Brett Kavanaugh Is A “Direct Threat” To LGBT People

Kavanaugh and Der Trumpenführer who has been waging a relentless war on LGBT Americans.

While I have been at times critical of the Human Rights Campaign ("HRC") because in the past it has at times put more emphasis on self-promotion and maintaining "access" to politicians by not putting the rights of its LGBT supporters first, when it comes to research, generally does a first class job. Today, HRC released a research piece that concluded that Brett Kavanaugh, Der Trumpenführer's nominee to replace Anthony Kennedy, is a "direct threat" to LGBT Americans.  Why?  Because, Kavanaugh seemingly does not believe in a constitutional right to privacy which is the principle that under grids not only Roe v. Wade, but also Lawrence v. Texas and even the Obergefell marriage ruling. Equally disturbing is Kavanaugh's deference to "religious liberty" claims that increasingly are being utilized by Christofascists to demand exemption from non-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws.  BuzzFeed looks at HRC's concerns.  Here are highlights:

h,The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBT advocacy group, has concluded that Judge Brett Kavanaug President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, is “a direct threat to the constitutional rights of everyday Americans and for the LGBTQ community in particular.”

In his dozen years as a federal appeals court judge, however, Kavanaugh has not heard any significant cases addressing LGBT issues and has said hardly anything about LGBT people. As a result, HRC’s opposition to his nomination — detailed in a new report to be released Tuesday, a copy of which was reviewed by BuzzFeed News — drew primarily on Kavanaugh’s opinions regarding reproductive rights and religious liberties, as well as the dearth of information about his work in the George W. Bush White House, to back up its conclusions about the threat the group says his confirmation would pose to LGBT Americans.

The fact that Kavanaugh would replace Justice Anthony Kennedy — the author of all of the Supreme Court’s key decisions advancing LGBT rights over the past 25 years — also appeared to figure into HRC’s stance.

The HRC report also expressed concerns about Kavanaugh’s views on the Affordable Care Act, voter ID laws, and federal agency power, as well as his rulings in employment discrimination cases.

“During his 12 years on the D.C. Circuit, [Kavanaugh] did not substantively address any of the Supreme Court’s seminal LGBTQ decisions in Lawrence v. Texas, Romer v. Evans, United States v. Windsor, or Obergefell v. Hodges, nor its discredited ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick,” the report stated. 

In the absence of opinions on LGBT-related cases, HRC pointed to speeches Kavanaugh gave “extensively praising” former chief justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia — whom the group claimed “have some of the most pronounced anti-LGBTQ records of modern jurists.”

“Judge Kavanaugh’s record on reproductive rights, the right to privacy, and religious liberty indicates a potent combination of ideological views that could significantly and unnecessarily reshape constitutional doctrine and nondiscrimination protections as they apply to LGBTQ persons,” the group concluded.

The next five sections of the HRC report laid out the legal areas where the group argued that Kavanaugh’s opinions and other statements suggest he will be opposed to LGBT people’s interests.

·      Right to Privacy: HRC argued that Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinions in two reproductive rights cases — one involving an undocumented minor seeking an abortion and the other involving the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage opt-out procedures — signal a “critical and constrained perspective” on Roe v. Wade. His record, the report concluded, “suggests that he does not accept the enduring precept that the Constitution protects the right to privacy,” adding that this relates to LGBT issues as “the Court’s 2015 momentous marriage equality decision built upon this logic further.”

·         Religious Liberty: The group pointed to Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion in the ACA case, which the majority of the DC Circuit judges called “a potentially sweeping” interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, and concluded that Kavanaugh “seems all-too-ready to carve out any number of other religious exemptions into statutory and constitutional law.”

·     Nondiscrimination Protections: Calling Kavanaugh’s opinion upholding South Carolina’s voter ID law “troubling,” HRC also noted that the judge repeatedly dissented in discrimination-related cases where his colleagues “upheld a claim or finding of discrimination.”

·         Separation of Powers: Citing his criticism of “independent agencies [as] … a headless fourth branch of the US government” in a case challenging the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the HRC report expressed concern that Kavanaugh’s reasoning “could regularly disempower federal agencies and narrow federal laws, which often serve as crucial bulwarks against LGBTQ discrimination.”

