The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to award Congressional Gold Medals to the Capitol Police, the D.C. police, and the Smithsonian Institution in recognition of their service in protecting the U.S. Capitol on January 6, when it was attacked and overrun by Trump-loving insurrectionists bent on preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Only 12 House members voted against the resolution, all of them Republicans. Among them was right-wing conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, who took to Facebook following the vote to explain that she had opposed it because, among other things, the resolution referred to the Capitol as “the temple of our American Democracy,” which she felt was an insult to God.
“There were a few things in this bill that really bothered me and caused me to vote ‘no,'” she said. “Number one: Nancy Pelosi called the Capitol ‘a temple.’ You know, it’s the Democrats that worship government as if government is some kind of God. And the government will never be God, and it can never be God. There’s only one God and he created all things that we know and see and hear and feel and experience in our life. God created creation. This government is not God and this Capitol is not a temple. I will not vote for that. I will not give that a stamp of my approval, and I know for a fact that people back home in my district in Georgia will not give that a stamp of their approval. We do not believe the Capitol is a temple, so therefore I cannot vote for that.”
