| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fredric L. Rice" |
| Date: |
22 Apr 2005 12:17:51 AM |
| Object: |
Frist and allies use piety for profit |
Frist and allies use piety for profit
Republicans morph opposition of judicial nominees into 'war on people of
faith'
Joe Conason - The New York Observer
04.20.05 - Next Sunday, Bill Frist will illustrate the threat posed to
traditional American values by the combined forces of the Republican Party
leadership and religious fundamentalism. By lending the prestige of his
office to a telecast from a Kentucky Baptist church that will mobilize
"people of faith" behind his effort to outlaw the filibuster, the Senate
Majority Leader continues his party’s destructive strategy of dividing
the nation along religious lines and empowering the radical right.
This is a disturbing moment for Americans who wonder where Republican
hegemony will take us. Senators and Congressional leaders utter threatening
language, brandish weapons and sound as if they’re excusing violence
against sitting judges. Ministers share the stage with demagogues who
mutter Stalinist death threats against Supreme Court justices.
"Conservatism" is becoming a radical ideology that discards constitutional
balances for the pursuit of unchecked power.
On "Justice Sunday," Mr. Frist will advance that ideology in a television
feed sponsored by the Family Research Council and allied fundamentalist
groups. His co-stars will include the evangelical broadcaster and author
James C. Dobson, the born-again Watergate felon Chuck Colson and Southern
Baptist theologian R. Albert Mohler Jr.
In announcing this extravaganza, Tony Perkins of the Family Research
Council outlined the alleged grievances of his movement, which consists of
people who believe they are Christians and excludes anyone who disagrees
with them -- about anything. According to him, the Democratic filibusters
against a dozen of President Bush’s judicial nominees represent an
ongoing assault by "radicals" on "people of faith."
"Many of these nominees," he writes, "are being blocked because they are
people of faith and moral conviction. These are people whose only offense
is to say that abortion is wrong or that marriage should be between one man
and one woman."
Clearly, Mr. Perkins has no compunctions about bearing false witness when
that serves his political aims. As he well knows, the tiny percentage of
blocked Bush nominees weren’t filibustered because of their religious
faith, and the controversies surrounding them had little to do with
abortion and nothing to do with gay marriage.
Consider Carolyn Kuhl of California, whose nomination was eventually
withdrawn. Like many Bush nominees, she is a right-wing judicial activist
who would seek to overturn most environmental and consumer protections in
the name of property rights. During her stint in the Reagan Justice
Department, Ms. Kuhl wrote a memo urging the government to reverse
longstanding policy by renewing the federal tax exemption of the infamously
bigoted Bob Jones University. As a judge in Los Angeles, she dismissed a
lawsuit brought by a cancer patient whose doctor allowed her breast
examination to be observed in his office -- without her informed consent --
by a drug-company salesman.
Or consider Priscilla Owen of Texas, a protégé of Bush political guru
Karl Rove, whose decisions on the Texas Supreme Court tended to be most
favorable to corporations that bankrolled her judicial campaigns, such as
Enron and Dow Chemical. Alberto Gonzales, now serving as U.S. Attorney
General, repeatedly criticized her extreme opinions when they were
colleagues on the Texas Supreme Court.
These corporate servants in black robes were all too typical of the
nominees sent up by the White House. It’s hard to understand how
rejecting them offended any religious faith. And when Mr. Perkins implies
that Democrats apply a religious test to the Bush nominees, he is lying
about that, too.
Surely Mr. Perkins knows that the Senate has not hesitated to confirm
ultra-conservative, faith-professing nominees. These include Timothy
Tymkovich, the stridently anti-gay former Solicitor General of Colorado who
argued against Medicaid funding of abortion even in cases of rape and
incest; John Roberts, another committed abortion opponent who argued that
public schools should be allowed to hold religious graduation ceremonies;
and former Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher, who fought state
funding for contraceptive services and likes to mention "the important role
that God and Jesus Christ have played in my life."
Addressing a National Right to Life convention in 2002, the year before he
was elevated to the bench, Mr. Fisher said, "All of us are hoping and
praying that the day will come under the leadership of George W. Bush that
we’ll have a Supreme Court with justices who will leave [abortion] to the
state to decide the legality of this issue by overturning Roe v. Wade."
Although there were certainly reasons to object to those three nominees,
including their ideologically rigid views on reproductive choice, none of
them was stopped by filibuster. That option has been reserved for the least
qualified and most extreme of the President’s nominees.
Mr. Perkins, Mr. Dobson and Mr. Frist are exploiting religion to advance an
agenda that has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with
the Chamber of Commerce. Their mouths prattle incessantly about the Holy
Spirit, yet their eyes are fixed on the golden calf.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18928
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http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
http://www.0-48.preclear.ru/ http://PerkinsTragedy.org
http://www.rightard.org/
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