On Wednesday past the Senate Judiciary Committee was holding hearings for some of President Joe Biden’s nominees. Those nominees included Hampton Dellinger selected to serve as assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy.
No doubt Mr. Dellinger expected to get a proper drilling by Republican senators because he is a progressive, and devout Catholic, who stands up for the rights of all Americans. Obviously, that includes women and that is where the trouble began.
Some sanctimonious bag of feces from Louisiana serving as a United States senator, John Kennedy, was ready and waiting to pillory Mr. Dellinger over a tweet in which he correctly asserted that Republican men are the driving force behind abortion restrictions. His tweet, “If there were no Republican men in elected office there would be no abortion bans” rubbed Kennedy the wrong way.
Of course that is the gospel truth, but it struck a raw religious patriarchal nerve in Senator John Kennedy. He read the tweet out loud and then proceeded down a path that revealed his theocratic and blatantly hypocritical mindset. Kennedy asked Mr. Dellinger:
“Do you think that my votes with respect to abortion are based on the fact that I want to control women?”
Mr. Dellinger then responded that he “cannot speak to that.” So the patriarchal senator responded, “Then why’d you say it in front of God and country?”
Mr. Dellinger replied that in his mind the Supreme Court’s decisions to protect a woman’s reproductive rights “are important.”
Then Kennedy made a pair of serious mistakes. First he asked Mr. Dellinger:
“Do you believe in God?”
When Dellinger told him that “I have faith, I believe.” Kennedy exploded:
“A lot of people have faith. Did it ever occur to you that some people may base their position on abortion on their faith?”
Kennedy exposed a fact most Americans already know about the Republicans’ intent to control women by erasing their right to decide her own reproductive health. The Republican opposition to a woman’s right to choose is based purely on religion. Legislating according to religion has no place anywhere on Earth except in a theocratic dictatorship like Afghanistan, Iran and the fictional theocratic America called Gilead. The United States Constitution’s 1st Amendment strictly prohibits religious laws.
Kennedy had no right asking Mr. Dellinger if he believed in god because it is “expressly forbidden” according to the United States Constitution, Article VI where it plainly states:
“No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Kennedy’s query violated the “No religious test” clause of the U.S. Constitution and he can never say he was unaware of Article VI because Kennedy brought up the clause just three years ago.
In 2017 when “Handmaiden” Amy Coney Barrett appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, several Democratic senators who were aware of Coney-Barrett’s desire to live in an America resembling “Gilead,” inquired whether her extremist Catholic faith would interfere with her duties as a fair jurist. Four outraged Republican senators bristled at the line of questioning and asserted that these kind of questions were tantamount to an unconstitutional religious test.
Then, in 2020 Barrett appeared before the same committee to be confirmed as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. Fully aware of handmaiden Barrett’s Gilead aspirations, Republicans warned that any questions about her extremist faith would violate the Constitution.
Several of the Republican senators, including John Kennedy, alleged that any such questions about Barrett’s ability to serve without imposing her religion on the country would amount to religious bigotry against Catholics. In fact, that dirty traitor to the Constitution Josh Hawley even declared that asking Barrett anything regarding the landmark Supreme Court decision establishing a right to contraception, Griswold v. Connecticut, would constitute a bigoted attack on her faith.
Republicans are generally hypocrites; they simply can’t help themselves. However, Kennedy not only exposed his flagrant hypocrisy and violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on a religious test to serve in the public trust, he revealed right there “in front of god and county” that he does indeed want to control women according to his religion.
This is the first time in recent memory that a Republican has openly confessed that his drive to control women is borne of a flawed religious belief that is nowhere to be found in the Christian bible he professes to hold near and dear to his patriarchal black heart.
This is an event that is in the public record and should serve as a valuable weapon against all Republican attempts to ban a woman’s right to control her own reproductive health. John Kennedy made a serious mistake and one can only hope it comes back to hit him square in his religious face.
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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