September 22, 2005

Marci Hamilton and 'God vs. The Gavel'
by Liza Sabater

Marci Hamilton's book, God vs. the Gavel : Religion and the Rule of Law, is fundamental in inspiring my contributions to the Feminist Bloggers Statement Against John Roberts.

I am an unconventional soccer mom. I am an atheist, a rabid non-puritanical feminist who works more than 60 hours a week yet shares with a lot of Christian fundamentalists a penchant for homeschooling her kids. So even though I believe the government ought not tell me how to parent; I've always found a cognitive dissonance between the push all across the country waged by Christian fundamentalist organizations to free homeschooling from government oversight and their often vicious efforts to strike down Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal, if not at the federal level, then at one locality at a time.

For years have been trying to articulate why the extremists view of state compelling interests is wrong. Marci Hamilton clarified all my doubts and more with this book. I urge everybody who wants to understand how significant it is to have a dominionists and Federalist Society member as the head of the Supreme Court, to read this book. It is an amazingly lucid primer on legal precedents established by the systematic campaing to muddle the government with religion.

Hamilton is a conservative Christian and Constitutional law professor who admits to having used her position in the past to argue for morality based legislation.

From the ivory tower, it is easy to spin abstract arguments about the high principle of protecting religious conduct. Read this:

Having engaged in my own weighing of the value of religious diversity against the potential for anarchy and having determined that religious diversity is highly valuable while the fear of anarchy is without basis at this time in history, I would push the line to be drawn in these cases to the farthest extreme compatible with the viability of a living democracy, which is to say that the exercise of religion should trump most governmental regulation.

I’m now embarrassed to say that I wrote that. If one’s theory of protecting religious conduct is based on hypotheticals, ideals, and Sunday School, as mine was, it is not difficult to concoct a theory of religious liberty that permits religious conduct to sail above the law and the people. My views have changed 180 degrees, because I have been educated and now know the severe harm religious entities can cause. Most laws should govern religious conduct, with the only exception being when the legislature has determined that immunizing religious conduct is consistent with public welfare, health, and safety.

In recent decades, religious entities have worked hard to immunize their actions from the law, either by obtaining legislative exemptions or by forcing the courts to invalidate any law substantially burdening religious conduct that was not absolutely necessary. They have always waved the banner of “religious liberty,” and few Americans have thought to question them. What could be more important in a free society than religious liberty? When the question is left in the abstract, it is hard to think of anything more important. But when one operates from the ground and knows the facts, the answer to the question is that there are all sorts of interests that must trump religious conduct in a just and free society – such as the interest in preventing childhood sexual abuse, or in deterring terrorism, or in preserving private property rights. Every citizen has at least as much right to be free from harm as the religious entity has to be free from government regulation.

And therein lies the heart of my opposition to John Roberts. His handling of the "french fry case" seals it for me. He can be cold, calculated and in his seemingly quiet dissents, ruthless while using the law to advance his morality agenda. He is called "a brilliant legal mind". Scheming is more like it; for as Hamilton says in her book,

In this climate, it is rather hard to take seriously the prevalent complaints about secularization or the purposted removel of religion from the public square. Instead, the facts dictate a fresh appraisal of who is operating the levers of power, what the political process has produced for religious entities, and how the courts have interpreted these enactments. It is just as important to divine what is flying under the radar. And that will require the media to swear off its squeamishness on religion. Well-known commentator Andy Rooney clearly articulated the problem (without acknowledging it requires a solution) when he said that there were many topcis not reported in the United States because the people did not want to hear about them. "Religion is the best example of that. People don't want to talk about religion if it's negative". That is quite an indictment on the media, which must share responsibility for the suffering of many of the victims detailed in this book, especially the children.

(Emphasis mine)

Bloggers are the alternative media. There are many who write about religion on a daily basis. We need to discuss religion, rant about religion and question all definitions of morality not for the obvious Sunday school teachings but for the potentially harmful agendas on all fronts but mostly the benches all across the country and the Supreme Court, where the unspoken could cause harm of national proportions.

John Roberts has left many things unsaid about who he is and what he has done in the past as a legal counsel. I am an atheist, but good grief, God help us if this man becomes the next Chief Justice of United States. Freedom as we now it, will be no more under his court if he goes unopposed within it.

Read God vs. the Gavel : Religion and the Rule of Law and you will be thinking just like me, why can't we have conservative Christians like Marci Hamilton on the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Hamilton. I like the sound of that.

Posted by Liza Sabater in American Theocracy, Books, Catholicism, Christian Fundamentalism, Conservatism, Culture War, Democracy, Dominionism, Extremists, Government, John Roberts, Law, Privacy, Religion, Roe vs. Wade, SCOTUS, Supreme Court
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