Speaking of God and of Republican senatorial candidates preferred by Democrats, there's a primary next week in Wisconsin.

In this week's Missouri primary, Democrats helped Ted Akin with ads that promoted him as more conservative than his opponent.

Democrats perceived Mr. Akin as the weakest general election candidate because he has a 12-year congressional track record that's ripe for excavation and wears his Christian faith on his sleeve. That can sometimes be unbecoming, as it was last year when he slipped that "at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred of God."...

According to the Daily Kos, Democrats are looking at the Wisconsin primary and hoping ex-Congressman Mark Neumann defeats businessman Eric Hovde and former Governor Tommy Thompson. If Neumann is the GOP Senate candidate, he'll have his own "God" quote to answer for:

In 1996, Neumann said, “If I were elected God for a day, homosexuality wouldn’t be permitted.”  Years later he clarified the remark, explaining he would not want God’s job.

Neumann has also suggested he wouldn’t hire an openly gay staffer.  “If somebody walks in to me and says, ‘I’m a gay person, I want a job in your office,’ I would say that’s inappropriate, and they wouldn’t be hired because that would mean they are promoting their agenda,” Neumann said in an address to the Christian Coalition.  “The gay and lesbian lifestyle (is) unacceptable, lest there be any question about that.”

It's one thing to oppose same-sex marriage, quite another to promote employment discrimination against gay people. Even worse is banning homosexuality. Neumann knows that can't be done in America. We have constitutional rights that prevent legislators from outlawing homosexual sex, and, yes, if you got a couple more Scalias on the Supreme Court, it might conceivably overrule the precedent, but Neumann wished to end "homosexuality," not merely sexual activities between same-sex partners — the state of feeling sexual desire for a person of the same sex. That is, he's objecting to the inner thoughts and feelings of the human individual, and he knows he'd need to be God to accomplish that end. And so the legislator imagines himself as God.

God save us from legislators who fantasize about being God. When I think of what conservatism means, I think of limited government, respect for decisionmaking in the private sphere, and modesty about re-engineering human nature. And when I think about God, I don't go wishing he'd made the world a different way. And ironically, attempting to appeal to Christians, Neumann spouted blasphemy: God should have done a better job. So you think God goofed when he made homosexuals? You're telling gay people they're mistakes, and you'd like to nudge God out of the way and eradicate those mistakes. Presumably, the Neumann God wouldn't smite the homosexuals — Sodom-style — but somehow cause them not to exist. And yet, Neumann is, of course, opposed to abortion. Embryos are creatures of God, who challenges us to accept what He has willed into existence and to respond with love and humility to the burdens He has laid upon us.

There are gay people in the world, how do you respond to that trial? Do you love them and respect them as human beings, entitled to equality and autonomous decisionmaking? Or do you run for office, promoting yourself to religious folk by fantasizing about having the power of God and using it to eliminate people toward whom they feel animosity? It's bad religion and it's bad politics. The mask slipped, and what we saw was not conservative.

(By the way, the Democratic candidate, Tammy Baldwin, is lesbian.)