Around the world there are several nations with brutally authoritarian governments that embrace the concept of imposing religion to play a major role of public life. It is what is known as theocracy and evangelical fanatics are a step closer to imposing their extremist vision of social conservatism on every aspect of all Americans’ daily life.
Those theocratic religious regimes include the likes of the Taliban, ISIS, Iran’s Supreme Council, and Saudi Arabia’sWahhabist Sunnis. If Trump’s religious extremist nominated to define the law of the land over the next generation is confirmed next week, Americans will know firsthand what it’s like to live under a harsh evangelical theocracy. What many observers label America’s Taliban.
It is a terrifying prospect that Republicans are very excited about because they will be able to enforce biblically-approved domination over American women and members of the LGBTQ community under the auspices of the United States Federal government.
To say that Amy Coney Barrett’s judicial record is lacking is a gross understatement. The sum total of her experience as a jurist is barely three years and yet Trump tapped her for a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court for one simple reason and it is not solely because she is an Antonin Scalia conservative; it is because she is an extreme social conservative and rabid religious right cultist who spent her entire life being trained to believe that it is an atrocity that religion is not a major force in every Americans’ public life.
Barrett claims to be a Catholic; likely why she embraces the 1968 Papal edict that any unnatural form of birth control is a mortal sin. However, the group Barrett subscribes to is considered “the lunatic fringe of the Catholic faith” and more in line with far right extremists in the evangelical movement Republicans are intent on allowing free rein over the American people – especially women.
According to a 2017 article by the New York Times’ Laurie Goodstein, Barrett’s religious group, People of Praise, is considered a “cult” to most Catholics and more akin to freakish fundamental Pentecostals – “Holy Rollers.” Ms. Goodstein writes:
“People of Praise incorporates elements of fundamentalist Pentecostal Protestantism (such as speaking in tongues) and is considered a cult in mainstream Catholicism. Its practices include requiring members to swear an oath of loyalty to the group and teaching that wives must be submissive to their husbands, and in the past, People of Praise called its female leaders “handmaidens”—which is downright chilling if one is familiar with Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” People of Praise embrace a highly patriarchal ideology, believing that women ultimately must submit to male authority.”
What that means for America’s women is that everything patriarchal Republicans have pushed for decades will be imposed on the people under the authority and support of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority. It is almost certainly why an inexperienced federal judge was tapped to sit on the High Court – to put an abrupt end to women’s basic human right to control their own bodies or decide when they give birth.
For example, Barrett has made it clear that according to her religion, and the 1968 Papal edict on reproduction, life begins at the moment of conception. That mindset is the death knell of women’s reproductive rights.
In a dissenting opinion on why she believes a woman cannot terminate a pregnancy based on the lifelong issues a damaged fetus presents, Barrett concurred with religious maniacs that doing so was eugenics in action.
Unfortunately SCOTUS Associate Justice and alleged sexual abuser Clarence Thomas fully agrees with Barrett and takes it one step farther claiming that women who use contraception are practicing Nazi-era eugenics.
Barrett also made it abundantly clear that she labors under the idiotic idea that being gay is a personal choice and not any part of natural life. Woe to any LGBTQ person expecting protection under the U.S. Constitution’s (14th Amendment) provision that all American citizens, including women and gays, have the right to pursue their version of happiness in their lives.
However, the greatest threat posed by Barrett is her undying belief that religion should play a major role in public life as defined by the religious Republicans and the religious conservatives on the Supreme Court.
The idea of Barrett joining religious Associate Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, Alito, and most likely Gorsuch is absolutely a dire threat to any concept of Americans enjoying freedom from religion. Most Americans are aware that Republicans across the nation have attempted to, or have, proposed theocratic legislation like mandatory school prayers, requirements for politicians to pass a Christian bible-based examination to qualify for serve in public office and unrestricted taxpayer funding of religious education. Those items are just a sampling of what Barrett, and nearly all evangelical extremists, believe is “religion playing a major role in public life.”
It is noteworthy that a very significant majority of Americans believe religion, any religion, has no place in the political decisions, but that significant majority also believes that women’s right to control their own bodies is not to be abridged for any reason. However, America is being governed by a minority of religious extremists with as much fealty to the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state as they do adhering to the commands of their religion’s namesake.
Of all the atrocities Trump and his Republican facilitators are guilty of forcing on the American people, installing a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical extremist on the nation’s highest court is beyond comprehension in a nation under a secular Constitution in a representative democracy – a dying democracy that Trump and McConnell put to death to sate the vicious religious right that promised to make America a Christian nation by 2020 and a promise Trump pledged to make happen on his watch.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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