “obey” were deleted from my marriage vows the second time around. Instead, I opted for a partnership among two rational adults, and it works great because we respect each other and are faithful to each other. Support is no longer a one-way street.

This past week, I found it suspicious when Speaker Mike Johnson made an excuse for the absence of his wife by saying that she was tired from being on her knees in prayer for the past few weeks. I thought someone probably needed to do a wellness check on her. And then I heard her childlike voice in an interview and recognized the tone I associate with the perfectly submissive wife. The wives of these evangelical white nationalists like Mike Pence and Governor DeSantis all behave and sound the alike. The men are strong and confident having absorbed the will, energy, intellect, and ambition from their submissive wives to feed their egos. These are the same men who seek to control women across the country through their anti-abortion legislation. They are also against birth control.

I am convinced that their ultimate goal is to trap women into submissive marriages and motherhood through a process of cultural brainwashing and laws surrounding the reproductive process. They will eventually outlaw sex outside of marriage and censure media portrayals of it as indecent. The banning of books is a preview of their agenda. They will eliminate any social safety nets that provide single mothers help with food and childcare, forcing marriage, adoption, or extended family support as the only option for survival and once again labeling unwed mothers as immoral social deviants.

I already see young men and young women who have been taught in their Christian schools or homeschooled flooding social media with their message on the traditional role of men and men. These young men unapologetically claim their desire to find a good woman who will have their babies and obey them without question. These young women gleefully claim they just want to be protected, to be mothers, and “not have to think”. They vehemently argue against anyone who presents the notion of marriage between equal adult partners. The culture war is in full force on social media while the political war that will determine the legal status of women hangs on this next election.

It’s not a coincidence that the Republicans want to eliminate the Department of Education and that they are constantly attacking public school teachers as immoral people with a “WOKE” agenda. They need uneducated females much like the Taliban in Afghanistan need uneducated females to feed their egos and enable their personal ambitions.

The 2024 election is our opportunity to reject this white Christian nationalist agenda. It is up to us to ensure the civil liberties of women in this country, so each one can decide for herself the lifestyle she wants to live, whether submissive or independent.