That ‘f*** your prayers’ guy fits perfectly in Michigan’s anti-religious Democratic Party
Timothy P. Carney
“F*** your prayers” is the official message of Ranjeev Puri, a leader in Michigan’s Democratic Party.
After a horrific mass murder at Michigan State University, Puri, the majority whip in Michigan’s House of Representatives, took to Twitter to take aim at the real bad guys.
“Today, we begin to collectively heal from the horrific events which transpired,” he wrote. “Tomorrow we work. My official statement regarding the Michigan State University shooting is below: F*** your thoughts and prayers.”
As of the close of business Tuesday, this is Puri’s pinned tweet. That is, “F*** your prayers” is not simply a misfired angry tweet. It is his central belief.
His party has not rebuked him in any way. His defenders say that he is not really saying “f*** your prayers” to religious people but that “thoughts and prayers” is now a term of art, supposedly representing legislative inaction, which Democrats are right to attack.
But “we have been making fun of ‘thoughts and prayers’ for years” isn’t a defense against a statement that literally says “f*** your prayers.” Also, he didn’t merely write “thoughts and prayers are not enough,” or anything like that. He actually said they are detestable.
More to the point, Michigan Democrats deserve no benefit of the doubt when it comes to bigoted anti-religious rhetoric. The party’s leadership has a long record of anti-religious bias. Dana Nessel, the state’s second-term attorney general, campaigned for reelection last year as the anti-Catholic candidate, and she won.
“If they win,” Nessel said in her 2022 campaign ad attacking her state’s GOP, “you might have to cross state lines just to legally have safe sex, and Lansing could decide when and if you have kids.”
Nobody actually believed that, not even Nessel. What she was signaling was that her Republican opponents were too religious. If you doubt that Nessel is motivated by extreme anti-Catholic bias, check out her earlier tweet attacking Pope Francis.
That attack on the pope makes absolutely no sense on any level. It makes no sense to posit, as Nessel does, that people who have children but don’t want children are “selfish.” Twist your brain into whatever anti-natal knot you want to, you won’t make sense of it. It is also insane to assert, as Nessel does, that the foster-care system is full of children born because faithful Catholics refused to use contraception.
Given that no part of Nessel’s statement makes any sense, the only meaningful part is the “bc the Pope thinks you should.” That is, the attorney general of Michigan went out of her way to lob a centuries-old anti-Catholic canard into the Twittersphere. Because she is a bigot.
Then there was the lawsuit the state had to settle after the Democratic-run government refused to work with Catholic adoption agencies.
All of that context makes it harder to give a charitable reading to today’s “f*** your prayers” declaration from the state party’s leadership.