Finally, HRC echoed concerns expressed by Senate Democrats about records from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House — first as a lawyer in the counsel’s office and then as Bush’s staff secretary. Specifically, the group noted that records from Kavanaugh’s work in the Bush administration may include information regarding his views on LGBT issues.

“The years of 2001 to 2006 (when he served in the Bush White House), was an especially consequential period for the LGBTQ rights and marriage equality movement,” the report said. “This era included the Lawrence v. Texas decision, multiple pronouncements by President Bush about the institution of marriage and marriage-related amendments to the federal Constitution, and civil rights litigation and referenda at the state and circuit levels.”

As most readers will recall, the George W. Bus White House used anti-gay marriage initiatives and anti-gay animus in general as a means to rally the Christofascist vote in 2004.  What role Kavanaugh played in this anti-gay witch hunt and demonizing of LGBT Americans needs to be made public BEFORE any vote takes place on Kavanaugh's nomination. 

The Time Ted Cruz Defended a Ban on Dildos

Finding all of the examples of Republican politicians pandering  and selling their souls to Christofascists is an almost endless task and would be utterly exhausting.  I do my best, but as a part time blogger, my time is limited. Thankfully, sites like Mother Jones - Joe My God does a wonderful job as well - make the task more simple because they do such a great job in exposing GOP batshitery.  A case in point is the Mother Jones piece that looks at Ted Cruz's crusade against dildos.  Yes, dildos.  It would be hard to make up stuff this insane, but not when you are dealing with Christofascists and their political whores in the Republican Party. Here are article highlights (read the entire piece):

In one chapter of his campaign book, A Time for Truth, Sen. Ted Cruz proudly chronicles his days as a Texas solicitor general, a post he held from 2003 to 2008. Bolstering his conservative cred, the Republican presidential candidate notes that during his stint as the state's chief lawyer, in front of the Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts . . . . Yet one case he does not mention is the time he helped defend a law criminalizing the sale of dildos.

The case was actually an important battle concerning privacy and free-speech rights. In 2004, companies that owned Austin stores selling sex toys and a retail distributor of such products challenged a Texas law outlawing the sale and promotion of supposedly obscene devices. Under the law, a person who violated the statute could go to jail for up to two years. At the time, only three states—Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia—had similar laws. 

The plaintiffs in the sex device case contended the state law violated the right to privacy under the 14th Amendment. They argued that many people in Texas used sexual devices as an aspect of their sexual experiences. They claimed that in some instances one partner in a couple might be physically unable to engage in intercourse or have a contagious disease (such as HIV), and that in these cases such devices could allow a couple to engage in safe sex.

In 2007, Cruz's legal team, working on behalf of then-Attorney General Greg Abbott (who now is the governor), filed a 76-page brief calling on the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to uphold the lower court's decision and permit the law to stand. The filing noted, "The Texas Penal Code prohibits the advertisement and sale of dildos, artificial vaginas, and other obscene devices" but does not "forbid the private use of such devices." The plaintiffs had argued that this case was similar to Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down Texas' law against sodomy. But Cruz's office countered that Lawrence "focused on interpersonal relationships and the privacy of the home" and that the law being challenged did not block the "private use of obscene devices." . . . . In other words, Texans were free to use sex toys at home, but they did not have the right to buy them.

The brief insisted that Texas, in order to protect "public morals," had  "police-power interests" in "discouraging prurient interests in sexual gratification, combating the commercial sale of sex, and protecting minors." There was a  "government" interest, it maintained, in "discouraging…autonomous sex." The brief compared the use of sex toys to "hiring a willing prostitute or engaging in consensual bigamy," and it equated advertising these products with the commercial promotion of prostitution. In perhaps the most noticeable line of the brief, Cruz's office declared, "There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one's genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship." That is, the pursuit of such happiness had no constitutional standing.

In a 2-1 decision issued in February 2008, the court of appeals told Cruz's office to take a hike. The court, citing Lawrence, pointed to the "right to be free from governmental intrusion regarding 'the most private human contact, sexual behavior.'" The panel added, "An individual who wants to legally use a safe sexual device during private intimate moments alone or with another is unable to legally purchase a device in Texas, which heavily burdens a constitutional right." It rejected the argument from Cruz's team that the government had a legitimate role to play in "discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation." 

