High Tea: Sounds Good, But May Not Be...
 

February 27 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ
 

The February 21, 2006 CNN headline read “Court sides with church on hallucinogenic tea.” The story reported on the “first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts”:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God. Justices … moved decisively to keep the government out of a church’s religious practice.

 

Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision.

 

The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has a blend of Christian beliefs and South American traditions. Members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea, which is consumed twice a month at four-hour ceremonies. [italics and link added]

Sounds great. A cup of tea sure beats wandering in the desert for forty day and forty nights hoping to achieve the same “peak experience.” The decision does keep government out of religion – at least this particular religion in this particular case – but will the newly configured Supreme Court keep religion out of government? Or will the new Court, under the guise of “religious freedom” and “judicial restraint,” enable Christian fundamentalists to legally enforce their faith-based bigotry and discrimination with impunity?

In a February 24, 2006 article for James Dobson’s Family News in Focus, Steve Jordahl hailed the Supreme Court’s decision as “a victory for religious liberty,” which it was, but Mr. Jordahl began his article with “a recent ruling involving an obscure religious sect may seem inconsequential, but it has broad implications for all faiths and sends a message that Chief Justice John Roberts is a friend to believers.”

It’s impossible to miss the message in that statement. The Christian Right is beaming with anticipation that the new Supreme Court will consecrate their faith-based politics and advance their goal of making America a theocracy.

Mr. Jordahl went on to cite comments made by Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund and Jared Leland of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty:

The decision is a blow to secular groups bent on removing religion from the public square. Jordan Lorence is with the Alliance Defense Fund. …

 

For example, he says, school clubs and even churches should now be clear to require officers and pastors to be believers. This is the first religious liberty case to come before the Roberts court. Leland says it’s a good beginning.

 

“And it certainly seems to be an indication that the Roberts court is going to be one that is respectful and in furtherance of religious liberty rights.” …

 

Lorence says this could also have a bearing on suits challenging pharmacists’ and doctors’ rights of conscience. [italics added]

Those “rights of conscience” mean refusing patients prescribed medications or medical procedures based on the pharmacist’s or health care provider’s personal religious beliefs.

According to People for the American Way (PFAW), the Alliance Defense Fund’s founders include:

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ;

Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts;

Rev. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family;

Rev. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries;

Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media;

Don Wildmon, founder of American Family Association
(And 25+ other ministries)
[italics and links added]

So there is absolutely no doubt about what their agenda is. The PFAW website lists these among the “Alliance Defense Fund’s Principal Issues”:

ADF has been involved with 16 “victories” before the Supreme Court, including such high profile cases as Boy Scouts of America v. Dale and Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network. ADF has had success in anti-gay cases all over the US, from Alaska to Massachusetts. …

 

ADF has brought together attorneys and allied legal groups to help develop a national strategy on controversial social issues, for example it has worked to develop a national strategy to “protect marriage” across the United States after Vermont's decision to legalize civil unions for gays and lesbians. …

 

ADF also defends the right of Christians to “share the gospel” in workplaces and public schools, claiming that any efforts to curb proselytizing at work and school are anti-Christian. [italics added]

“Anti-gay cases” and national strategies to “protect marriage” from Americans who want to get married. No one is more rabidly anti-gay or more hell-bent on discriminating against gay and lesbian Americans in every and any way possible than Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, founder and chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC). Sheldon’s hero on the Supreme Court is Antonin Scalia, as was made clear in a February 16, 2006 TVC article entitled “Justice Antonin Scalia Defends Judicial Restraint”:

In his speech [to The Federalist Society on February 13, 2006], Justice Scalia criticized those who claim that the Constitution is a “living” document that must be reinterpreted by judges to reflect the changing times.

 

According to Scalia, anyone who believes that is an idiot. He told the audience: “That’s the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break.” But, said Scalia, “... you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn’t say other things.”

 

Justice Scalia rightly states that what the advocates of the living Constitution mean is that they want matters decided “not by the people, but by the justices of the Supreme Court. They are not looking for legal flexibility, they are looking for rigidity, whether it’s the right to abortion or the right to homosexual activity, they want that right to be embedded from coast to coast and to be unchangeable.” [italics and link added]

If you don’t agree with Scalia’s views, you’re “an idiot”: what a childish word to use and what a menacing statement for a Supreme Court justice to make.

