Ann Althouse was invited to take an all expenses-paid trip to see “Justice Sunday”–the Christian Right’s bashing of Judicial Activism (Lawrence, Roe), Judicial Restraint (Kelo), gays (Lawrence again), and non-Christians (Engel). In actuality, it’s probably a good thing the good Professor turned them down–she thought it was pretty awful (stunning, I know).
I’m sorry, but when Captain’s Quarters is going “ehhh…”, something is going wrong. And can someone explain this?
Rev. Ted Haggard says that Christians are citizens with all the same rights as anyone else, and that their voices belong in the policy debate. The nation, he says, was not designed for atheists to exclsuively control public policy.
What crack is this man on? Statistically speaking, known atheists stand almost no chance of being elected in the United States (a recent poll indicated that strong majority would refuse to vote an atheist into political office regardless of his/her views–percentage-wise, the figure was akin to similar polls asking about voting for African-Americans in the 50s). President Bush (the elder) specifically said that he didn’t think atheists could be patriotic Americans–an outrageous statement barely met with a peep of uproar. Atheists may be the most reviled minority group in America–even more than homosexuals–ironically because the Supreme Court has done a reasonable job of protecting their rights (albeit mostly accidently in the process of protecting the rights of religious minorities like Jews), while homosexuals are only just beginning to see some legal recognition of their plight (the earliest case to show any concern for gay rights was Romer v. Evans, in 1996). Because of that, they’re more visible and activists can point to a dizzying array of cases where the Court “caved” to the evil atheists. The fact that these decisions have objectively done little to change our lives means virtually nothing. I am reminded of the wise words of Lt. Gen. John Rosa, Superintendent of the Air Force Academy (remarking on allegations of anti-Semitic bias at the Academy):
The problem is people have been across the line for so many years when you try and come back in bounds, people get offended
Christian supremacy has reigned in America for so long that neutrality seems like an imposition. Placing Christianity on an equal playing field to the rest of America’s religions–a private affair, not a government mandate, is seen as bias. Frankly, they can cry me a river.
What bothers folks like Rev. Haggard isn’t that atheists control America–that’s an absurd statement bordering on delusional. What bothers them is that the Supreme Court has created a climate where they aren’t entirely suppressed–in the closet, so to speak. The government isn’t allowed to demean their beliefs out of existence. It isn’t allowed to indoctrinate children into believing they’re demonic. It isn’t allowed to proclaim to America that this particularly minority is definitively and assuredly hellbound. Nope, as it so happens, atheists can go about their lives mostly free of that (officially anyway). And that is infuriating to the Christian right.