Trump Is Tearing Down the Wall Between Church and State

As a gay American, once I overcame the brainwashing of my Catholic upbringing, I have come to increasingly view religion as one of the great forces for hate, division, and bloodshed throughout history.  For instance, both Christianity and Islam claim to be peaceful religions, yet the Bible and Koran can be cherry picked to find justification for almost unlimited evils, including war and the persecution of others of other faiths or non-believers in general.  Works of charity more often than not are outweighed by horrors, especially when viewed with the lens of history. This toxicity becomes even worse when religion intertwines itself with government for the purposes of forging a dogma based political agenda or seeking taxpayer support even as the theocrats rail and discriminate against segments of the taxpaying public.  Thomas Jefferson described such forced financial support "sinful and tyrannical."  Despite these realities and founding principles, the Trump/Pence regime is striving to destroy the concept of separation of church and state and merge government policy with the dogma of right wing Christian extremists.  A column in the New York Times looks at this disturbing phenomenon.  Here are excerpts: 

Many Americans were shocked when Attorney General Jeff Sessions turned to the Bible — specifically, Paul’s epistle to the Romans — to justify President Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents. This scriptural justification for a political decision should not have surprised anyone, because Mr. Trump’s administration has consistently treated the separation of church and state as a form of heresy rather than a cherished American value.

Attacks on the wall of separation established by the founders — which the religious right likes to call “a lie of the left” — are nothing new. What has changed under Mr. Trump is the disproportionate political debt he owes to extreme religious conservatives, whose views on church-state issues — ranging from the importance of secular public education to women’s and gay rights — are far removed from the American mainstream.

The very meaning of the phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” . . . . is being altered to mean that government should foster a closer relationship with those who want to mix their Christian faith with taxpayer dollars. This usage can be found in numerous executive orders and speeches by Mr. Trump and his cabinet members. Changes in language have consequences, as the religious right’s successful substitution of “pro-life” for “anti-abortion” has long demonstrated.

[T]he Supreme Court upheld Mr. Trump’s travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries and struck down a California requirement that anti-abortion, state-licensed pregnancy clinics provide notice to their clients that abortion is an option. These significant rulings were immediately overshadowed by the retirement from the court of the frequent swing voter Anthony M. Kennedy, which now gives Mr. Trump the opportunity to nominate a predictable religious conservative who would most likely support the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

While it is impossible to overstate the long-term importance of the next court appointment, Mr. Sessions and many of his fellow cabinet members offer textbook examples of the everyday perils of entangling religion with politics.

Many pro-immigration religious leaders, including Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims, took umbrage at the biblical justification for a policy that could hardly be described as loving. Their objections, however, were based mainly on the idea that Mr. Sessions had picked the wrong verse.

It was left to secular organizations to identify all religious rationalizations as the fundamental problem. The Center for Inquiry, a secular think tank, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, on whose honorary boards I serve, issued strong condemnations — as did the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Rachel Laser, president of Americans United, put it succinctly: “The separation of church and state means that we don’t base public policy on the Bible or any religious book.”

And yet Trump administration officials have used fundamentalist biblical interpretations to support everything from environmental deregulation to tax cuts.

Many evangelical Christians do not share such theocratic fantasies. These evangelicals, like former President Jimmy Carter, are spiritual descendants of Roger Williams, who was banished from the Puritan theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded the first Baptist congregation in colonial America. Williams is also credited as the first person to use the phrase “wall of separation,” in a 1644 response to the theocratic Puritan clergyman John Cotton. . . . Thomas Jefferson used the expression in a famous 1802 letter to a Baptist congregation in Danbury, Conn.

Destructive religious wars in 17th-century Europe, among other factors, had led many Americans to the realization that governments could indeed be threatened by a close identification with religion.

Trump’s appointees seem unconcerned about whether statements praising the godliness of mixing religion and politics will offend secular and many religious Americans.

Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development and a devout Seventh-day Adventist, has described commitment to the separation of church and state as “crap,” prompted by “political correctness.”

