“Supreme Court further erodes separation between church and state in case of praying football coach.”
Of course they did. And they did so with the supreme confidence that comes with knowing they’re on God’s side in the matter.
I’ve heard this religious confidence described as arrogance in the past few days. And, of course, it is. But having grown up in a community that thought we knew what God was up to, this attitude begins with a serene confidence. We were confident that the truth resided with us. A confidence that when applied to your own life has certain benefits in a quality of life that makes decisions easier. Life is black and white. When applied to other folks, well, there the quality of life gets a little iffier. Religious authoritarianism is a natural end result. Men rule. Women buckle under. It likely leads to disaster. Especially in a nation founded, as was ours, on a separation between church and state.
Linda Greenhouse pointed out that “five of the seven justices in the Roe majority were appointed by Republican presidents. The votes necessary to preserve the right to abortion 19 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Roe follow-up decision that the court also overturned on Friday, came from five Republican-appointed justices.”
And yet Alito and gang assert that these fellow conservative justices were “egregiously wrong” from start to finish. Not just wrong. Egregiously wrong. Their legal thinking absurd, foolish, not worth paying attention to. Alito is here to show us the true way. And so, at their first opportunity, they cast aside a half century of precedent, return women to a subservient status in half the states of the country, all with the supreme confidence that they are obviously right, and those who think differently are simply egregiously wrong. They sleep easily despite the pain they cause because God is on their side.
This is the kind of moralistic political thinking that destroyed the end of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, that caused such problems for Jimmy Carter. It is very difficult to compromise when you view yourself as morally right and the other side as morally wrong. In such situations, you work backwards. You have your decision, and you search for legal justification for it. The ends justify the means. It’s how you wind up voting for Trump.
These folks standing astride the moral high ground dwell most densely, pun intended, in the 14 states leaping most quickly to do away entirely with women’s right to choose. They also occupy the states which invest the least in policies and programs for women and children. The states which refuse to take the Medicaid handout offered by Obamacare, a service which provides a great deal of medical help to pregnant women, because, well, because, well, you know, just because.
This should not worry us, of course, because we know that the churches of the nation, in anticipation of this moment, have been putting plans and programs in place, not to mention raising the vast amounts of money which will be required, to support pregnant women, their children until they reach adulthood, and to help out the millions of families which will step forward to adopt the children in need. We are about to see the pro-life folk put into place a carefully designed and planned complete culture of support for life. I, for one, can’t wait.
South Dakota’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, said as much over the weekend when challenged with the fact that her state invested hardly at all in the welfare of women and children. South Dakota, she hurriedly said, would try to “coordinate” with churches to pick up the slack. Of course. She’ll likely unveil her plan in two weeks. She then scurried to change the subject. “Gas prices!!”
There is some good news in all of this. “In April, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found Republicans leading Democrats on the generic congressional ballot, 47 percent to 44 percent. In a new poll from the same outlet — conducted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — Democrats now lead Republicans, 48 percent to 41 percent.”
And, “78% of Democrats say the court’s decision makes them more likely to vote this fall, 24 points higher than Republicans.”
Ah well. At least when the next hurricane hits, preachers can no longer blame God’s wrath on America’s stance on abortion. In fact, with this new change in policy, we should expect the fires to go out, the rains to return, the temps to die down, the seas to recede, the massacre of children to end, as, once again, God’s chosen nation receives the blessings commensurate with such status …