identity politics

Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women For America, in the conservative publication The American Thinker ridicules the Obama Administration’s claims that bigotry and inequality still exist in the U.S., but goes on to claim that the Religious Right represents the actual victim of discrimination at the hands of “homosexual activists.” Such fatuous allegations are nothing new from Wright, who participated in the “Green Dragon” series that believes the environmental movement is surreptitiously trying to destroy Christianity and dismissed a study which showed that the children of same-sex parents are as “well adjusted” as their peers because it didn’t conform to her anti-gay prejudice.

In her article, “What Obama Thinks of America,” Wright is incensed that the Obama Administration still believes that discrimination survives in the U.S. and facetiously asks “Which American laws or institutions enshrine discrimination?” However, she then blasts the Obama Administration for not confronting the “homosexual activists” who are leading “a campaign of harassment, threats, vandalism, and attacks on employment against people who support traditional marriage, with particular venom toward religious people.” Essentially, Wright and the CWA strongly endorse discriminatory laws and bigoted views that target gay and lesbian Americans, but in her opinion proponents of anti-gay bigotry like herself are the real victims of intolerance:

Sometimes the best way to find out what a person thinks about you is to find out what he tells others.

That's why the report on America's human rights record filed by the Obama administration with the U.N. is particularly interesting.

…

What comes through is that President Obama's crew thinks America is congenitally discriminatory, and his administration is bravely soldiering into this morass against the unwashed masses to create an equal society.

As the report states, "[w]ork remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all." Which American laws or institutions enshrine discrimination? Not mentioned. No matter -- when you're convinced that Americans are bigots, there is no need to provide proof.

The administration crows in the report about passing the incredibly divisive and unconstitutional health care act. It devotes a section to the bill, with glowing aspirations of how it will end the discrimination of a racist medical system. (Remember, these people see everything through the filter of race or identity politics -- even health care.)

Yet religious freedom (in which the U.S. excels in contrast to other countries) gets a few measly paragraphs with boilerplate generalities. Whereas the health care bill earned details like how many Asian-American men suffer from stomach cancer, the examples of a defense of religious freedom were a Native American primary school student's right to wear his hair in a braid and a Muslim girl's right to wear a hijab.

Maybe this administration is not keen on religious freedom. The issue is so old-school...yesterday's news...Christian. And it inconveniently conflicts with one of President Obama's priorities highlighted in the report, a priority that threatens religious freedom -- privileges for those who engage in homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender behavior.

Homosexual activists conducted a campaign of harassment, threats, vandalism, and attacks on employment against people who support traditional marriage -- with particular venom toward religious people. The vile assaults on Carrie Prejean for merely expressing her views pulled away the curtain that had been hiding how homosexual activists routinely treat decent people who dissent. It raised the question: Who is the aggressor, and who is victim?

Did you get that? "In each era of our history" -- that is, America is historically and inherently bigoted. Makes you wonder why they'd want to live here.

LGBT advocates (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) claim that sexual orientation is an inborn identity, like skin color or ethnicity, and they excoriate people who use the term "gay lifestyle" because it implies choices and actions. Yet the report's first boast of tackling discrimination against this group was the striking down of a law criminalizing sodomy. Apparently, particular actions do define homosexuality.

Wright goes on to argue that the Justice Department intentionally lost the Massachusetts cases challenging the constitutionality of the Defense Of Marriage Act, a charge which Focus on the Family thinks deserves a congressional investigation by Darrell Issa, and that any move towards equality for gays and lesbians actually represents prejudice:

Remember, since he ran for president, Obama has claimed that he does not upport same-sex "marriage." Yet he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the clearest federal statute that protects marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Obama's Justice Department sabotaged its defense of DOMA in a legal challenge, making such weak arguments that it guaranteed a loss. And he opposed California's Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. So Obama opposes federal and state measures that define and enforce traditional marriage.

That's where the report to the U.N. really gets interesting. It states, "Debate continues over equal rights to marriage for LGBT Americans at the federal and state levels, and several states have reformed their laws to provide for same-sex marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships."

…

President Obama is, as he said in his inaugural address, remaking America. Too bad his image of America -- and what he wants to turn us into -- is so prejudiced.

A collection of early responses from the Right to the news that President Obama intends to nominate Elena Kagan to a seat on the Supreme Court (I will continue to update this post throughout the day as more statements are released).

