DEER LICK PINES, TN — State Rep. Jerry Sexton (R-TN) made national headlines when he proposed that his state adopt an official book, something it has yet to do despite having an official state fruit and wild animal. Tennessee House Bill 615’s very plain language states that “The Holy Bible is hereby designated as the official state book,” and that the decree will be official once the bill is signed into law. It would be a quite step in the direction of government sanctioning religion, expressly forbidden in the Constitution of the United States of America’s very first amendment. But rumors are rampant in the Volunteer State that Sexton will take his experiment in American Theocracy one step further by tacking on an amendment to his bill.
That amendment would not only make Christendom’s high holy book the official tome of the state, but it would also grant equal gubernatorial powers to Jesus H. Christ himself. “Sure, Jesus ain’t here yet,” Bobby McShannahan, a spokesman for Rep. Sexton, told us over the phone, “but that don’t mean we can’t be ready for that day to come. And we want to be the first state that Jesus feels most welcome.”
McShannahan says that granting Christ gubernatorial powers will all but assure Tennessee will be his first stop. “After all,” McShannahan asked, “Why wouldn’t he want to come back to the state where he can veto any law he sees fit? I don’t see the People’s Republican of California or the liberal bastion of New York offering to make Jesus an unelected official in their state, do you?”
The Jesus is Lord and Mayor Amendment would be quite an unprecedented step in American politics. It would be the first time a state created a co-equal governor’s role, and the first time that office was one in which no votes could be cast in favor or against a candidate. It’s also the first time of course that a possibly fictitious character would be made a state’s chief executive since Florida named Mickey Mouse governor for a day back during the Disney Missile Crisis of 1978, which of course led to the Goofy Accords being signed, making it illegal for cartoon characters to stockpile intercontinental ballistic missiles unless they were loaded with pancakes, confetti, and other “fun” things.
The Tennessee branch of the American Civil Liberties Union sent us a one sentence email in response to Sexton’s proposals. “Rep. Sexton is super-duper cray-cray; what else needs to be said?” But one prominent Tennessee man sees Sexton as a hero and a “champion for good, clean Christian American values like theocracy above all and fealty to the one, true, accurate, totally verified Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” and that man is Father Ryan Anderson of The West Tennessee Religion and Nullification Council.
Father Ryan says the new law, if passed, would “send a strong signal to the whole country that if you want to live in a place where the Constitution comes second to a set of ancient mythologies, you move to beautiful Tennessee.” When asked how the American public should react to such a clearly unconstitutional move to declare a religious text as the official state anything, Father Ryan laughed. “Spoken like a true Godless, amoral heathen. Trust me, when Jesus Christ comes back down to Earth, he will care not for our ‘laws’ or ‘rules’ or ‘Constitutions.’ Maybe you gross atheists should move to the Soviet Union if you don’t want to live in a country where a non-existent entity can be given enormous power over real, live people.”
McShannahan says that his boss’s proposed amendment only violets the Constitution in spirit and intent, but that “it’s not a big deal, really. So what if the non-Christians in this state will take this as a rebuke of their beliefs? Who cares if the Constitution gets completely ignored? This is a states’ rights issue, and we will not have the Tyrant Lincoln — er I mean Obama — telling us we can’t make a religious symbol an official symbol of our state government!”
It’s unclear at this time, according to McShannahan, if Sexton will wind up tacking on the amendment to make Jesus the official co-governor of the state but that “clearly the people of Tennessee elected Rep. Sexton to do a job, and that job is not helping the state fix it’s terribly-ranked schools or faltering economy. It’s to make sure Jesus Christ can veto a gay marriage bill if he wants to.”
