In late April 2005, right-wing religious leaders gathered in Louisville, KY for a nationwide simulcast event titled “Justice Sunday - Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith.” The event’s sponsors, the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, claimed it reached “61 million households in 44 states” and that “7 networks and 502 radio stations carried it and thousands [more] watched on the internet.”
|
"I don't think there's any evidence that he'll be another Souter. Justice Souter was a black box. No one knew what was in it. We know a lot about Judge Roberts." — James Dobson
|
The event sought to discredit Democrats who were using the filibuster to stop extremist judicial nominees by accusing them of using the longstanding Senate rule “against people of faith.” In an unconscionable attempt to manipulate and use “faith” as a wedge issue for political purposes, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist lent his name, position, and prestige to this event by agreeing to address the audience via videotape. Frist’s decision to participate and implicitly support the divisive rhetoric of James Dobson, Tony Perkins and Albert Mohler was roundly criticized by a broad interfaith group of over 400 clergy and religious leaders.
Five months later, those responsible for the first “Justice Sunday” event announced that they are staging another; this one entitled “Justice Sunday II - God Save the United States and this Honorable Court." The first “Justice Sunday” focused on the filibuster at a time when Senate Republicans were threatening to “go nuclear” in order to remove the Democrats’ ability to use the Senate’s filibuster prerogative.
The second “Justice Sunday” will focus on the Supreme Court at a time when the Senate is preparing for hearings on President Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. “Justice Sunday II” features many of the same speakers that occupied the stage and the airwaves during the first event, with the notable exception of Sen. Bill Frist -- who has been replaced on the program by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
According to news reports about why Frist was not invited to speak, “Since the first rally, the potential 2008 presidential candidate has angered the events' organizers by stating his support for expanded human embryonic stem cell research. Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said Tuesday on the group's Web site that Frist's recently announced stem cell stance "reflects an unwise and unnecessary choice both for public policy and for respecting the dignity of human life."
This is not the first time Tom DeLay will be addressing a right-wing religious audience on the judiciary. In April he delivered an opening video message to the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration’s “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference. The conference was held shortly after the death of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman whose husband’s efforts to allow her to die after she had spent years in a vegetative state roused right-wing anger and spurred intervention by Congress and the White House in the family’s agonizing decision-making. DeLay’s address to the conference came just days after he had threatened judges involved in the Schiavo case, insisting that the “time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
DeLay was invited by like-minded Tony Perkins - a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, campaign manager of at least one disreputable campaign, and unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate from Louisiana – and president of the Family Research Council.
In the aftermath of the Schiavo ruling, Perkins was reported as saying "There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to take a black robe off the bench." But Perkins has clearly expressed FRC’s pleasure in President Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court saying, “I think the President has made a nomination that he promised the American people in his re-election. He promised that he would nominate justices along the lines of a Scalia or a Thomas…we feel pretty comfortable that the president has made the right choice.”
The Family Research Council is considered the leading “pro-family” think tank in Washington, DC promoting the religious right agenda and the “Justice Sunday” concept is the public relations brainchild of the FRC and James Dobson. Perkins claims his growing concern for the family and worry over the influence of the homosexual community on public policy issues led him to found the Louisiana Family Forum in 1998, which became an affiliate of Dobson’s Focus on the Family. He went on to join FRC in 2003 following his unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana. Before that, Perkins served two terms in the Louisiana House where he made a name for himself as a vocal anti-abortion advocate, as well as an advocate for government-sponsored school prayer and an opponent of the state’s gambling industry.
During his unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 2002 information surfaced about Perkins’ willingness to associate with racist groups. During that campaign, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996, Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for Woody Jenkins, a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.
Perkins recently made incendiary comments asserting that judges have not only “become hostile to Christianity” but that “they pose a worse threat to this country than terrorists.”
James Dobson will be delivering a taped message to the gathering. Founder and chairman of the right-wing Focus on the Family, Dobson is perhaps the most influential right-wing Christian leader in the country, with a huge and loyal following that he can reach easily through an impressive media empire. In the lead up to the first “Justice Sunday,” Dobson compared the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan while interviewing Mark Levin, the author of Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America on Dobson’s radio program.
Dobson routinely uses his media empire to alert his listeners and activists to the problems caused by what he calls the “unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious” judiciary. He says judges are “determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they're out of control” claiming that judges ‘don’t care about the sanctity of life.’
