My four o’clock consultation today was with the Right Reverend Dr. Hezekiah Torquemada Hicks, D.D., Vice President for Public Relations at the Interstate Christian Commerce Committee here in Washington DC. “Greetings, sinner!,” he bellowed as he strode into my office, “Proclaim Jesus Christ as your Savior and repent! He will forgive you, and come Resurrection Day, you shall have eternal life in Heaven with the Lord!”
“Who, me?” I replied as he made himself comfortable on the couch in front of the picture window overlooking the White House.
“Yes, you!” Dr. Hicks declared. “You, Tom Collins Martini, the smartest man inside the Beltway!”
“Which is a lot,” I asserted, “like being the tallest building in Baltimore.”
“Baltimore?” Dr. Hicks thundered. “A latter day Sodom or an End Times Gomorrah? That’s what God Almighty will soon decide!”
“Great seafood in any case,” I opined. “How may I help the I.C.C.C. today?”
“Why, this Indiana thing, of course,” he huffed indignantly. “Since last Thursday, it’s all anyone’s been talking about!”
“Not exactly,” I noted, “In fact, there has also been a fair amount of discussion concerning nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva Switzerland, elections in Nigeria, massacres by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and its seizure of a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, the Houthi rebellion in Yemen and a certain airline crash in the French alps involving an angst-ridden German copilot with a psychosomatic eye condition, chronic depression, psychotic tendencies and a sociopathic mental pathology.”
“And they’re all going to Hell,” Dr. Hicks shouted, “if they don’t cut out all that there heathen behavior, pagan belief and willful commission of mortal sins and get down on their knees and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Personal Savior, right now! Will you do that for me, Tom Collins Martini? Will you get down on your knees, right now on this here bodacious Oriental rug of yours, and take the Lord Jesus into your heart?”
“Dr. Hicks,” I said, “much as it may be to your dismay and disappointment, I am a Roman Catholic, have been since my Confirmation and intend to die that way.”
“You’re going to Hell, then, you know,” he warned me. “Only those who are born again in the Lord, accept Jesus as their Personal Savior in the Holy Spirit of Evangelical Pentecostalism; are washed in the Blood of the Lamb; and, who hold the poisonous Serpents without harm while speaking in the Holy Tongues can hope to attain Eternal Salvation in Paradise with God Almighty and his Blessed Son, hallelujah!”
“No thanks,” I told him, “frankly, if God wants me to spend eternity with company like that, I would rather He just send me to Hell and be done with it.”
“Okay,” he shrugged, “your choice, I guess. Can’t say you weren’t given the opportunity, anyway. So, what about this Indiana business?”
“That new religious freedom law,” I observed, “certainly has stirred up a hornets’ nest, hasn’t it?”
“You’re telling me!” Dr. Hick groused. “We thought, here’s Indiana, a state that gets less attention than Ohio or Iowa, damn it all – pardon my French – the only time anybody ever thinks about Indiana is when somebody mentions the Indianapolis Five Hundred. Am I right?”
“Pretty much,” I confirmed. “I’d bet twenty to one odds that the average person in China couldn’t find Indiana on a map of the United States and fifty to one the average American couldn’t find it, either. And come to think of it, I’d put down a ten to one side bet that the American couldn’t find the United States on a map of the world.”
“The only map anyone needs to find anything on,” Dr. Hicks confidently vouched, “is the one in the Bible that shows the path to Salvation. But never mind that, I suppose, if you’re not interested in the fate of your immortal soul. What we need to talk about is what went wrong and how the I.C.C.C. is going to fix it!”
“What went wrong?” I sought to clarify. “Could you explain?”
“Wrong?” Dr. Hicks rolled his eyes in righteous disbelief. “Tell me, what went right? Here we had this knuckle-headed peckerwood, Governor Mike Pence, all stuffed with campaign contributions and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and got him to ram through a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, named exactly like that federal law Bill Clinton got passed back in 1993, but specially cooked up just for Indiana with a couple of new features the Devil made sure old Slick Willy left out of the original.”
“Oh, right,” I acknowledged, “you took a tip from Mitt Romney and saw to it that the Indiana version of RFRA treated private businesses, publicly traded corporations, religious organizations and professional associations like people.”
“That we did,” he proudly beamed. “And I got to give that Romney feller credit where credit is due, even if he is a Mormon and going straight to Hell the moment he dies.”
“No waiting for the Last Judgment?” I japed.
“Absolutely not!” Dr. Hicks roared, completely missing my irony, as expected. “Straight to Hell, that’s where the Mormons go, along with the atheists, the socialists, the liberals, the communists and the Unitarians!”
“And you also made sure,” I noted, “that the Indiana RFRA allowed legal action on the part of any party who feels that their religious beliefs are being impinged upon in a ‘substantially burdensome’ manner…”
“Yep,” he proudly confirmed, “we took them words straight out of Burwell versus Hobby Lobby Stores, Incorporated. That’s what the United States Supreme Court said, and by God, that’s what the new Indiana law means!”
“And,” I pressed on, “the new Indiana RFRA also allows legal action by that religiously infringed party without the necessity of government involvement, interest or action.”
“That’s right,” he snickered, “as we at the I.C.C.C. like to say, ‘Godly laws keep government in the bedroom and out of the courtroom.’ That pretty much says it all, don’t you think?”
“It certainly says a lot,” I allowed. “But it appears that your plan has more or less backfired on you, hasn’t it?”
