the extreme right....
The extreme right is so far to the right that they should be careful of falling off of the page altogether. If they continue to claim to be indicative of the majority of our nation then we need to do some serious self-examination.
All we have to do is look at today's Washington Post. If you're conservative, forget the notion that the Washington Post is some liberal hate machine spreading vile propaganda. What I pulled out of the article are just the words from the horse’s mouth. Let us read:
"Rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork warned that the high court has defined homosexuality as "a constitutional right . . . and once homosexuality is defined as a constitutional right, there is nothing the states can do about it, nothing the people can do about it.""
First of all, homosexuality IS a constitutional right. If you are gay, I'd advise you to call your senator or congressman, or Bork for that matter and get an apology. This is just unacceptable rhetoric, forget the liberal bias machine, this is just base pandering to further brainwashing people. We should turn to our First Amendment, as so many people like to do.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
Oh look there it is. Right under Amendment I, Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Homosexuality is not explicitly written into the constitution, it shouldn't have to be, nor will it ever be. I don't think anybody needs to turn this into serious discussion, it's not even a deep first amendment issue, it's pretty cut and dry. Moving on.
"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said "activist courts" are imposing "state-sanctioned same-sex marriage" and "partial-birth abortion" and are "ridding the public square of any mention of our nation's religious heritage" in what amounts to "judicial supremacy, judicial autocracy."
At times I wonder at Tom DeLay. Who is he kidding, I mean really. Our nation's religious heritage was one of deism. The founding father's, the majority of which were either atheist or deist, strictly wrote into the first amendment that we have a freedom of religion but also one where congress does not respect an establishment of religion. This was because Christianity's own troubles of having more flavors of Jesus than Coca Cola. We have a heritage of tolerance if anything. If by ridding the public square of our religious heritage we mean not imposing Christianity on everybody in the United States and their kid sister, of putting up statues of Moses and the 10 commandments in front of government buildings (where the constitution actually says that the government wasn't going to favor one over the other). To say that we have a history of religion that we should respect is to hide the true motive of the religious right. One should be hesitant of simply calling them "religious", they are extremist Christians. If a history of religion is signified by no more than a tacit mentioning of 'God' than... they might want to go look for something new to throw out there. Respect for religious history is not being truthful; it means a broader stranglehold on the United States' religious demographic, which includes Muslims, Jews, Scientologists, etc. If there is one thing that is scary is that the Christian PAC's are so strong, while at the same time we advocate a culture of religious tolerance. May we be weary that Jesus be written into law and "Moses is god's prophet" be cause for federal crime. That is a little outrageous, but that is the direction we are heading in. Serious nominees for the Supreme Court, our nation's highest court, should even in the strictest most literal reading of the Constitution, should know that the advocacy by the extreme religious right would not be sound legal policy in anyone stroke of life.
In Supreme Court rulings, DeLay said, "rights are invented out of whole cloth. Long-standing traditions are found to be unconstitutional. Moral values that have defined the progress of human civilization for millennia are cast aside in favor of those espoused by a handful of unelected, lifetime-appointed judges."
I think perhaps Mr. DeLay may want to apologize for these sorts of comments too. To say that long-standing traditions are found to be unconstitutional is saying what? What sorts of traditions in America have been found to be unconstitutional? Slavery? oh oh oh I got one, segregation? Wait... no. These are the words of Rep. John Lewis who puts it better than I ever could:
"Where would we be as a nation if Congress in 1954, fifty years ago, had radically amended our constitution to uphold segregation or the separate but equal doctrine? I further ask: Where would we be as a nation if Congress in 1967 made it unconstitutional for interracial couples to marry?”
Well shit. I can't think of anything else that has been found to be unconstitutional if not slavery, separate but equal, segregation, or interracial marriage. I can't tell if DeLay is just pandering to the Christian base or if he is a white supremacist... or maybe he's just hinting that these "activist judges" would turn over some other tradition... He was probably talking about abortion (I know I know) ... then again anti-abortion wasn't exactly an American tradition.
Speakers compared the civil rights movement of the 1960s to demands now by Christian groups for restoration of traditional morality. "It's time we move to the front of the bus and that we take command of the wheel," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League.
In light of the last two quotes, one by DeLay, one by Donohue, I think it is important to remember that our societal ethics was largely decided not by Christian religion, but by common sense secularism. If we were following by the book bible morality, we'd be stoning women to death, taking the rod to our children, and generally just killing everyone who didn't agree with us. I'd rather Bill Donohue not have Bill Donohue pretending that he is anyone similar to Rosa Parks. There is a weird belief that is becoming pervasive in American society that believes that Christians are somehow the minority in the country, that they are the intellectually, economically, everything-ally repressed. They forget that they compose 80% at last census of 288 million people. This could be why I and most other people can't help but wonder with that big incredulous look on our faces when we are told that they are "at the back of the bus".
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