PRESS RELEASE ** PRESS RELEASE ** PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
April 18, 2005
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Contact: Joe Conn, Rob Boston or Jeremy Leaming
www.au.org
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER SHOULD SKIP JUDGE-BASHING EVENT, SAYS AMERICANS
UNITED
AU's Lynn Urges Sen. Frist To Step Away From Religious Right Extremism
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) should disassociate himself
from a Religious Right-driven attack on federal judges, says Americans
United for Separation of Church and State.
On April 24, Frist is scheduled to join an array of Religious Right leaders
in a nationally televised event that will attack federal courts as out of
control and hostile to evangelical Christians. The event, dubbed "Justice
Sunday," is organized by the Family Research Council (FRC), a
Washington-based Religious Right group.
"Sen. Frist should disassociate himself from the Religious Right's unseemly
and increasingly shrill campaign to destroy the nation's independent
judiciary," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive
director. "I am appalled that Sen. Frist would lend his support to this
attack on our court system."
Lynn said Frist's recent efforts to distance himself from extreme
congressional rhetoric about our nation's courts ring hollow in light of
his role in the court-bashing rally that will be broadcast from Highview
Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. The FRC is targeting evangelical churches
and individuals nationwide in an effort to stir up more animosity toward
judges.
"Sen. Frist can't have it both ways," Lynn continued. "Espousing moderate,
even-keeled views one day and joining with rabid court-bashers the next
won't cut it."
The FRC's ads for the Sunday rally claim that Senate Democrats who are
waging a filibuster against a handful of the Bush administration's federal
court nominees are doing so out of bias toward Christians. Tony Perkins,
the FRC's president, told The New York Times, that the Senate must
aggressively remake the federal courts because they have worked "to rob us
of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."
Observed AU's Lynn, "Religious Right activists loathe court rulings
upholding individual freedom. They want to break Senate rules and pave the
way for radical judges who will uphold Religious Right interference in our
personal lives."
Lynn said Religious Right activists want to tear the wall of separation
between church and state, interject religion into public schools, repeal
reproductive rights and ban legal rights for gays. The FRC pushed Congress
to pass a law to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case and then railed
against the federal and state courts for repudiating the congressional
interference in a family legal dispute.
Lynn urged Frist to distance himself from radicals trying to overrun the
federal courts.
"Religious Right extremists are overreaching and most Americans are waking
up to that fact," Lynn said. "So should Bill Frist. He should do the right
thing and forgo this Sunday's rant on the federal courts."
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington,
D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the
importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
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