Get Your Filthy Faith Out of Our Secular Legal System
One of the hopes and dreams for Jesus-fellating right-wingers and fascists who know how to manipulate the Jesus fellaters is that the 2024 election will hasten the establishment of a Christian nationalist government for this damned country. That means, among other scary shit, laws come directly from an invisible sky wizard or, you know, "God," and the book of fiction that is the Christian bible. (Just to be fair and clear, all books of fables about sky wizards and their earth-bound superfriends and relatives are fictional, no matter which flavor they happen to be.) And it means that you will need to follow what they claim their sky wizard tells them, whether you believe in that sky wizard or not.
In the past week. two judges, one on the Alabama Supreme Court and one on the U.S. Supreme Court, issued opinions that they didn't have to issue just to put forth the idea that the law needs to take into account what "God" thinks about shit. Seriously, the decisions in the cases, which they agree with, were completed and then they went and added their own bullshit side opinions just so they could flog for crazed right-wing Christianity.
Over at the Supreme Court (motto: "Harming as many people as possible as quickly as we can"), the justices declined to hear a case from Missouri "about people removed from a jury after voicing religious objections to gay relationships." More precisely, Jean Finney, a female employee for the Missouri Department of Corrections, was suing because a male co-worker retaliated against her for being in a same-sex relationship with the man's ex-wife. During jury selection, which, again, was in Missouri, Finney's attorney asked prospective jurors, "How many of you went to a religious organization growing up where it was taught that people that are homosexuals shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else because it was a sin with what they did?" A bunch raised their hands because, again, Missouri. Three jurors were excluded by the judge for their anti-gay bias when they said they couldn't set aside their belief that their sky wizard will be angry with them if they're nice to a lesbian. The state lost the case and appealed based on the exclusion of homophobes for Jesus. Other courts denied the appeal, and the Supreme Court let the verdict stand.
And that should have been that. It's a rational decision, one that even the conservatives went along with because of procedural issues with the state. But then fuckin' Samuel Alito, who wrote a dickish dissent in the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage, had to say fuckin' something. See, Sammy's sad because he feels this is unfair, that people who say they have to deny rights to the gays shouldn't be treated any differently when they're in a position to deny rights to the gays. Scribbles Sammy, "Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be 'labeled as bigots and treated as such' by the government." He's quoting his own Obergefell dissent there.
Finney's lawyer was worried, quite rightly, that the "conduct" of her client involved activities that the Christ brigade thinks should be punished, you know, eternally. But Sammy doesn't think that's enough to exclude them from the jury. "When a court, a quintessential state actor, finds that a person is ineligible to serve on a jury because of his or her religious beliefs, that decision implicates fundamental rights," he whines. He says he would have wanted the court to take the case because of the constitutional issues, but the state fucked up procedural stuff and so, sorry, not this time. However, Alito is indicating he wants jurors to be allowed to bring their religious prejudices to the justice system.
Let's be perfectly clear, though. If you think an invisible sky wizard is commanding you to be a bigot, you're just a fucking bigot, and you should be treated like a fucking bigot. The rest of us don't give a fuck about your faith unless you try to impose it on the rest of us. You can choose to believe or not. You can choose to act on those beliefs. And that's on you. But you'll have to wait until Sammy gets his chance to baptize the law.
However, down in Alabama (state motto: "Are we worse than Mississippi? Maybe"), by a 7-2 decision, the state's Supreme Court declared that frozen embryos are the legal equivalent of children and thus if you dispose of unused embryos after your IVF treatment is successful, you've essentially killed kids. The mad legal reasoning on this is some clusterfuck of Alabama bullshit: the Sanctity of Life Amendment to the state constitution, as well as the Wrongful Death of a Minor law. The motherfuckers on the state court have long said that "unborn" children fall under the law. And the horrific implications of the decision are just being felt as hospitals and clinics that do IVF are saying that they can't risk their employees, doctors, nurses, whoever going to jail, so they are pausing something that is literally about women who definitely want children. In saving the zygotesicles, the court majority is preventing actual births.
The majority opinion is batshit enough, but Chief Justice Tom Parker, whose look says, "I really want to enslave women," took the extra step of writing a concurring opinion because he wanted to kick out the Jesus jams hard. After leaps of legal and theological logic that would make a kangaroo jealous, at the end, Parker gets to what he really, really wants to say. And, fuck it, I'm just gonna quote it in full because you need to behold the bonkers fuckery in all its wretchedness:
"The People of Alabama have declared the public policy of this State to be that unborn human life is sacred. We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.' Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982). All three branches of government are subject to a constitutional mandate to treat each unborn human life with reverence. Carving out an exception for the people in this case, small as they were, would be unacceptable to the People of this State, who have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image."
How about that? Everyone in Alabama has to abide by this jackass's ultra-conservative imaginary friend.
First off, I know this isn't the most important part of the whole thing, but that line from the Book of Jeremiah is tossed around by anti-choicers all the time. It even shows up on their posters and bumper stickers and shit. And it doesn't fucking mean what they are saying it means. This isn't God making some general statement about loving everyone. No, it's God trying to convince Jeremiah to get off his ass and go be a prophet. That's why he sanctified Jeremiah. The rest of the verse is "Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations." It's a guilt trip by God before he gets all pissy about it. God's saying, "Look at all the shit I did so you could go be my spokesman." Seems way more specific in context. Then Jeremiah is all, "But I'm too young," and then God is all, "The fuck you say. I'll tell you what to do. Now fucking do it." So even Parker's cheap use of a bible verse to back him up is garbage.
But think of what that piece of the concurrence means. Imagine being Muslim or Jewish or, god forbid, an atheist in Alabama, and reading this shit. It's a big "fuck you" to anyone who doesn't believe in the cruelest version of Christianity. Parker believes it. He fucking well said, "God created government, and the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others, it’s heartbreaking." He totally supports this weirdo thing called the Seven Mountain Mandate, which is not some gay fun on a long camping trip. No, it's this bugfuck nuts idea that seven "mountains" that have "cultural influence" should be filtered through Jesus's ball hair: religion, family, government, education, media, arts/entertainment, and business. Speaker of the House and man who definitely isn't watching chicken porn Mike Johnson is into it. So is rat-bearded Ted Cruz. Or so they say. Who knows what these fucks really believe.
And to those of us who don't believe, it's madness. It's undemocratic. And it's filled with hate for women, for LGBTQ people, for anyone who isn't willing to say, "Yes, I believe an invisible sky wizard controls us all and will grant us wishes if we tell him we love him all the time." I mean, I might think that people like Alito and Parker actually believe this shit if they didn't constantly make decisions that seem to be the exact opposite of what the sky wizard says you should do for the poor, the hungry, the less fortunate right there in his Big Book of Stories.
What's even scarier is how willing con men like noted rapist and fraud Donald Trump are willing to use Christian nationalism as a tool in their fascist chest. We're just gonna bumblefuck into Gilead.
(Bonus quote: Parker dismisses one of his fellow justices who wrote a dissent in the Alabama decision. He says, "To the extent that Justice Cook is predicting that IVF will now end in Alabama, that prediction does not seem to be well-founded." If Parker were capable of anything like self-reflection, he sure as fuck owes Cook an apology.)
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