However, Dobson is thrilled about the nomination of John Roberts, and has reassured activists about the nominee: "I don't think there's any evidence that he'll be another Souter. Justice Souter was a black box. No one knew what was in it. We know a lot about Judge Roberts."
Other speakers include Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, who, during the first “Justice Sunday” event said "There isn't de jure discrimination against Catholics in the Senate. There is de facto discrimination. They've set the bar so high with the abortion issue, we can't get any real Catholics [sic] over it" slanderously passing judgment on the faith of many members of the Senate, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.
Ironically, Donohue is quite versed in denigrating the faith of others: “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It‘s not a secret, OK? … You have got secular Jews. You have got embittered ex-Catholics, including a lot of ex-Catholic priests who hate the Catholic Church, wacko Protestants in the same group, and these people are in the margins.” One has to wonder if his views are shared by the other right-wing speakers as few of them denounced his comments at the time.
Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries will also be taking the stage during “Justice Sunday II.” Colson, a former aide to President Richard Nixon, is best known for his tough guy role as Nixon’s special counsel and “hatchet man” who went to prison for his role in Watergate. Colson is now president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, the largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, crime victims, and their families in the world. The Christian nonprofit has more than 50,000 prison ministry volunteers in 88 nations and Prison Fellowship’s InnerChange Freedom Initiative receives government funds through President Bush’s Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Colson was famously quoted as saying: "I would walk over my grandmother if necessary to assure [President Nixon’s] reelection.”
Since 1991, Colson has been providing a daily radio commentary called "BreakPoint," which aims to provide a “Christian” worldview on the issues of the day. BreakPoint, which can be heard on over 1000 radio outlets nationwide, is a member group of Townhall.com, a right-wing Internet news portal.
Colson has “warned” that failure to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment would be “like handing moral weapons of mass destruction” to terrorists. In Colson’s view, when Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists “see news coverage of same-sex couples being ‘married’ in U.S. towns, we make our kind of freedom abhorrent--the kind they see as a blot on Allah's creation. Preserving traditional marriage in order to protect children is a crucially important goal by itself. But it's also about protecting the United States from those who would use our depravity to destroy us."
Sharing the stage with Colson during “Justice Sunday II” will be former Democratic Senator Zell Miller. Miller’s identification with extremists in the Republican party was solidified when he delivered a primetime speech during the Republican National Convention in 2004 attacking Democrats, during which he railed that “at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker” because of Democratic opposition to President Bush. Since then, he’s become a favorite of the Right for his relentless attacks upon the party he once represented, appearing at right-wing events such as the 2005 CPAC convention and the Christian Coalition’s “Road to Victory” Conference.
In 2004, when Miller took to the Senate floor and announced his support for several right-wing pieces of legislation, including the “Federal Marriage Amendment,” the “Liberties Restoration Act,” and the “Constitution Restoration Act,” he did so by proclaiming that he proudly stood “shoulder to shoulder with Roy Moore,” the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was removed from office for refusing to obey a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he installed in the rotunda of the Supreme Court building.
Just as with the previous “Justice Sunday” event, Bishop Harry Jackson will again be the only African American speaker. During the last such event, Jackson complained that "Black churches are too concerned with justice.”
Bishop Jackson is a fervent opponent of gay rights, at one point calling the gay agenda "clearly satanic" in a column he published in Charisma magazine, a prominent publication among Pentecostals and charismatic Christians. He is also the senior pastor of the nearly 3,000 member Hope Christian Church just outside Washington, D.C. He played a prominent media role in efforts to encourage African-Americans to vote for President Bush during the 2004 election.
Jackson is a primary author of the so-called ”Black Contract with America on Moral Values,” whose six-point platform calls for a prohibition of same-sex marriage, school vouchers and private Social Security investment accounts, among other things. Jackson also appeared at a rally called “America for Jesus” alongside right-wing figures such as Lou Sheldon, Jerry Falwell and Alan Keyes.
Appearing along with Jackson at the “America for Jesus” rally was National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard, who is also speaking at “Justice Sunday II.” A graduate of Oral Roberts University, Ted Haggard has pledged to the White House that his organization, the National Association of Evangelicals, “would do anything we can to help” get John Roberts confirmed.
Haggard was one of those called by White House before President Bush announced his choice of John Roberts for the Supreme Court. Haggard says the White House called to reassure him about the selection and said that Roberts would “have respect for precedent but that precedent would not have the same weight as the Constitution itself.” In fact, Haggard talks to the President or his aides every Monday and is a frequent visitor to the White House.