With nodding grins of approval from Sheldon and the TVC, Justice Scalia accused those who believe the U.S. Constitution should be a “living document” that evolves as society and the country do of seeking “rigidity.” But that is precisely what Scalia advocates. It’s the very essence of his textural originalists’ beliefs that give “primary weight to the text and structure of the Constitution.”

“Originalism” refers to a theory of Constitutional interpretation. H. Jefferson Powell offered an obtuse definition in his 1987 article “Rules for Originalists” in the Virginia Law Review: “Those who advocate giving normative force to the ‘original intent’ of the Constitution’s framers … adherence to the Constitution’s original meaning(s) without locating that (those) meaning(s) in the founders’ actual intention.” 

Failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork authored a functional definition of “originalist” in his book The Tempting of America. Mr. Bork stated “all that counts” for a judge interpreting the Constitution “is how the words used in the Constitution would have been understood at the time” they were written and ratified more than 200 years ago.

In other words, Scalia wants the Constitution frozen in time – the 18th century. If a right or a protection is not explicit in that frozen-in-time document, it doesn’t exist no matter how society and the country have evolved since then. Sheldon and the TVC agree.

“Lucky Louie” – as former TVC and anti-gay patron Jack Abramoff called Rev. Sheldon – also claimed that “Justice Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justice Samuel Alito affirm a commitment to judicial restraint. They believe that judges are to interpret the Constitution, not redefine it to suit their own political or moral objectives” [links added]. Yet interpreting “the Constitution … to suit their own political or moral objectives” is exactly what Scalia, the Christian Right and Sheldon advocate.

Most Americans do not want persons who are openly engaged in homosexual conduct as partners in their businesses, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home.

– Justice Antonin Scalia in dissent of the Lawrence v. Texas decision, June 2003

Sheldon actually urged people to “pray for one or two additional vacancies on the Supreme Court before the end of President Bush’s Administration. Liberal activists on the court still hold a 5-4 majority.” But those odds are just not good enough for “Lucky Louie.” He and the minions of the Christian Right want to make absolutely sure gay Americans are made permanent second-class citizens. They’re not interested in Constitutional guarantees of equality for all Americans. Their focus is squarely on their own theocratic “political [and] moral objectives.”

Another Alliance Defense Fund objective was to defend “the right of Christians to ‘share the gospel’ in workplaces and public schools, claiming that any efforts to curb proselytizing at work and school are anti-Christian.”

The Christian Right loves to represent itself as “persecuted.” An article that appeared on the website of The Christian Underground in late January 2006 was titled “The Passion of the Left: Hating Christians.” The author went through the usual withering litany of grievances, this time in reference to a conference entitled “Examining the Real Agenda of the Far Religious Right.” But, as usual, while playing victim and simultaneously condemning the “idiots” who oppose the Christian Right’s dogmatic theocratic agenda, the author also admitted the truth:

At one point, a speaker spoke about the need “to save democracy” from the “Christian Right,” to which the audience broke out in applause. An associate professor of comparative studies equated the zeal of the “Christian Right” with that of “suicide bombers.” A former Pentecostal minister gave a presentation titled, “Christian Jihad,” while someone claimed to unveil, “The Real Hidden Religious Agenda: The Theocratic States of America.” For those suffering under such delusions, evangelical Christians are indeed the biggest threat to America and the entire world for that matter. [italics added]

Indeed they are, and they’re still playing victim as was so well illustrated in a February 21, 2006 Agape Press article – “Homosexual Activists’ War Against Christianity” – by Ed Vitagliano of the American Family Association. You remember Mr. Vitagliano: the American Family Association’s homophobic “researcher” who began to whole SpongeBob fiasco.

The Alliance Defense Fund has several brethren organizations. One of them is the American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy that was recently in the news for protecting “the right of Christians to ‘share the gospel’ in workplaces and public schools.” The Agape Press headline said it all: “Grandmother Gets Help Asserting Preschooler’s Right to Share His Faith.”

