If a bunch of fundamentalist Christians wish to secede from the United States of America, that’s just fine with me. Were it not for the fundies, my state wouldn’t be the scientific laughingstock of the world for its early (and ongoing) views on evolution. Thank you, Dayton, Tennessee. Were it not for fundies of various creeds, we might not be at war today, and it’s highly unlikely that the World Trade Center would have been destroyed as it was. Were it not for fundies, we might be a good bit closer to having equal rights for all in America rather than only for those who, a hundred years ago, were white and those who, now, happen to be attracted to members of the opposite sex. The fundies want a state of their own? I say give it to them. I say give them California and hope it’s in their vengeful fundy god’s will to split it off into the ocean sooner than anticipated.

Whence this outburst? An acquaintance sent me a link to Christian Exodus today. The site provides information about a movement appealing to the Christian Right to find 50,000 people willing to relocate to a conservative state and vote to rescind that state’s ratification of the constitution and thus to become an independent state. The site seems to be self-contradictory, as its author cries out for a return to the “moral and constitutional government that we have demanded for so long” while encouraging the denunciation of that very constitution.

The fact is, it’s not the constitution that’s problematic. There are means to amend it, as the Christian Right, with its Defense of Marriage Act and its attempts to have the U.S. declared a Christian nation, well knows. The problem here is that the Christian Right just doesn’t have the numbers to get what it wants. Rather than filtering the issues through the appropriate (electoral) channels, this group is skulking off to find a way around the protocol defined by the very founding fathers they insist were all good Southern Baptist prayer leaders. Yet they consider me unpatriotic because I don’t support their war or their particular ancient set of moral codes.

I do think it’s a shame that they’re going to ruin a perfectly good state for those of its residents who disagree with the fundamentalist ideology. (And by the way, I’m not railing here against Christians generally — just this particular offensive subset of them.) If the fundies were coming in such great numbers to Tennessee, I’d be inclined to move away, and I’d be pretty steamed about it, because I like it here in spite of the stifling climate of intolerance for anyone besides the hetero WASP. My residency here is safe, it turns out, as they’ve narrowed their prospective venues down to Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina. And they’re welcome to the hypocritical legacy of Strom Thurmond and racial division, which they were happy to spur on with scripture 150 years ago.

Yes, they’re welcome to any of these backwater states, as far as I’m concerned, though for my part, I’d have the government designate an island for them so that they can commit their social atrocities in isolation without displacing any harmless non-extremists, hurting or “helping” none but themselves. If as big an island as Australia was good enough for British criminals, then surely we could devote a few hundred square miles to the likes of Falwell and Robertson.