Haggard has said that finding the right replacement for O'Connor, often a “swing” vote on the court, is a priority for his organization.
Other high profile right-wing speakers include Cathy Cleaver Ruse, for years the Director of Planning and Information and chief spokesperson on “pro-life” issues for the U.S. Catholic Bishops, has just recently moved to the Family Research Council to work on judicial nominations. She has appeared extensively in the media to push the anti-abortion position views held by the Catholic bishops.
Following the retirement announcement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruse said, “After Roe [is overturned] a great wrong … will be set aright, for there is nothing in American constitutional law, history, or tradition to support the idea that the American people would relinquish their right to govern themselves on the issue of abortion.” Her articles have appeared in national newspapers, and in 1997, Wired magazine called her "one of the most influential opinion shapers in the country."
Her husband, Austin Ruse is president of the Culture of Life Foundation and Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. Ruse and her husband spoke at the “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference sponsored by the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration (JCCCR). The event showcased the anger of Religious Right leaders over the fact that some of their agenda has been thwarted by the courts and it was notable for the calls for mass impeachment of sitting judges, among other things.
Right-wing luminary Phyllis Schlafly, whose recent book, The Supremacists: the Tyranny of Judges – and How to Stop It describes the threat of the “imperial” judiciary, and what Congress can do to bring an end to the current “reign of judicial supremacy." Schlafly has said: “We simply must not permit out-of-control, activist judges to ban our acknowledgment of God, redefine marriage, overturn our culture and history, and rewrite our laws and Constitution.”
She apparently sees John Roberts as part of the solution to the “imperial” judiciary: "President Bush's nomination is a good first step toward stopping the out-of-control supremacist judges. It will take a couple more nominations, which I hope the President will have, to really reform the Supreme Court, but we're very happy about this great start. Judge Roberts seems to be a very qualified man, and we look forward to a speedy confirmation."
Under her leadership, the Eagle Forum has worked on a wide range of issues including opposition to comprehensive sex education, reproductive rights, federal support for daycare and family leave, United States involvement with the United Nations, affirmative action, bilingual education, gay and lesbian rights, and immigration. Schlafly, who led the pro-family movement’s fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, was, and remains, one of the most articulate opponents of equal rights for women, as evidenced by her recent suggestion that “if Republicans are looking for a way to … reduce federal spending, a good place to start would be rejection of the upcoming reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.”
Finally, there is Dr. Jerry Sutton, Pastor of the Two Rivers Baptist Church where the event is being held. In offering his church as host of the Justice Sunday II, Sutton said, “The most important legislation in America in the last 50 years has not been legislation, at least not from the legislative branch. It’s been something legislated from the bench.”
Sutton once admitted to “Hardball’s” Chris Matthews that, during the last election, he encouraged members of his congregation to vote for President Bush. When Matthews asked if he had ever told his congregation how he was going to vote, Sutton half-jokingly replied “Only once or twice.”
Given that the focus of “Justice Sunday II” is “God Save … This Honorable Court,” the nomination of John Roberts will very likely receive a good deal of mention from the speakers. In fact, many of the speakers have already praised Roberts’ nomination:
- Tom DeLay: “He looks to be a great candidate”
- James Dobson: "President Bush is to be commended for keeping his promise to the American people . . . Judge Roberts is an unquestionably qualified attorney and judge with impressive experience in government and the private sector."
- Tony Perkins: "[President Bush] promised to nominate someone along the lines of a Scalia or a Thomas, and that is exactly what he has done."
- Phyllis Schlafly: “"I think President Bush has made a good start in replacing supremacist judges with judges who support the Constitution."
- Chuck Colson: “I am very enthusiastic about the nomination of John Roberts. He is a devout Catholic and has an impeccable professional record.”
- Ted Haggard/National Association of Evangelicals: “John Roberts he is a man of exceptional education and intellect … [W]e pray that Judge Roberts will be shown as someone who, if approved to the Court, will uphold religious freedom, preserve the sanctity of life and marriage, and strictly construe the Constitution.”
Much as with the last “Justice Sunday,” this one will likely be an opportunity for the extremist leaders of the religious and political right wing to spread false, inflammatory and politically motivated allegations that liberals and “activist judges” are somehow silencing conservative Christians or denying them the right to participate in public life. It will be, in essence, just another sad attempt by Religious Right leaders to manipulate religion and misrepresent the truth in order to advance their wildly and dangerous out-of-the-mainstream political agenda.