Four-year-old “Zachariah” was apparently “sharing his faith” with preschool classmates when the teacher told him he could not talk about religion at school. Grandma went ballistic and contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy, where Steve Crampton, “a specialist in constitutional law,” took up the case.

Crampton is notorious for making outlandish statements, such as the one he made following the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that “equal” means “equal” in relation to all civil institutions, including marriage: “Unless the people of the State of Massachusetts rise up with one voice in opposition to this lawless and socially destructive behavior [marriage], it will destroy society as we know it.”

More recently, when the University of Florida began offering health care coverage to same-sex domestic partners – all 25 couples who initially signed up – he had this nonsensical response: “Steve Crampton, chief counsel with the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, says, in this case, homosexuality appears to be the preferred lifestyle of the State of Florida…”

The Center for Law and Policy’s parent organization, Don Wildmon’s American Family Association (AFA), has been busy raising its profile among dogmatic fanatics – albeit with little if any finesse – by calling for boycotts of companies that treat their gay and lesbian employees equally, organization that promote equality for all Americans, and television shows that offend their delicate and distinctly humorless “Christian” sensibilities. Their latest target was announced on February 24, 2006:

AFA Warns Sponsors to Separate From 'Desperate Housewives’

Pro-Family Group Will Target ABC Show’s Advertisers for Future Boycott

 

(AgapePress) - A pro-family media watchdog group has announced it will monitor advertisers on ABC’s popular program “Desperate Housewives” and plans to call for a yearlong boycott of the series’ sponsors.

Meanwhile, the legal arm of boycott-bully Wildmon’s AFA is busy defending the Constitutional right of a four-year-old to dispense theological truths in the playground:

In this case, Crampton notes, “The teacher was basically insinuating herself into a private conversation between Zachariah and one of his classmates. The over-zealousness on the part of this teacher is extraordinary, and I’m sure she thought she was doing a good deed, trying to protect the school. But, in fact, she was interfering with Zachariah’s own constitutional rights.”

A four-year-old’s cognitive abilities don’t extend much beyond Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and are certainly not capable of comprehending Biblical scholarship or understanding the convoluted, man-made complexities of religious dogma. So aside from possibly scaring his classmates with tales of fire and brimstone, “Zachariah’s” evangelical message was essentially like talking about the “old woman” in Hansel and Gretel or the bogeyman under the bed.

What isn’t harmless or amusing are the campaigns by the Alliance Defense Fund, the AFA’s Center for Law and Policy, and similar organizations within the Christian Right to deny certain Americans their Constitutional rights as equal citizens deserving equal access to all civil institutions, including the one called “marriage.”

The AFA Center for Law and Policy has been working hard to make sure gay and lesbian Americans are excluded from that civil institution. A January 26, 2006 letter Mr. Crampton sent to all West Virginia legislators urging them to pass the West Virginia Marriage Protection Amendment confirmed the all out assault on equality and corroborated Mr. Crampton’s gift for hyperbole.

“The preservation of the Republic itself is inextricably linked to the preservation of the institution of marriage,” wrote Mr. Crampton, followed by the assertion that “marriage in under attack in America.” If the “institution of marriage” is threatened or under attack, it certainly isn’t by the gay and lesbian Americans who want to confirm their belief in the institution by participating in it. Perhaps Mr. Crampton should have a look at divorce rate statistics, especially those involving “born-again” Christians.

On September 8, 2004 – during the height of the pre-election campaign to “save traditional marriage” – the Christian marketing-research Barna Group issued a report entitled “Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians.” It documented that “among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.” Barna also documented that “nearly one-quarter of the married ‘born agains’ (23%) get divorced two or more times.”

But Crampton’s best line claimed that the West Virginia Marriage Protection Amendment “will erect a permanent wall around a permanent institution, older than the state, older than the nation, older than civilization itself.” Apparently the chief counsel of the American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy is unaware that the institution of marriage – like all other “institutions” – is a product of “civilization,” not older than it.

Perhaps if Mr. Crampton and the leaders of the Christian Right, as well as their political, legal and judicial allies joined the members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal for a cup of hoasca tea – “members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea” – then they might see the Light and start treating all people equally instead of trying to make their malevolent, dogma-based bigotry the law of the land.

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