Using Your Religion

During the Senate hearings on Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court, Republican senators decry the scourge of  anti-Catholic bigotry has been weaponized and aimed like a cannon at Judge Barrett by Democrats and the media. 

Here's the thing, evangelical Christians have long decried that they have no voice in government policy. But now they have someone who will explicitly give them a voice on the Supreme Court bench, questions about religion are off the table? 

Democrats have tried to not take the bait and mostly focused on questions of law and judicial precedent. But that hasn't stopped Republicans accusing Democrats of being anti-Catholic and anti-religion. 

There are a few things to unpack here. 

One, what most evangelical Christians want to inscribe in law or in judicial rulings are dictates from their religion. Issues of abortion and same sex marriage spring from objections by evangelical Christians as determined by their faith. 

The reasons why evangelical Christians want to deny women access to legal and safe abortions are not derived from the law or from science but by their interpretation of their faith. 

Two, this faith and its interpretation is not shared by all Americans. Americans are NOT exclusively evangelical Christians even though evangelical Christians like to act like that is the basic definition of being an American. Americans are of a broad spectrum of belief systems that have varied and unique views on subjects that many evangelical Christians hold as sacred and irrefutable dogma.  

Three, any American who seeks to be in a position of leadership, by election or appointment, over other Americans has to consider the impact of their leadership on everyone and not just evangelical Christians.  If any American seeking a position of leadership holds views that run contrary over the views of most other Americans, we kind of need to know that. If those views are born of judicial study or a matter of faith does not matter. 

Amy Coney Barrett being appointed to the Supreme Court, given both her background as an evangelical Christian and her judicial alignment with conservatives will be a boon to evangelical Christians. 

But given that the majority of Americans are not evangelical Christians and that a majority support the rights of a woman to legally have access to an abortion as allowed by Roe V. Wade, the appointment of Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court may be viewed as a challenge to the interests of the majority of Americans.  

Here's the thing: Amy Coney Barrett can believe whatever she wants. If her faith tells her all abortions are bad and gay people shouldn't be married, well, I would disagree with her views but she is allowed to have them. 

Quite frankly, any politician can damn well believe what they want. As long as they remember that the people they represent may not share that faith. 

If Barrett is on a fast track to become our next Supreme Court justice because her faith tells her all abortions are bad and gay people shouldn't be married, that's when her faith becomes a problem. 

Democrats are not making Amy Coney Barrett's Catholic faith a problem. It is Republicans who are making Amy Coney Barrett's Catholic faith a problem because it is the beliefs of her faith that have put her in that chair, all to satisfy the specific agenda of evangelical Christians back home. 

With only three years on the Appellate Court bench, it's not any vast experience as a judge that has put Barrett on the expressway to the Supreme Court. It's not her time, experience and wisdom of arguing cases as a litigator since most of Barrett's pre-judicial experience has been in academia and not in a courtroom. 

Senate Republicans are greasing the wheels to slide Amy Coney Barrett into the Supreme Court in record time is her religious faith to appease the evangelical Christians that keep Republicans in power. 

During her Senate hearings, Amy Coney Barrett acknowledges the importance of Catholicism in her life but pledged not to apply her religious beliefs to matters before the high court. 

Maybe Judge Barrett believes that sincerely to be true. But is a disingenuous statement when the reason she is there in the first place is those religious beliefs. 

We can only hope that Barrett will be true to her word because all Americans, not just those of her particular religious group, will be counting on her to keep her word.