“And don’t it burn my onion something fierce!” Dr. Hicks railed indignantly. “That servant of Satan’s Serpent! That spineless Judas Iscariot! That… that… that…
“You are presumably referring,” I interrupted, “to Governor Mike Pence?”
“I am,” he growled, “and I would not be terribly surprised if he got a ticket straight to Hell right along with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama! Because, Mr. Collins, as it turns out, the man’s solemn word as a Christian Evangelical gentlemen isn’t worth a hook-nosed, liver-lipped Jewish pawnbroker’s promise to marry the white virgin choir girl he has despoiled! No sir, it is not! I swear, no sooner did that foul apostate disciple of Satan, Governor Mike Pence, sign that bill – upon which we worked so hard, and so long, and in good faith, I remind you – than the Sodomites start hollering and marching around with that Satanic rainbow flag of theirs. Which we anticipated, of course, but not that the governors of five states – three of them with FRFA laws of their own, mind you – would ban expenditure of their treasuries’ funds for any travel by their public employees to the State of Indiana!”
“Maybe they felt insulted,” I suggested. “After all, their FRFA laws don’t have those two sneaky little provisions in them. You must admit, Reverend, that those clauses do, in fact, open a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences – or, dare I propose, perhaps not so very unintended, after all.”
“Pandora,” he angrily shot back, “is a pagan deity, and I’ll thank you not to invoke pagan gods in my presence, if you please!”
“Actually,” I dryly responded, “Pandora is only a mythological human character, and I can tell you without the slightest doubt, there was no intention on my part to conjure demons. I try very hard to avoid that, you see, since they stink up the office for hours after they leave. My point, sir, is that just because your Indiana law has the same name as those in other states and even the same name as the federal law passed in 1993, the public has had over three decades of experience by now with laws bearing clever names engineered to conceal the fact that their intention is precisely the opposite of what those clever names seem to imply. Maybe the American public isn’t in general any smarter than a mule, but those who seek to deceive them should bear in mind that once a mule learns something relevant to its survival, that mule never, ever forgets it. And something you have apparently forgotten, Reverend, is that the original federal FRFA was enacted, among other things, to allow Native Americans to consume peyote as a religious ritual without being subjected to ten years in prison for violating federal laws against possession of mescaline.”
“Any savage stupid and ignorant enough to worship a cactus,” Dr. Hick yelled as he stood up and shook his fist in the air, “deserves what he gets! There are Evangelical missionaries all over the Southwest devoting their lives to bringing the Word of God to those pathetic redskins, and you know what they do when our missionaries tell them about Jesus Christ? They smile and say He was a wise man, but He did not know everything. Well, you know what I know? I know those heathens are going straight to Hell with Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, the Mormons and the communists, that’s what I know!”
“Have you heard,” I asked, “that the Arkansas state legislature passed its own RFRA bill not so very long ago this afternoon?”
Stunned, Dr. Hicks stood silent for ten seconds. “Praise the Lord!” he finally shouted, throwing his hands skyward in exultation. “Our prayers have been answered!”
“Not so fast, Reverend,” I chided. “About twenty minutes later, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson announced he won’t sign that bill until the legislature changes it to omit those same two sneaky little clauses.”
Dr. Hicks blanched white as a sheet and went comatose, staring at the wall opposite the couch for about fifteen seconds. “Won’t… sign… without… changes?” he finally muttered.
“You are correct, sir,” I stated with my best nonchalant tone.
“What… what’s… what’s going on?” he beseeched, his affect flat, tears welling up in his eyes.
“Oh, that,” I averred, “it’s simple, really. While Republican politicians sincerely appreciate the gullible, reliable, dependable votes they receive from conservative Christians, the bald fact of the matter is, those folks don’t have particularly deep pockets. No, the real money – the kind of money you need these days to win elections, be they primary or otherwise, comes from other Republicans, the Republicans of the business community. And truth is, Reverend, the typical Republican American businesses proprietor would sell their products to Lucifer Himself if He placed an order while fisting an underage chicken in full Fifty Shades of Grey bondage, as long as the cash ain’t counterfeit, the credit card goes through or the check gets approved, as the case may be. Billionaires like that think picnic ant businesses like Hobby Lobby are just quaint, silly, pathetic and asinine little pustules on the corpulent buttocks of the market. Republican business interests worship Mammon, my dear Reverend, and they cheerfully answer the call of nature all over your ranting, raving, barefoot Evangelical minions, seven blessed days a week, and not all the preaching, praying and persecution your flocks can muster will change a single accounting transaction of it, nor all your tears wash out a single capital gain. Face it, Reverend, Pence and Hutchinson are down on their knees for the NCAA, Angie’s List, Apple Computers and WalMart, doing what Monica Lewinsky did for Bill Clinton, not down on their knees praying to Jesus.”
“Anybody,” he slowly murmured, “who bakes a cake… or delivers flowers… for a gay wedding… is… going… to burn… in Hell… for all eternity. You… can’t… force… someone… to sacrifice… their entire livelihood… in order to save themselves… from that.”
Rising from the couch, he collapsed on the floor. I dialed 911.
“Holy [expletive], Mr. Collins,” Rastus the DC paramedic remarked about an hour later as he and his crew finally arrived and surveyed the situation, “this here be the third one this month. What the [expletive] you be doing here, anyhow?”
“Just business as usual,” I assured him. “Check with your boss if you don’t believe me.”