As horrific as the Texas abortion ban is, and it is horrifying, the religious architect of the law has his sights set on criminalizing homosexuality and banning same-sex marriage according to an amicus brief he filed with the Supreme Court.
It is not unusual for interested parties to offer up, as “a friend of the court,” information, expertise, and insight that may have a bearing on the issues of a particular case under consideration. However, the so-called “friend of the court” is not a party to a case although their intent is influencing a ruling favorable to that “friend’s” particular bent; in this specific case it is the “friend’s” religious obsession.
The former Texas solicitor general, Jonathan Mitchell, served as a clerk for now-deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and has been diligent in doing work for the right-wing, evangelical outfits the Alliance Defending Freedom and Texas-based Right To Life.
Mitchell is the co-author of the amicus brief in question and his particular obsession is denying women the right control their own bodies and reproductive health. He also wants to control society and human nature by criminalizing homosexuality according to his religious conviction.
The lawyer is a deeply religious Catholic and has made his mission of the past decade working to legally deny women the freedom to control their reproductive health; but that is not his only obsession.
Back in late June Mitchell wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the Texas Right to Life organization supporting Mississippi’s abortion restrictions currently before the his friends on the deeply religious Supreme Court.
The gist of Mitchell’s appeal to the Catholics on the Supreme Court is essentially that if the conservatives will do right by the Vatican and ban abortion by overturning. Roe v. Wade, it will force women to “practice abstinence from sexual intercourse as a means of controlling their reproductive lives.”
Mitchell wrote in his amicus brief:
“Women can ‘control their reproductive lives’ without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse. When this court announces the overruling of Roe, that individual can simply change their behavior in response to the court’s decision if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy.” (author bold)
However, just forcing women to either adopt the life of a cloistered nun or produce offspring is not the only Taliban-like brutality on Mitchell’s mind. He claims, as a “friend” of the religious conservatives on the High Court, that there are two other “lawless” rulings that have to be struck down.
Mitchell’s amicus brief questions the legitimacy of the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling: that decision decriminalized gay sex nationwide.
Mitchel also wants the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage reversed. Mitchell asserted to the conservative majority that both Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges rulings are abominable “judicial concoctions” with no source of law that can possibly“salvage their existence.”
To get a clear picture of where a religious fanatic is heading with his theocratic leanings and ardent support of the fanatical evangelical right, he claims overturning Roe v. Wade would not necessarily “threaten interracial marriage,” but it will give the High Court faithful the opportunity to ban “homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage.”
Mitchell wrote:
“Reversing Roe would not threaten interracial marriage, but the news is not as good for those who hope to preserve the court-invented rights to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage … These ‘rights,’ like the right to abortion from Roe, are judicial concoctions, and there is no other source of law that can be invoked to salvage their existence. This is not to say that the Court should announce the overruling of Lawrence and Obergefell if it decides to overrule Roe and Casey in this case. But neither should the Court hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread. Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe.”
It is important to note that Mitchell’s amicus brief was directed solely at his deeply religious “friends” on the High Court; all of whom are intimately aware of his crusade to control women and make a 1968 Papal Encyclical the law of the land by judicial fiat. He, like a minority of religious zealots driving America towards a theocracy, wants religion as the law of the land and the new Catholic Institution posing as the nation’s highest court is certainly in agreement. Neither banning a woman’s right to choose nor criminalizing homosexuality have any social value to America and will not contribute to the common good. But it will establish a religious basis for laws in America.
Mitchell’s intent is advancing a theocratic obsession to control women that the religious conservatives on the High Court have actually called out for – especially Clarence Thomas. Thomas has solicited the religious right Republicans for a case specifically to overturn Roe as well as ban contraceptives according to his Catholic faith. And Amy Coney Barrett, the self-professed “Handmaiden” has made it abundantly clear that her allegiance is to her extremist Catholic faith as the prime influence of her existence.
Of course the Constitution is very clear that there can be no laws establishing any religion, but like the preponderance of Republicans alive today, the religious conservatives on the Supreme Court have shown time and again that they have little use for the Constitution – particularly where religion is concerned.
American women and the LGBTQ community should be quaking in their shoes at what the religious minorities in America have in store for them. What is happening in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is a portent of what the fanatics in the evangelical right have in store for America. As “friends of the court,” that small American Taliban minority is on the verge of completely controlling women and they lust to imprison members of the LGBTQ community. With the highest court in the land legislating from the bench according to their deeply held religious views, no Constitution or Congress will be capable of stopping them.
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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