Catholic Families for America:

Today Catholic Families for America, one of the largest groups of lay Catholics in the country, announced its opposition to the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing "grave concerns" about her promotion of same-sex "marriage" and abortion, as well as a "dangerous internationalism" that has become fashionable among leftist jurists.

To galvanize citizens' concerns, particularly those of Catholic voters, CFA has initiated a nationwide petition that it will forward to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The petition can be signed.

"By nominating Miss Kagan to the Supreme Court, the president continues to demonstrate a brass-knuckles, Chicago-mobster mentality toward unifying our nation," said Dr. Kevin Roberts, executive director of CFA. "Naming someone who has been so actively hostile to traditional marriage and to the unborn lays bare the president's pro-abortion, anti-family agenda, in spite of what he says to the contrary."

Americans United for Life: 

Elena Kagan has strong ties to abortion-advocacy organizations and expressed admiration for activist judges who have worked to advance social policy rather than to impartially interpret the law. Americans United for Life will oppose President Obama's attempt to reshape the Court as an activist, pro-abortion institution through which unelected judges will work to impose an out-of-the-mainstream social agenda upon the American people."

Ed Whelan:

2. Kagan may well have less experience relevant to the work of being a justice than any justice in the last five decades or more. In addition to zero judicial experience, she has only a few years of real-world legal experience. Further, notwithstanding all her years in academia, she has only a scant record of legal scholarship. Kagan flunks her own “threshold” test of the minimal qualifications needed for a Supreme Court nominee.

3. There is a striking mismatch between the White House’s populist rhetoric about seeking a justice with a “keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people” and the reality of the Kagan pick. Kagan is the consummate Obama insider, and her meteoric rise over the last 15 years—from obscure academic and Clinton White House staffer to Harvard law school dean to Supreme Court nominee—would seem to reflect what writer Christopher Caldwell describes as the “intermarriage of financial and executive branch elites [that] could only have happened in the Clinton years” and that has fostered the dominant financial-political oligarchy in America. In this regard, Kagan’s paid role as a Goldman Sachs adviser is the perfect marker of her status in the oligarchy—and of her unfathomable remoteness from ordinary Americans.

4. Kagan’s record thus manages to replicate the primary supposed defect of the judicial monastery—isolation from the real-world lives of ordinary Americans—without conferring the broader benefits of judicial experience.

Bill Kristol:

For me, the key obstacle to Elena Kagan's confirmation is ... [h]er hostility to the U.S. military.

Hostility? Isn't that harsh? Kagan has professed at times her admiration for those who serve in the military, even as she tried to bar military recruiters from Harvard Law School. But how does one square her professed admiration with her actions--embracing an attempt to overturn the Solomon Amendment that was rejected 8-0 by the Supreme Court--and her words?

Priests for Life:

"Supreme Court Justices are not supposed to shape public policy, and their nomination and confirmation should be based on their qualifications, not their views on specific issues.

"But there are certain issues so central to the very nature and purpose of government that one's position on those issues is tantamount to a qualification for the job. The very purpose of government is the protection of human rights, starting with life. No court can legitimize an act of violence, such as abortion, or take away human rights. Anyone who fails to affirm that does not belong in any public office, much less the US Supreme Court."

Ed Meese:

First and foremost, any nominee to a lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court must demonstrate a thorough fidelity to apply the Constitution as it was written, rather than as they would like to re-write it. Given Solicitor General Kagan’s complete lack of judicial experience, and, for that matter, very limited litigation experience, Senators must not be rushed in their deliberative process. Because they have no prior judicial opinions to look to, Senators must conduct a more searching inquiry to determine if Kagan will decide cases based upon what is required by the Constitution as it is actually written, or whether she will rule based upon her own policy preferences.

Though Ms. Kagan has not written extensively on the role of a judge, the little she has written is troubling. In a law review article, she expressed agreement with the idea that the Court primarily exists to look out for the “despised and disadvantaged.” The problem with this view—which sounds remarkably similar to President Obama’s frequent appeals to judges ruling on grounds other than law—is that it allows judges to favor whichever particular client they view as “despised and disadvantaged.” The judiciary is not to favor any one particular group, but to secure justice equally for all through impartial application of the Constitution and laws. Senators should vigorously question Ms. Kagan about such statements to determine whether she is truly committed to the rule of law. Nothing less should be expected from anyone appointed to a life-tenured position as one of the final arbiters of justice in our country.