Summing up, the judges declared, "The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the State is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification for the statute after Lawrence...Whatever one might think or believe about the use of these devices, government interference with their personal and private use violates the Constitution."

The appeals court had rejected the arguments from Cruz's office and said no to Big Government policing the morals of citizens. But Abbott and Cruz wouldn't give up. Of course, they might have initially felt obligated to mount a defense of this state law. But after it had been shot down, they pressed ahead, relying on the same puritanical and excessive arguments to justify government intrusion. Abbott and Cruz quickly filed a brief asking the full court of appeals to hear the case, claiming the three-judge panel had extended the scope of Lawrence too far. This brief suggested that if the decision stood, some people would argue that "engaging in consensual adult incest or bigamy" ought to be legal because it could "enhance their sexual experiences." And Cruz's office filed another brief noting it was considering taking this case to the Supreme Court.

Cruz and Abbott lost the motion for a hearing from the full court of appeals. And the state soon dropped the case, opting not to appeal to the Supreme Court. This meant that the government could no longer outlaw the sale of dildos, vibrators, and other sex-related devices in the Lone Star State—and in Mississippi and Louisiana, the two other states within this appeals court's jurisdiction.

Imagine how his political career might have been affected had Cruz become the public face for the anti-dildos movement.

Given how physical repulsive Cruz is - he could raise a fortune by allowing people to pay to NOT have sex with him - I can only imagine how many dildos his wife must own.  

"Religious Freedom" Laws Threaten Women’s Access Basic Health Care

I have often said that the Christofascists long to overturn not only Roe v. Wade, but also Griswold v. Connecticut which first laid out a right to privacy and struck down Connecticut's ban on the sale of contraception even to married heterosexual couples.   The ruling in Lawrence v. Texas was an extension of the right to privacy in one's intimate relationships first noted in Griswold.  The "godly folks" have always had an agenda to force others to live by their hate and fear based religious dogma.  While gays are ostensibly the targets of the GOP backed "religious freedom" laws, the real targets are much broader, including women's health care rights.  Think Progress looks at this larger agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Presidential candidates, the Christian Right, and the entire state of Indiana are still reeling from the fallout over Indiana’s recent attempt to enact a broad “religious freedom” law designed to allow for LGBT discrimination. And despite the national outrage over that law, similar fights are brewing in Arkansas and Louisiana.

Most of the conversation around these state-level policies, which are modeled on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), centers on the legislation’s discriminatory effect on LGBT citizens. Indeed, the people who drafted Indiana’s law were quite specific about the fact that it was intended to allow businesses to refuse service to LGBT individuals based on their sexual orientation.

But, as Dalia Lithwick recently pointed out in Slate, these “religious freedom” arguments are actually rooted in a much older fight that has implications stretching beyond the LGBT community. Over the past several decades, states have quietly been expanding the scope of their religious liberty laws to allow medical professionals to refuse to provide basic health services they oppose on religious grounds. And those services invariably end up falling under the category of reproductive rights, since that particular aspect of women’s medical care often gets caught in the crossfires of religious debates.

[T]hese laws can also inflict serious harm on women by denying them essential health care, such as contraceptive coverage, emergency contraception, sterilization and abortion procedures, and more,” Sally Steenland, the director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, told ThinkProgress.

One recent case in Georgia, in which a woman was unable to receive the medication she needed to treat her miscarriage because of her local pharmacists’ objections to abortion, provides a clear example of what Steenland is referencing.

“A woman who has just learned that she lost her baby shouldn’t have to spend time shopping for a pharmacist who will fill the prescription her doctor has ordered,” Amy Morton, the chairwoman of progressive advocacy organization Better Georgia, told ThinkProgress via email. “There are women all over Georgia — particularly in rural areas — who don’t have the option of going to another pharmacy if their pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription.”

But, thanks to the proliferation of so-called “conscience clauses” that arose in response to Roe v. Wade, that’s perfectly legal in Morton’s state.

