As you doubtless already know, America is suffering through an unprecedented economic disaster. With millions of people jobless and millions of homeowners underwater, the economy is stagnant and its prospects are dim. Which is why, in these hard times, nothing is more important than shoveling more taxpayer dollars into the gaping maw of the fundamentalist carnival sideshow:
A group of private investors and religious organizations is hoping to build a Bible-themed amusement park in Kentucky, complete with a full-size 500-foot-by-75-foot reproduction of Noah’s Ark, a Tower of Babel, and other biblical exhibits on a 800-acre campus outside of Williamstown, KY. Their effort got a shot in the arm yesterday when the state approved $43 million in tax breaks for the project.
As the article notes, Kentucky has cut funding to education and Medicaid eight times in the past three years. But, somehow, its government has found room in the budget for a $43 million tax break, a 75% property-tax reduction over 30 years, $200,000 in direct incentives, 100 acres of reduced-price state land, $40 million in sales tax rebates, and $11 million in nearby road improvements, all of which are for the benefit of a creationist “amusement park” whose chief attraction will be a full-size replica of Noah’s leaky boat. All this is to complement the “creation museum” which Kentucky already boasts, though I feel dirty even using the word “museum” to describe an institute devoted to the teaching of antiscientific ignorance.
This story is a prime example of something that I first saw pointed out by Sikivu Hutchinson. In economically depressed communities, storefront churches are both a sign of and a contributor to blight: a sign of blight because it means that profit-generating businesses can’t get a foothold; a contributor to blight because churches, unlike businesses, pay no taxes and don’t help broaden the revenue base. The same is likely to be true of these “creation museums”: as soon as their builders have cashed the state’s checks, we can expect them to turn around and claim that they’re part of a ministry and should be entirely tax-exempt, over and above the massive tax breaks they’ve already been given.
This project is unlikely to help the state’s economy, but it does help right-wing demagogues burnish their theocratic credentials for the benefit of the masses. In today’s Republican party, being anti-science is a prerequisite, and dispensing government pork to some loon who claims that the universe is younger than the invention of writing is a solid bullet point on a politician’s resumé. That said, I can’t pin all the blame on Republicans: Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, also supports the project, which just proves that ignorance and pandering cross party lines.
Nor is it just Kentucky that’s rewarding the purveyors of religious lunacy. In Texas (where else?), the state is funneling money to “crisis pregnancy” centers, those anti-choice fronts that typically do their best to look like legitimate family-planning clinics so that they can bombard women who come to them with religious propaganda.
What these stories show is that the Republicans’ alleged fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with deficits, and everything to do with wielding the power of the government as a bludgeon to support their regressive, medieval views on science and women’s rights. They’re dead-set against raising taxes, except when it’s raising taxes on abortion and family planning. They’re ferociously opposed to more government spending, except when that spending is for the benefit of carnival-barker religious whackjobs or deceitful anti-choicers. They’re more than willing to use the government’s spending power to advance ignorance and take away choice, just never the other way around.