Overturning Roe is Hypocrisy

The big news maker last week was the draft opinion regarding the abortion case heard by the Supreme Court published by Politico. The document indicates that 5 of the 6 Republican appointees have agreed to overturn the 50 year old Roe v. Wade decision and once again allow states to make abortion a criminal offense. Had Sen. Mitch McConnell not stolen a seat by refusing to hold hearings on Pres. Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, when Justice Scalia’s death created a vacancy this decision would almost certainly been to continue the right to abortion as the law of the land.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion includes the justification that “the domestic supply of infants” is insufficient to meet demand. This sentiment has previously been expressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett saying that we don’t “need” abortion anymore because the supply of adoptable domestic infants cannot meet demand. I don’t see how that argument is morally sustainable.

According to Adopt US Kids, there are 117,000 children waiting to be adopted in the United States right now. So Alito and Barrett’s argument doesn’t hold up factually either.

Alito and several other conservative members of the court claim to be originalists, which they define as believing that the constitution is a dead document, in other words it means only what it meant at the time it was written and is to be understood as it would have been understood in the 1780’s. There’s a real problem with that notion, founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both rejected Originalism. You’ll often hear Republicans use a similar argument about government agencies they claim shouldn’t exist because it isn’t stated in the constitution. Neither is the right to travel but no one argues that Americans don’t have the right to travel within their states, or within the country, or even to other countries.

Then there’s our Firsts Amendment right to religious freedom, which this decision actually runs roughshod over. There are numerous Christian denominations, not to mention other religions that are pro-choice on a theological basis and at least as many other religious denominations that believe that abortion is a matter of individual conscience. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and the United Church of Christ are just a few of those.

In Judaism when a mother’s life is endangered by a pregnancy, it is Jewish law that the mother’s life, a life in being, takes precedent. Keep in mind that Jesus, being born a Jew, would likely accept this position since nowhere in scripture does he speak out against it. Justice Alito has essentially ruled that a pregnant Jewish woman who will risk death if the pregnancy is carried to term can be denied an abortion – against her own religious beliefs. That makes Alito and other four Justices joining him Christian supremacists. Alito has essentially declared orthodox Catholic theology to be the law of the land on abortion. Such a ruling is counter to the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.

Alito’s draft says that a right to abortion services is not deeply rooted in this nation’s history. Women on the Supreme Court are not deeply rooted in this nation’s history either, nor are anyone but white men. The Constitution doesn’t say that women or black people can serve on the Supreme Court. By Alito’s argument apparently the founders thought only white men should ever serve on the Supreme Court. So why has he never advocated for rejecting Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett’s positions on the court.

It all boils down to hypocrisy in service to an agenda that is incompatible with democracy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 11, 2022

Religious Exemptions Against Public Interest

Government and religious exemptions are on my mind right now on two separate topics. First up is the pretzel-like logic of conservatives which never ceases to amaze me. They’re the noisiest on the topic of religious freedom but they’ve got this really strange idea that it means letting them push their religion on everyone else. I call your attention to the case of Aimee Madonna in South Carolina where tax-payer funded foster care organization, Miracle Hill Ministries, rejected her because she's the "wrong" religion – the agency will only work with evangelical Protestants, not Catholics, Jews or people of any other faith. That’s a lot of Americans. If Miracle Hill were operating on their own dime there wouldn’t be much I could say other than shame on them for keeping children in need of foster care services from finding loving homes. In this case Donald Trump and his Department of Health and Human Services has actually granted South Carolina a waiver to allow this injustice and discrimination with your tax dollars.

It isn’t just South Carolina either, our own Attorney General Ken Paxton has also requested a waiver to allow foster care and adoption agencies to discriminate against potential parents purely on religious grounds. You might say well the parents can just go to another agency but it’s not that easy. In South Carolina Miracle Hills by far the largest agency. In Texas some of the largest agencies also discriminate based on religion and those that don’t often only cover small sections of the state.

If the adoption agencies in Seguin hold to the same discriminatory practices as Miracle Hill that would mean that over half the city’s population is ineligible to adopt or provide foster care just on the basis of the church they attend. Are you OK with your tax dollars funding discrimination against yourself?

The second topic is non-partisan and a public health issue that involves religious exemptions from required vaccinations for children attending public schools. This is becoming a massive national health problem with Texas near the top of list of states at risk.

When the percentage of people who have been vaccinated for a given disease falls below a certain threshold the risk of that disease spreading throughout the population increases exponentially. The threshold percentage is a function of how communicable the disease is with measles being highly contagious it requires around 93% of the population in a given area to prevent one case of measles from spreading the hundreds of people. Herd immunity protects people who can’t be vaccinated due to health conditions or newborns who aren’t ready to be vaccinated. There are some that have been vaccinated but due to differences in how our immune systems they don’t have full immunity and others with a compromised immune system like cancer patients.

The right of a community to be free of a deadly and immunizable disease should be more important than one person’s right to refuse an immunization. Just as a community like Seguin has a stronger right to protect itself from disastrous fires than a property own has the right to a to burn trash during a drought.

In my view your right to behave as you want stops when you put me and mine at risk. If people don’t want their kids vaccinated then they should keep them home and the parents should stay home too.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 4, 2020

Religious Freedom Day - Letter to the Editor

The Texas legislature will soon be in session and several ostensible “religious freedom” bills have already been submitted including one from Senator Donna Campbell (SD 25). Unfortunately neither Campbell nor her colleagues seem to understand the intent of our constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. January 16 is Religious Freedom Day commemorating the enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786 and an opportunity to remind her and others what “religious freedom” really means.

At the time of the Revolution religious freedom was not guaranteed by any government then existent. Most of the colonies had officially established religions and citizens were expected to attend that church and pay taxes supporting that church.

Before the U.S. Constitution was drafted, future presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison worked to free Virginia from its official state church, the Anglican Church. Jefferson wrote the bill and Madison pushed its passage as a member of the state legislature.

Shortly after the bills passage Madison went to Philadelphia and became the primary author of the U.S Constitution and the First Amendment. During the lengthy debates between delegates to the constitutional convention several attempts were made to include statements claiming the United States to be a Christian nation but they were soundly rebuffed each time.

There only two mentions of religion in our constitution, both in the negative. Article VI prohibits a religious test in order to hold public office and the First Amendment bars laws “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

Radicals on State Board of Education seek to undermine religious freedom

At the last meeting of the State Board of Education the members proposed and discussed various aspects of the proposed curriculum developed by the volunteer teachers and subject matter experts. Board member Mavis Knight offered the following amendment: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” Knight pointed out that students should understand that the Founders believed religious freedom was so important that they insisted on separation of church and state.

Board member Cynthia Dunbar argued that the Founders didn’t intend for separation of church and state in America and claimed instead that the Founders intended to promote religion. She called the amendment “not historically accurate.”

Almost all constitutional scholars agree that separation of religion and state is clearly expressed in Article VI paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution which states: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Ken Mercer voted with the rest of the historical revisionists to defeat the amendment. If you value your right to practice your religion and teach your children that religion Rebecca Bell-Metereau must be elected to the State Board of Education.