Mr. Sessions took on a larger mission last fall when he sent a 25-page memo on “protections for religious liberty” to every federal agency. It warned that government “may not exclude religious organizations as such from secular aid programs, . . .

Last but not least is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Ms. DeVos, raised as a strict Calvinist, has devoted much of her life to promoting private and religious schools over public education. . . . In May, Ms. DeVos visited New York City, which has the largest public school system in the country. She did not inspect a single public school. Instead, she stopped by two Orthodox Jewish schools and spoke at a fund-raiser where she was introduced by Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan. In her speech, she expressed support for tax credits to help pay tuition for private schools.

Regular Americans who ignore this creeping Christofascism at their own risk.  While one may not be gay, non-Christian or seeking an abortion, over time, the Christofascist want to outlaw even things like simple contraception.  With a second Trump appointee on the Supreme Court, the right to personal privacy first enunciated in Griswold v. Connecticut  could even be overturned. 

What Religious Conservatives Really Want Out Of Hobby Lobby

I have noted from time to time that the ultimate objective of the Christofascists is to overturn the U.S. Supreme court ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut which first upheld the right of couples to use contraception and began the line of rulings expanding on citizens' right to privacy.  Some scoff at this assertion, but if one follows the Christofascists' websites and statements, ending contraception and not just abortion is the goal.  In the short term, if the ultimate goal cannot be achieved, the fall back agenda is to limit contraception as much as possible, especially through sabotaging  contraception coverage under the Affordable Health Care Act.  A piece in Think Progress looks at these shorter term efforts.  Here are highlights:

For two and a half years, the Obama Administration has tried to strike a balance between the health needs of workers and the sensibilities of employers who object to contraceptive care on religious grounds. Just last month, the administration announced its most recent accommodation for these religious objectors — an employer can exempt itself completely from the federal rule requiring employer-provided health plans to cover birth control, so long as it informs the government that it seeks a religious exemption and tells them which company administers their health plan.

Yet, according to a court document filed earlier this month by a leading religious conservative litigation shop, even this degree of accommodation is insufficient to satisfy the most vehement objectors to birth control. Indeed, if the courts ultimately accept the arguments presented by this court filing, that would leave the administration largely powerless to ensure that workers whose employers object to birth control still receive contraceptive coverage. The alleged rights of the employer would trump the rights of the employee.

The court filing is a motion filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — the same Becket Fund that represented Hobby Lobby in its successful lawsuit in the Supreme Court — on behalf of Ave Maria University, a conservative Catholic school which claims that “any action ‘specifically intended to prevent procreation’ — including contraception and sterilization — is morally wrong.”

What’s unusual about this motion, however, is that it specifically denies that the Obama Administration’s latest accommodation for religious objectors is sufficient. “Rather than simply requiring notice that Ave Maria is a religious nonprofit with a religious objection,” the motion complains, “the augmented rule would require Ave Marie [sic] to provide its insurance company’s name and contact information for the specific purpose of allowing HHS to issue a notice requiring the insurer to provide the exact same items through Ave Maria’s healthcare plan as if Ave Maria had given the insurer Form 700 directly.”

Once the government has this form in hand, they would then contact this insurance company and arrange for it to provide contraceptive coverage to the religious objector’s employees without requiring the objector to provide this coverage itself. Notably, the Supreme Court’s opinion in Hobby Lobby strongly suggests that the just-fill-out-this-form accommodation is sufficient to overcome any legal objections to the overall regime for providing birth control to employees.

Nevertheless, several religious employers objected to the fill-out-the-form solution, so the Obama Administration granted them a further accommodation — permitting them to exempt themselves from the birth control rules without having to fill out any particular form at all, so long as the government learns who their insurance administrator is.

Ave Maria’s objection is not exactly surprising, as we explained shortly after the Obama Administration announced its latest accommodation, “employers who have raised the staunchest objections to birth control have often claimed that they cannot take any action that will set in motion a chain of events that leads to someone receiving contraception, as doing so would make them ‘complicit’ in the act of providing birth control,” but their objection is nonetheless significant because it reveals what the stakes actually are in the follow-up cases to Hobby Lobby. 

