Catholics Like Amy Coney Barrett Inspired "The Handmaid's Tale"

I have severe problems with religious faith becoming intertwined with public policy and secular laws.  America - despite the lies of Christofascists and evangelicals, and yes, some far right Catholics - was founded as a secular nation with a government founded on the premise of separation of church and state.  Nonetheless, these "Christian" religious zealots are relentless in their efforts to insert their religious beliefs into the civil laws and to control the lives of all citizens through a "Christian" version of Sharia law. Now, among Donald Trump's leading candidates for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is Amy Coney Barrett, an ultra far right Catholic who belongs to a group - cult is perhaps the better term - which should terrify the vast majority of Americans.  Indeed, similar far right Catholic groups served as inspiration for Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale.  To believe that an extremist like her Barrett who opposes abortion, any sex outside of marriage, and, of course, homosexuality and same sex marriage, would not allow her "faith" to control her judicial decisions is utterly ridiculous.  Anyone who claims Barrett's so-called faith or cult would not control her legal rulings is a liar or living in a fantasy world.  A piece in Newsweek looks at Barrett's troubling religious background.  Here are highlights (another disturbing piece is here):

Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite to be President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is affiliated with a type of Christian religious group that served as inspiration for Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale.

Barrett, a devout Catholic, and her husband both belong to the People of Praise group, current and former members have said, according to The New York Times.

The charismatic Christian parachurch organization, which was founded in South Bend, Indiana in 1971, teaches that men have authority over their wives. Members swear a lifelong oath of loyalty to one another and are expected to donate at least 5 per cent of their earnings to the group.

Members of People of Praise are assigned to personal advisers of the same sex—called a "head" for men and "handmaid" for women, until the rise in popularity of Atwood's novel and the television series based on it forced a change in the latter.

Atwood herself has previously referred to the practices of a charismatic Catholic group motivating her to write The Handmaid's Tale, set in the fictional Gilead, where women's bodies are governed and treated as the property of the state under a theocratic regime.

While Atwood has not elaborated on which sect she was referring to, a New Yorker profile of the author in 2017 mentions that in a box of newspaper clippings the author collected while writing the novel, there is "an Associated Press item reported on a Catholic congregation in New Jersey being taken over by a fundamentalist sect in which wives were called 'handmaidens'—a word that Atwood had underlined."

People of Praise describes itself not as a church, but as a "charismatic Christian community" on its website. The group has about 1,700 members in 22 cities across the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, according to the website.

The covenant community is one of many that formed across the U.S. in the 1970s as a part of the Charismatic Renewal movement in American Christianity, which emphasizes direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit.

[S]ome former members have described how "heads" and "handmaids"—now known as "leaders"—can play a huge role in the lives of members, such as directing their choice of partner, where they live and how they raise children.

"They're very watchful of their people. They report things to your heads if they see you out doing things you're not supposed to be doing. It's very much a Big Brother type of thing," she said.

People of Praise believes that only married couples should have sex, and that marriage is only between a man and a woman, Lent added.

Lent told The Tribune that any person who admits to homosexual activity, or any other "ongoing, deliberate, unrepentant wrongdoing," would be expelled. 

[C]oncerns have been raised that Barrett's ties to the group as would influence her decisions on the Supreme Court.

"These groups can become so absorbing that it's difficult for a person to retain individual judgment," Sarah Barringer Gordon, a professor of constitutional law and history at the University of Pennsylvania, previously told The Times.

And while the People of Praise group was never brought up in Barrett's 2017 confirmation hearing for her current post, Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett: "The dogma lives loudly within you." Barrett told the senators that her faith would not affect her decisions as a judge.

In recent days, abortion rights groups have expressed concern that if put on the Supreme Court, Barrett, a darling of the religious right, could help overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

 It is disturbing enough that Barrett narrowly managed to gain a seat on a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  We definitely do not want her on the Supreme Court or, better yet, any court.