[J]ust like how states’ overly broad RFRA laws can be used to allow anti-gay businesses to deny services from LGBT people, this particular interpretation of “religious freedom” can also allow anti-choice doctors and pharmacists to deny services from women. And there’s no question that this framework is being advanced to the detriment of women’s health care access: It was also the argument at the heart of the recent Hobby Lobby case, when the Supreme Court decided that some private companies should be allowed to refuse birth control services to their employees based on their own moral objections to contraception.

RFRA laws’ potential impact on reproductive rights wasn’t a major talking point during the national fight over Indiana’s law. But it’s important to see the issues of LGBT rights and reproductive rights as interconnected . . . “Those asserting claims about same-sex marriage are self-consciously drawing on objections to abortion and contraception as they advance objections to interacting with persons in same-sex relationships,” NeJaimes and Siegel told Slate. “These conscience objections run beyond the wedding industry to implicate a much broader set of goods and services, including healthcare and employment benefits.”

Why theGOP/Christofascists Hates American History

As noted repeatedly on this blog, to be a Republican nowadays - or a Christofascist - one must consciously embrace ignorance and/or seek to erase facts and history that do not support your limited agenda or "world view."  Modern knowledge and an accurate knowledge of history work against the GOP's talking points and the Christofascists claims that the Bible is inerrant and/or that America was founded as a Christian nation.  Salon has two separate posts that underscore why the far right hate true and accurate American history and education.  Here are highlights from the first piece:

Sure, the war on education helps Republican lawmakers destroy unions and slash government spending, but it’s our history of progressive change that makes Conservatives hate accurate depictions of our past.

Just think about Social Security, The New Deal, freeing the slaves, or child labor laws… all represent great turning points in our nation that progressives made possible. The fact is, our entire history – from our revolution to healthcare reform – is filled with progressive accomplishments, and it’s hard to sell the Conservative brand to people who know that history.

Many of the today’s biggest political issues, like our privacy rights, would not even be up for debate today had it not been for the attack on education. If more Americans had had a strong understanding of our history, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would have never been able to pull off the Patriot Act. And, we wouldn’t be discussing the Orwellian government spy agencies like the NSA in this day and age.

Thomas Jefferson recognized that education is vital to a functioning Democratic Republic.  In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson wrote: “And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them…. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

In light of Oklahoma’s recent attack on AP History, it would be easy to argue that today’s Republicans don’t recognize the value of a good education. However, the reality is that they do, and that the spreading attack on public education is far more sinister.

When the Patriot Act was signed, Bush and his ilk claimed the power to violate citizens’ private lives because, they said, there is no “right to privacy” in the United States. 

[I]n the minds of the Founders, human rights are inalienable—inseparable—from humans themselves. We are born with rights by simple fact of existence, as defined by John Locke and written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Founders wrote.

Jefferson’s insistence on a bill of rights exemplifies the progressive thoughts and actions that fill our rich history, and provide a perfect example of why education is vital to our democratic republic.

Jefferson was in France when Madison sent him the first draft of the new Constitution, and he wrote back on December 20, 1787, that, “I will now tell you what I do not like [about the new constitution]. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land….”

Although the purpose of the Constitution wasn’t to grant rights to people, as kings and popes and feudal lords had done in the past, Jefferson felt it was necessary to be absolutely unambiguous about the solid reality that humans are holders of rights, and that in no way was the Constitution or the new government of the United States to ever be allowed to infringe on those rights.

The Constitution’s authors well understood this, Jefferson noted, having just fought a revolutionary war to gain their “self-evident” and “inalienable” rights from King George, but he also felt strongly that both the common person of the day and future generations must be reminded of this reality.

Jefferson is stating openly that the purpose of the Constitution—and even the Bill of Rights—is not to grant rights to the people, but to restrain government. It doesn’t grant, it limits.  And, Jefferson said, his proposed Bill of Rights was only a beginning and imperfect; it would be nearly impossible to list in detail all the rights humans have. But a start, a try, is better than nothing—at least it will make clear that the purpose of the constitution is to limit government:

[N]ow, thanks to the war on education that began with Ronald Reagan, we have come to that remote period in time Jefferson was concerned about. Our leaders, ignorant of or ignoring the history of this nation’s founding, make a parody of liberty and flaunt their challenges even to those rights explicitly defined in the Constitution. And, perhaps worse, they allow monopolistic corporations to do the same.

