STFU Michele Bachmann

According to Videogum, the clip above features Michele Bachmann and Lou Engle at the Family Research Council’s 2009 “Prayercast” event, held to stymie the passage of Obama’s healthcare reform.

Bachmann leads the prayer with a bowed head and steady, practiced voice. She doesn’t bring up Healthcare or Obama by name, but begs God’s forgiveness for herself and as a “stand in for others” who failed to look to God as leaders.

Hearing a politician imploring God to take sides on a partisan issue usually feels a bit like watching football players asking God to take their team’s side before a game. If an omnipotent God exists and is watching the game, one can assume that he’s expending his energy preventing concussions, rather than taking sides.

But, while the Bible’s God is surely neither a Republican or a Democrat, healthcare may be one of the few partisan issues where he actually does take a side.

Last November Pope Benedict XVI and other Catholic church leaders said at the international papal conference on health care at the Vatican that it is the “moral responsibility of nations to guarantee access to health care for all of their citizens, regardless of social and economic status or their ability to pay.”

Yet various religious politicians who purport to be acting out God’s will are vocally opposed to healthcare reform. According to New York Times, last summer Sarah Palin called Obama’s proposal “downright evil.”

I don’t usually side with the Pope— it bugs me that he’s against gay marriage and contraceptives—but I’m with him on this one. God would most likely support a bill that tries to provide affordable healthcare to everyone. At the very least, it would make his job of preventing brain damage on high school Football fields a little bit easier.

Michele, you can’t pray away ‘the gay’, and you sure as fuck can’t pray away affordable healthcare. 

P.S From 2:30 on it gets REALLY weird