Screwtape’s Reflections on Marriage & the Indiana GOP State Convention

C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters, is famous for exposing Satan’s method of paving the road to hell with good intentions.  Little did anyone suspect that the subject of Lewis’ book, the demon, Screwtape, is still at work.  Let’s examine a recent letter penned by the demon to his nephew, Wormwood, regarding his activities at the recent Indiana Republican State Convention.

My Dear Wormwood:

Congratulate me!  I have just returned from the Indiana Republican State Party Convention to happily report that our campaign to rename the “Grand Old Party” with the slogan “Grow Our Party” was a rousing success.

As you know, Our Father Below developed a strategy to promote homosexual marriage by telling the party faithful that, by doing so, they could win votes.  Now, if there is anything a politician loves it is winning votes!  Willing participants cheerfully handed out stickers to people with the statement “Grow Our Party” without nary a clue that we were promoting homosexual unions.   Many an unsuspecting delegate put the stickers on their shirts, never suspecting that Our Father Below had designed the ploy to exchange the truth for a lie.

Now, it is true that the Party Delegates saw though our ruse and overwhelmingly defeated a proposal that would have removed support for traditional marriage between a man and a woman from the platform.  They succeeded in defeating our motion by a margin of 80% to 20%.   However, that does not matter.  For, you see my devoted nephew; the members of the news media did our bidding in reporting the results.

For example, Indianapolis Star Reporter Tony Cook wrote:

“The in-fighting is a reflection of just how divided the party has become on the issue.”  Cook went on to write: “At the convention, disagreement was evident everywhere. Delegates could almost be divided into two camps based on their political accessories: Those with yellow, “Pro Pence, Pro Marriage” buttons, and those with green, ‘Grow our party don’t divide it’ stickers.”

You see, this is the beauty of it all.  Never mind what the delegates really did at the convention.  As long as our minions in the media TELL the public what happened, that is all that matters!   And, nearly 10% of the delegates who had promoted the “Grow Our Party” propaganda walked out when they did not get their way.  Truly, this was a victory on our part to sow the seeds of discontent among so many!

Yes, there were a few moments when I was concerned.  One was when former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee rose to speak to the convention.  His was a message of remaining steadfast to Our Father Below’s arch nemesis.  He had an especially poignant closing message of steering into the coming curve of adversity in order to move forward to provide hope and leadership to the masses.  Fortunately, however, his speech came late in the day on Friday.  The seeds of hunger and the desire to “party” we had planted caused them to barely pay him any attention.

There was another moment that concerned me.  It was when that lame duck State Treasurer, Richard Mourdock, warned of the looming financial collapse of the United States and the danger of following in Germany’s footsteps to elect a modern day Hitler.  He spoke early in the day on Saturday, when the delegates were alert and paying attention.  He was met with rousing applause as he relayed the historical fact that Hitler rose to power in Germany because of the economic collapse that threatened to destroy that country via hyperinflation.   The truth of his statement is easy to discover, as one can easily find video of this on Youtube and other websites.

But, once again, Indianapolis Star reporter Cook came to our rescue when he confronted the leader of the Republicans, Tim Berry, with what Mourdock had said:

“After the convention ended, Indiana Republican Chairman Tim Berry declined to endorse Mourdock’s speech.  ‘I’ll be honest, I did not hear the comment, so I really can’t refer to that,” he said. “Certainly any reference to Nazi Germany is not appropriate’.”

Yes, this was a wonderful convention, as even their own Chairman could not bring himself to defend the truth in the face of our well-crafted lie.  This guarantees victory with the “Grow Our Party” slogan.

It never entered their heads that to truly grow the Republican Party, they might reach out to such groups as Eastern Star Church, that has an outreach ministry to pregnant girls and their fathers in order to provide parenthood coaching.  It never occurred to them to reach out to Crossroads Bible College which has a program on Urban Leadership and Racial Reconciliation, where they actively seek to promote Christianity through “Released Time Education.”   These and other groups, which support marriage between one man and one woman, are made up of socially conservative African Americans who are slowly awakening to the idea that the Democrat Party they support is leaving them.  Indeed, Wormwood, we must keep these “low information voters” from learning that the Democrat party turned its back on their view of marriage with the following wording of their 2014 Indiana Democrat Party Platform:

The Indiana Democratic Party opposes all forms of discrimination based upon sexual orientation or gender identity. We support full marriage equality, oppose amending the Indiana Constitution to define marriage and support repeal of statutes like the Defense of Marriage Act that define marriage by gender.

So long as we can divert their attention away from  what will TRULY grow the Republican Party, and keep these potential converts to the Republican Brand preoccupied with such labels as racist and homophobe, our strategy to bring America down will succeed.

Wormwood, that is our challenge.  And, so long as we succeed in drawing divisions on these issues, and continue to confuse people about the newly adopted 2014 Indiana Republican Platform, we will continue to win.  After all, who would ever wish to ACTUALLY READ their silly platform, which states:

We believe that strong families, based on marriage between a man and a woman, are the foundation of society. We also recognize that some families are much more diverse and we support the blended families, grandparents, guardians and loving adults who successfully raise and nurture children to reach their full potential every day.

Your affectionate uncle, hungering for the souls of Low Information Voters:

Screwtape