Our best defense against today’s pervasive ignorance about American history and human rights is education, a task that Jefferson undertook in starting the University of Virginia to provide a comprehensive and free public education to all capable students.

Nothing makes it easier for the Christofascists to promote the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation than the ignorance of far too many America's as to true founding principles.  As the piece above notes, education is the main protection of civil rights and liberties.  The second piece is indirectly related and focuses on the GOP/Christofascist war on education.    Here are highlights:

Modern conservative politics push the notion that people who flip switches, burgers or bedpans don’t need “education.”  They instead need “job training.”  In Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, someone crossed out this phrase: “to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society.”  And added this instead: “to meet the state’s workforce needs.”  Walker backed down on the language change when it was exposed, claiming it was a “mistake.”  Really it was just one more tired attack on the idea of education as a public good, one that helps people find fulfillment and meaning.

Before college, I voted conservative, hated gay people, loved America and served my country in the armed services.  I’ve changed because of many factors, but I know that college and graduate school made a difference. I met people unlike myself and was forced to defend sometimes ugly political positions.  The Tea Party thrives on blue-collar “common sense” that is composed of a combination of ignorance, superstition and fear. A literate and educated populace is an existential threat to the kind of thoughtless rage that has consumed the right over the past few years.

Modern politics is drawing bizarre new battle lines between “family values” and a halfway decent education.  American Christians may dislike “Islam,” but they share a lot of opinions with the radical Islamic group “Boko Haram,” a name that itself translates into “education is forbidden.” In our own country, we have a massive and growing group of people who would rather have illiterate children than let their kids learn anything that contradicts their most extreme 

religious views.

Anti-intellectualism may be an American tradition, but when “mainstream” politicians embrace ignorance, education ends up as collateral damage.“Serious” presidential candidate Scott Walker seems to have a problem with evolution, sounding like an idiot, most recently while in England. Unlike Rick Santorum who is an overeducated hypocrite, Walker lives the life of a true education hater. 

[S]ensible people need to stand up against the vilification of education. A good start is to support Barack Obama’s free community college initiative. 

[T]here is inherent value to education even if someone isn’t paying you for it. I know my life would be less satisfying without it. For instance, if I had turned my back on education, I could have ended up as an ignorant asshole trying to turn back the very hands of human progress, much like the party to which I once belonged.

NSA Leaker - Hero Or Traitor?

The rage in some quarters over the revelation that the National Security Agency, CIA and other U.S. government organizations have been spying on American citizens continues unabated.  What's interesting is that some both on the far right and far left are in an uproar.  Meanwhile, the "America, love it or leave it" crowd is accusing NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, is a traitor.  It's the same mindset that kept America in the disaster in Vietnam for far too long and the one that has kept the fool's errand in Afghanistan going for over a decade.  The New York Times takes the position in a main page editorial that Snowden is not a traitor.  Here are some column highlights:

For several top lawmakers in Washington, Edward Snowden committed the ultimate political crime when he revealed to the world just how broadly and easily the government is collecting phone and Internet records. “He’s a traitor,” said John Boehner, the House speaker. “It’s an act of treason,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.

Among prosecutors and defense lawyers, there’s a name for that kind of hyperbole: overcharging. Whatever his crimes — and he clearly committed some — Mr. Snowden did not commit treason, though the people who have long kept the secrets he revealed are now fulminating with rage. 

If Mr. Snowden had really wanted to harm his country, he could have sold the classified documents he stole to a foreign power, say Russia or China or Iran or North Korea. But even that would not constitute treason, which only applies in cases of aiding an enemy with whom the United States is at war.

In the landmark 1945 case Cramer v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that one had to provide aid and comfort and also “adhere” to an enemy to be guilty of treason. 

“A citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy,” the court said, “making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength — but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.” 

Clearly, Mr. Snowden did not join a terror cell, or express any hostility toward the United States, when he turned over documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post. (He was also not nearly as reckless as Bradley Manning, . . . .