Bob Marshall and the GOP Continue the War on Women and Contraception

People don't like to believe me when I tell them that the ultimate goal of the Christofascists is to overturn Supreme Court rulings that found a right to privacy, especially those like Griswold v. Connecticut that legalized contraception.  In the minds of these fanatics who would police everyone's bedrooms the contraception cases were the beginning of the end of the puritanical world they so loved and opened the door to decisions like Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas and United States v. Windsor.   Here in Virginia, the war on contraception continues as bills are pre-filed that would disallow health insurance plans that include contraception coverage.  Leading the charge is the utterly insane and anti-woman would be Grand Inquisitor Del. Bob Marshall who unfortunately won reelection.  Blue Virginia has these highlights:

Del. "Sideshow Bob" Marshall has been reelected yet again, and he's back yet again with his monomaniacal war on contraception.

HB 18 (requires HMOs, insurers, etc. who offer health insurance policies "be required to offer a policy, contract, or plan identical in all respects except that no such coverage [for contraception] is included");

HB 19 ("no individual or group accident and sickness insurance policy, individual or group accident or sickness subscription contract, or health care plan for health care services shall provide coverage for contraception methods, sterilization procedures, abortifacient drugs or devices unless the subscriber or enrollee in the policy, contract, or plan requests such coverage");

HB 20 ("no health insurance plan, regardless of whether such plan consists of self-insurance, purchased insurance, a combination of purchased and self-insurance, or the use of a health maintenance organization, offered by the Commonwealth or any locality to its employees or by any agency, department, division, or institution of the Commonwealth or any locality authorized by law to offer such a plan to its employees is required to include coverage for contraception methods, sterilization procedures, or abortifacient drugs or devices.").

Totally on board with this lunacy is, of course, would be Attorney General Mark Obenshain who has backed "personhood" legislation.

Virginia Republican Party Treasurer: ‘I’m Not A Big Fan Of Contraception

I continue to get chided by Republicans unfamiliar with the inner workings of the GOP or who don't pay close attention until the immediate run up to election day who don't want to accept the reality that the Republican Party, especially in Virginia, has been taken over by religious extremists and down right crazies.  One would think that the Virginia GOP's (i) decision to opt for a convention to nominate candidates rather than hold a primary and (ii) the extremism of the trio of theocrats nominated would be a wake up call.  Yet some continue to cling to the myth that the GOP is still the same party that it once was.  It simply isn't the same party now that the Christofascists and their Tea Party cousins have taken over the grass roots and, in the case of Virginia, the nominating process.  These folks want to end all abortions without exception, restore the sodomy laws and criminalize homosexuality, abolish freedom of religion for all but themselves, and severely restrict the voting rights of those them deed as "other."   And, they want to abolish access to contraception. Don't believe me?  Then listen to the views of Bob FitzSimmonds, the Treasurer of the Republican Party of Virginia (pictured above with GOP gubernatorial candidate whack job, Ken Cuccinelli:

Republican Party of Virginia Treasurer Bob FitzSimmonds, a former aide to and “very close friend” of gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli II (R), told Virginia blogger Ben Tribbett that he is “not a big fan of contraception, frankly.” 

At last weekend’s state party convention, Tribbett asked FitzSimmon whether he supported the distribution of emergency contraception on college campuses. “I’m not a big fan of contraception, frankly,” the Republican Party official explained. “I think there are some issues, we’re giving morning-after pills to 12-year-olds, and pretty soon I guess we’ll hand them out to babies, I don’t know.”

FitzSimmonds also told Tribbett that sex education has caused the spread of sexually transmitted diseases: “I believe that we don’t recognize the causal effect between the type of sex education that we’ve been giving and the spread of STDs. We focus on things like abortion, cause it’s a big pressure thing. I go into schools 15-20 times a year, I run a non-profit that goes into schools and talks to kids about sex. They’re all abortion and HIV. HIV’s kind of hard to catch. Abortion happens if you get pregnant. But we’re on the track for 50 percent of the American people to have Herpes by the time these kids are my age. And that is a profound — not only health but sociological crisis facing this country.”

