Must Love God$

Remember back when someone idly suggested that David Brooks was cruising the Christian Mingle scene in search of Mrs. David Brooks 2.0?

...

Under "likes" we find that Mr. Brooks appears to enjoy Catholic singer/songwriter Audrey Assad -- 

For example, Audrey Assad is a Catholic songwriter with a crystalline voice and a sober intensity to her stage presence. (You can see her perform her song “I Shall Not Want” on YouTube.) She writes the sort of emotionally drenched music that helps people who are in crisis. A surprising number of women tell her they listened to her music while in labor.

-- however only 800 words to work with, Mr. Brooks had to keep it short, so interested ladies should also know that Mr. Brooks is a committed lifestyle-asymmetriphobe who also likes

• Great Men who Change History like George W. Bush
• Big Tax Cuts because surpluses will go on forever!
• Bullies
• That Competent Republican Renaissance...which is always juuuust around the corner.
• Nice hotels.  

But he does not like:

• Jewels of Nuance.  Hates those things.  Except sometimes he likes them quite a lot.
• Norman Lear
• Imaginary Hippies
• People who ask a lot of impertinent questions about why so much of what he writes on any given day A) directly contradicts what he wrote just a short time ago and/or B) is based on "facts" he just made up.
• The Olympics
• Dirty Liberal sexytime.
• Reefers!

 Well, I'd sorta forgotten about it.

Until yesterday, when this crossed my "desk":

The $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy You Haven’t Heard Of

Are you female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state? Get to know The Gathering, a shadowy, powerful network of hard-right funders meeting Thursday in Florida.

Have you heard of the $1,750-per-person “Gathering,” which starts Thursday in Orlando, Florida?

Probably not. But if you’re female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state, your life has been affected by it.

The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders. Most of them are not household names, at least if your household isn’t evangelical. But that’s the point: The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest. They’re probably behind that, too.

Featured speakers have included many of the usual suspects: Alliance Defending Freedom President and CEO Alan Sears (2013), Focus on the Family President Jim Daly (2011), and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins (2006)...

OK, sure, that's very creepy,  And the list of loathsome causes to which these Mammons for Jebus disburse millions and millions of dollars ever year is frankly terrifying --

From 2001-12, the NCF gave $163,384,998 to leading anti-LGBT organizations. These include Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund), Campus Crusade for Christ (aka CRU), the National Organization for Marriage, and the Alliance for Marriage. They fund ex-gay ministries like Exodus International, exporters of homophobia like Advocates International, you name it.

The NCF is just getting started, though. The Green family—who were at The Gathering in 2008 and 2013—have said they intend to leave much of their fortune to it. And in 2009, Hobby Lobby-related contributions were the No. 1 source of NCF funding (about $54 million), which we know because Eli Clifton, funded by The Nation Institute, somehow got hold of an NCF 2009 990 Schedule B form, which shows NCF’s top funders that year (Hobby Lobby was No. 1, Maclellan Foundation No. 2)...

-- but, you ask, "What the Hell does this 'Magical Thinking: The Gathering' jamboree have to do with the mating habits of David Brooks?"

Fair question:

... his year, however, they are joined by David Brooks of The New York Times and Michael Gerson of The Washington Post. What’s going on? Has The Gathering gone mainstream?

Hardly, says Bruce Wilson, director of the advocacy group Truth Wins Out’s Center Against Religious Extremism and a leading researcher on The Gathering. The selection of this year’s speakers, he says, is just the latest in a long line of misdirections and canards.

Ruh roh.  

Well, in fairness, there is no greater expert today working in the very profitable "misdirections and canards" field than David Brooks, so this makes a bent sorta sense,

The Daily Beast continues:

...

Well, there are two possibilities. One, Brooks knows a bit about the underlying politics of The Gathering but doesn’t care, which is to say he’s on board with that political agenda to the extent he’s willing to lend his reputation to the event. Two, he’s relatively clueless. He’s been conned. Which would raise questions about his political acumen.

I’m very suspicious that Brooks’ planned appearance at The Gathering was an outgrowth of his heavy participation in the Faith Angle Forum of frequent The Gathering participant Michael Cromartie, who advises elite secular media on the culture wars, which he is also helping to wage...

So free advice to any of you, uh, professional ladies who may be working this Christopath whine-hoist over thee weekend.  If you are braced by a nerdy moral scold reeking of desperation who wants to take you up to his room to talk about his Great Man theory of history, get your money up-front.

Because I hear he might be into some pretty weird playtime activities.