Mr. Snowden’s goal was to expose and thus stop the intelligence community from what he considered unwarranted intrusions into the lives of ordinary Americans. “My sole motive,” he told The Guardian, “is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” While that principle is the right one, he should brace himself for the charges and possible punishment that may come in its wake. Most likely, he will be charged with disclosure of classified information under the Espionage Act, which carries a possible 10-year jail term for each count. 

Of course, prosecuting Snowden requires that he be taken into custody and may also involve some challenges as noted in The American Conservative under a headline of "Obama Shouldn’t Prosecute Snowden, He Should Hire Him":

I think the Obama administration will have a very difficult time prosecuting Edward Snowden. They can go after Bradley Manning because they have him, in uniform and in prison, and thus shut off from normal communication. Americans are unable to perceive how normal, probably likeable, and how similar to most of us he probably is. But Snowden comes across like everyone’s ideal of a really smart, techie, individualist kid. No high school degree, yet speaks as eloquently as an assistant Harvard professor. Smart enough to rise rapidly in the world without credentials, reminding us vividly computers really are a new frontier, the one field outside of sports and music where classic American Horatio Alger tropes have any continued relevance. If Obama wanted to do something smart, he should thank Snowden and offer him a job as a White House technology advisor.

The situation has indeed made some strange bedfellows when both Boehner and Feinstein are condemning him  and the ACLU and others on the far right are praising him.  It will be an interesting spectacle to watch play out.

Santorum's and the Catholic Bishops' Message to Americans

This Miami Herald cartoon needs no explanation.

No Right to Privacy, Including Birth Control

I am at a loss at times as to why Virginia seems to be the home base for so many wingnut Christianist and allied far right organizations. In addition to Pat Robertson's CBN and Regent University and the late Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University, parts of Northern Virginia - which in general is trending liberal politically - seem to be a cluster fu*k in terms of wingnut organizations ranging from Mike Farris's very scary Patrick Henry College with a mission of preparing "Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding" to the American Life League or "ALL" based in Stafford, Virginia. ALL opposes among other things all forms of abortion, birth control, and embryonic stem cell research. A further example of ALL's lunacy is the fact that ALL charged that Disney had concealed subliminal sexual messages in a number of its animated films, including The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin.

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Now, ALL is sponsoring an anti-birth control event on June 7, 2008, called "The Pill Kills." Worse yet, ALL is again bemoaning the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut which struck down laws barring MARRIED couples from using birth control. While ALL is a Catholic based organization, it shares the same agenda as fundamentalist Christianist organizations: having all U.S. Supreme Court decisions based on "the right to privacy" theory struck down. This would include Griswold, Roe v. Wade, Larence v. Texas and many other decisions - decisions that Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomsa would overturn if a conservative majority is achieved on the Supreme Court. These wingnuts do NOT want individuals to chart their own sexuality and lives. Sadly, the MSM never portrays the full extent of this extremist agenda or the potential consequences of a McCain presidency with conservative judicial appointments to the U. S. Supreme Court. Here is what ALL is saying about birth control:

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June 7 marks the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut. This was the first of many decisions that led to the culture of death we live in today.

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On that day in 1965, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Griswold v. Connecticut case, it set a legal precedent for claiming that the Constitution grants women the right to privacy in matters of sexual practice. This meant that Connecticut and the rest of the United States could not stop a married woman from obtaining birth control pills. However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano has pointed out, the constitutional right to privacy has nothing to do with birth control.

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Everyone should know the deadly consequences of the pill and similar contraceptive products- they cause chemical abortions. . . . Protest the Pill Day '08: The Pill Kills Babies, scheduled for the Griswold anniversary of Saturday, June 7. We encourage you to gather with your friends for peaceful protests in front of facilities that distribute birth control products. American Life League computed the following estimates for chemical abortions alone, from 1973 to 2003:

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**During this period, approximately 6,605,000 to 11,725,000 chemical abortions occured in the United States annually.

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**During this period, a total of 196,325,000 to 324,325,000 chemical abortions wiped out the equivalent of the entire United States population!