FitzSimmonds posted on his Facebook page shortly after last November’s election, “When Obama is 90 years old and he dies and goes to Hell, he is going to say ‘This is all Bush’s fault.’”

These folks oppose any right to personal privacy and  and want to police what goes on in every bedroom in Virginia.  People need to wake up to this reality.  After abortion and gays, and disenfranchising minorities, ending contraception is their next target.  Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Jr., and perhaps even Barry Goldwater could not win nominations and/or respect from today's GOP base for the simple reason that they are not insane and were never hard core religious extremists.

McCain Lies About Supreme Court Nominee Standards

John McCain lied frequently during last night's debate, but one lie in particular ought to have sent the alarm bells ringing among women, LGBT citizens and anyone else who believes in personal privacy. This lie dealt with who McCain would nominate to the U. S. Supreme Court if president. While he stated that he would have no litmus test for nominees, he has repeatedly promised to nominate individuals like Scalia and Thomas who do NOT believe that the Constitution grants the right to privacy to individual citizens. It is this right which was first enunciated in Griswold v. Connecticut which struck down a law that barred MARRIED COUPLES from using birth control that began the line of cases that includes Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas that have granted protections to women and struck down the laws that continued to make LGBT citizens potential felons in 13 states, one of which was Virginia.

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McCain can call such anti-privacy nominees whatever he wants - "strict constructionist" is a favored code term with Christianists - but the bottom line is that with two more such "strict constructionists" on the Court, contraception, abortion under any circumstances, and a permanent end to the sodomy laws all are put at risk. Read Scalia's opinions and dissents - it is all there. If you don't believe me, also read the websites of Christianist groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, etc., and you will see that this organizations want the line of privacy decisions reversed and "strict constructionists" is the code term/litmus test that would be used to select justices that would over turn such prior Supreme Court decisions.

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In short, McCain lied big time last night. He's become as much a pathological liar as Bible Spice Palin who, if her lips are moving, is likely lying.

End-Running Contraception

From my review of Christianist organizations' websites for a number of years, it has long been evident to me that gays are not the only targets in the Christianist agenda to implement a Taliban-like legal structure to bar all citizens from exercising rights and choices not supported by the Christianists' warped, intolerant religious views. Among the other matters they seek to force to conform to their views are divorce - they want to make divorce much harder, even though ironically they have the highest divorce rate of any religious group - and contraception. A reading of their sites and articles by their blowhard talking heads make it clear that they believe that there is NO RIGHT TO PRIVACY under the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, they seek not only a reversal of Roe. v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas, but also Griswold v. Connecticut which struck down laws banning the use of contraception by MARRIED couples. Now, Bob Felton over at Civil Commotion has a post that shows that the Chimperator is trying to assist this agenda backhandedly by regulations and interpretations. Here are relevant highlights:

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It’s been clear for a long time that the evangelical right means to eliminate not merely abortion, but even contraception; I’ve written about it previously here, here, here, and here. Now, President Bush’s Health and Human Services department proposes a rule that permits employees of facilities that receive federal dollars — which is practically all hospitals — to refuse to participate in any procedures that violate their religious beliefs, including the provision of contraception.

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I am not making this up, or indulging in hyperbole:

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Therefore, the Department proposes to interpret this term broadly, as encompassing individuals who are members of the workforce of the Department-funded entity performing the objectionable procedure. When applying the term “assist in the performance” to members of an entity’s workforce, the Department proposes to include participation in any activity with a logical connection to the objectionable procedure, including referrals, training, and other arrangements for offending procedures. For example, an operating room nurse would assist in the performance of surgical procedures, and an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments used in a particular procedure, would be considered to assist in the performance of the particular procedure.

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And don’t kid yourself: These yahoos won’t hesitate for an instant to put their hands on other people’s lives and destroy them for the glory of Jesus. It is beyond shocking that HHS would seriously propose to codify such a wide-ranging veto of private health decisions. Contact Congress … today.