http://blog.buzzflash.com/analysis/941Bart Stupak Says He Just Rents a Room at the C Street House, But Actually He's a Member of the Family
Rep. Bart Stupak knows that the first rule of the Family is that you're not allowed to talk about the Family. And the Michigan Democrat's silence has been golden for the secretive group behind the infamous C Street House.
"I don’t belong to any such group," Stupak told reporters during a recent conference call. "I rent a room at a house in C Street. I do not belong to any such group. I don’t know what you’re talking about --
Family and all this other stuff."
Stupak is consistent in his reticence as far back as 2002, when he told the Los Angeles Times, "We sort of don't talk to the press about the house."
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Despite the way the organization rose to prominence in the 1940s by gathering as many influential men into its ranks and prayer circles as possible, the current leaders of what is sometimes referred to by members as The Fellowship and the Christian Mafia have decided their best course of action is to lay low. The Family's leader, Doug Coe, has been widely quoted as telling other evangelical organizations that "the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have."
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Much of what the public knows about the Family is thanks to the undercover investigative reporting by journalist Jeff Sharlet. In 2003, Sharlet wrote an extensive account of his time spent living in one of the Family's many residences (of which the C Street House is one). He eventually published The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, a book exploring the extensive connections between the country's political elite and this shadowy organization.
More recently, Sharlet has been drawing connections between the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and the Family. He criticized the media's characterization of the amendment as a product of the Catholic Bishops' organization. Though Stupak is Roman Catholic, Sharlet says his residence at C Street, along with Republican co-author Rep. Joe Pitt's long-term affiliation with the Family, has more to do with the anti-choice amendment than anything else. He downplayed Stupak's role to more of a Democratic vehicle via which the Family-led amendment could be smuggled onto the Pelosi plan.
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However, in a recent piece on Salon.com, Sharlet treats Stupak as an equal collaborator with Pitts in an elaborate Christian scheme to being the Democratic Party to the knees of evangelicals:
Together, they're poster boys for the evangelical/conservative Catholic alliance known as "co-belligerency," a culture war strategy designed to take territory within the Democratic Party as well the GOP...
Pitts and Stupak have joined forces on that front before, teaming up to try to turn President Bush's underfunded but laudable President's Emergency Relief for AIDS initiative into an antiabortion crusade. What they couldn't achieve abroad, they've now brought back home, and then some.
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The idea that the Family might be holding the reins of any legislation as historic and wide-reaching as healthcare reform is troubling. Sharlet's reporting has revealed several instances in which Family leaders point to dictators and murderers such as Hitler for inspiration. He writes that "the Family's leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride."
The notion of personal responsibility is likewise shunned by the organization, as members believe themselves to be the new "chosen" people. Sharlet quoted David Coe, son of leader Doug and probable heir to the throne, as telling young members, "If you're a person known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything. And that's who you guys are. When you leave here, you're not only going to know the value of Jesus, you're going to know the people who rule the world."
And if these people have been "chosen" to rule the world, whither a woman's right to choose?
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the snips should be read too
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