(Satire)
Despite vigorous protests from Republican presidential candidates, the Vatican and preachers across the land, a new entry was added a few days ago to the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Social scientists termed the latest mental disorder, the 298th official entry, Impositional Religiosity. It means the unwelcome application of faith-based beliefs, dogmas, creeds and the like on the rights and preferences of others, particularly those without beliefs in, uses for, or intentions to adhere to what they perceive as preposterous burdens or obligations based on irrational beliefs.
The DSM dates to the 1840 census, when efforts were made to collect information about mental health in the United States. By the census of 1980, seven categories of mental conditions were established: mania, melancholia, monomania, paresis, dementia, dipsomania and epilepsy. Given that the inclusion of Impositional Religiosity brings the list of insanities to almost 200 in 2015, it seems clear the trajectory of mental health in this country over the course of the past 175 years is not encouraging.
Impositional Religiosity accounts for such phenomena as the culture war in America, wherein otherwise relatively good and generous people seek to deny women full reproductive choices, to oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians and in other ways to impose varied supernatural convictions on everyone else. It seems unlikely that such forms of intolerance, discrimination and/or mean-spirited bigotry would manifest absent the harmful creeds and dogmas that inspire such undemocratic tendencies, including discrimination and intolerance.
Many examples of Impositional Religiosity were on display before and right after the June 26 ruling by the US Supreme Court that same-sex marriage is a legal right across the United States. While hailed by President Barack Obama as a victory for America (“When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free”), many afflicted by Impositional Religiosity appeared in the throes of mental breakdowns, as the following examples attest:
- Associate Justice Antonin Scalia railed against an elitist majority on the Court, calling the decision a “judicial Putsch” and “a threat to democracy.”
- A month earlier, evangelist Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Billy Graham, predicted (see “Mayday! Mayday! Mike Huckabeeay! A Distress Call for Prayer”) that Jesus is coming to escort his followers to heaven. Without “authentic Christians” around to keep order, you-know-what will hit fans everywhere. Specifically, banks will close, the stock market will plunge, planes will fall out of the sky, cars will crash, families will be torn apart and so on.
- Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee urged conservative Christians to engage in a massive “biblical disobedience” campaign against the “false god of judicial supremacy.”
- Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert urged followers to “flee the country, since that’s what God did,” and added that there will be a “drop-off of God’s protection of the good ole U.S. because we’ve gone and legalized gay marriage.”
- Former Rep. Allen West wrote that the ruling could lead to civil war.
- Bill Muehlenberg of BarbWire said that we are now officially in the End Times due to “this homo-fascist decision,” that “the Supreme Court has just declared that reality and biology no longer exist.”
- Christian blogger Bryan Fischer somehow discovered that Satan is dancing in the streets of America and, because of this decision, “6/26 will be our nation’s moral 9/11 – a date that will live in infamy when the twin towers of truth and righteousness were blown up by moral jihadists.”
Unfortunately, the inclusion of this mental disorder in the DSM does not mean that a cure has been found. As of this writing, there is no drug known to alleviate, let alone immunize against the condition, nor is there a scientific medical remedy. However, numerous practitioners of alternative and complementary medicine, including homeopaths, psychic surgeons and chiropractors, claim to have fixes.
Regrettably, a conspiracy by the government, the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Society is, according to these holistic innovators, denying sufferers of Impositional Religiosity relief from the mental disorder that they, and the rest of us, so desire be brought to bear as soon as heavenly possible.
Be well and look on the bright side.