Chuck Norris:

It's that "unknown" Elena Kagan who has gun owners particularly concerned at the moment, not only because she's Obama's favored choice but because evidence for her beliefs on gun control is extremely scarce.

David McIntosh, co-founder of the Federalist Society:

I'm deeply disappointed that President Obama has chosen to nominate an individual who has demonstrated a lack of adherence to the limits of the Constitution and a desire to utilize the court system to enact her beliefs of social engineering. Solicitor General Kagan has been nominated with no judicial experience, a mere two years of private law practice, and only a year as Solicitor General of the United States. She is one of the most inexperienced nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court in recent memory.

Susan B. Anthony List:

"Elena Kagan has no judicial record from which to determine her position on Roe v. Wade, but she has publicly criticized the 1991 Supreme Court ruling to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to restrict funding from groups that performed or promoted abortion, and has also criticized crisis pregnancy centers. Additionally, President Obama has said he prefers a Supreme Court nominee who would take a special interest in 'women's rights'--a barely masked euphemism for abortion rights. Through the judicial confirmation process the American people must know where Elena Kagan stands on the abortion issue, and it is the responsibility of the U.S. Senate to find out.

"Ms. Kagan's publicly demonstrated prejudices do not lend themselves well to blind justice. Susan B. Anthony and her early feminist compatriots fought for a human rights standard sustained only through blind justice--and they knew that one group is never served by undermining the rights of another. Women will never be served by ignoring the rights of unborn children. When evidence of personal preference appears in any Supreme Court nominee's judgment, it should give all women pause."

Judicial Crisis Network:

Solicitor General Elena Kagan is out of step with main street Americans, her limited record is outside the mainstream of American legal thought, and she lacks any substantial qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court.

Elena Kagan has no prior experience that qualifies her for the Supreme Court.

...

Ultimately, it is difficult to see how Kagan’s extreme left wing views and lack of relevant experience qualify her for a seat on the Supreme Court.

Gary Bauer:

"Sadly, President Obama, while saying repeatedly that he wants to bring people together, does something to tear people apart by choosing another liberal activist and long-time abortion advocate to have long-term power over the fabric of American life. Equally troubling at this time of terrorist activity and international unrest is the fact that while she was dean of the Harvard Law school, Kagan opposed military recruiting. Our Armed Forces who protect and defend our freedom deserve better.

"Obama has become the 'Divider in Chief,' choosing racial identity politics, socialist economics and extreme liberal activists who would tear the fabric of American society. Whether you look at his appointments or his policies, Obama goes out of his way to repudiate the values and desires of the American people.

"This is an opportunity for Republicans to represent the values of millions of Americans who are counting on them to defend the rule of law. Republicans in the Senate need to use every tool available to determine the nominee's views on such pivotal issues as whether terrorists deserve the same rights as Americans, whether the U.S. Constitution has hidden code in it supporting radical social change, and whether the Constitution requires that the public square be purged of Judeo-Christian values.

Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel:

Judges should interpret, not make the law. The Senate should press hard to question Elena Kagan on her judicial philosophy. The public deserves to know whether Kagan will use her transnational law philosophy as a lens through which she views the Constitution. And the public needs to know whether her personal views will trump the Constitution, as they appeared to do when she banned military recruiters from campus.

American Center for Law and Justice:

This is the beginning of an important, deliberative process in which the American people deserve to know where Elena Kagan stands on the Constitution and the rule of law,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “The fact that Elena Kagan has no previous judicial experience underscores the importance of closely examining her judicial philosophy - will she abide by the Constitution, or will she take an activist view? With the Senate’s constitutional role of providing ‘advice and consent’ regarding nominees, we call on the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide full and thorough hearings and ask the tough questions about how Kagan views the role of Justices, the Constitution, and the rule of law. While no nominee should express legal opinions concerning specific issues, the American people deserve to know whether this nominee – which could serve for many decades – embraces the philosophy of judicial activism.

American Life League:

"Clearly, Kagan has demonstrated a record of interpreting the law in the light of homosexual, pro-abortion activism.

"What's at stake here is the core constitutional question that passionately divides the country – does our Constitution seek human rights for all human beings or merely some human beings? Kagan's answers to her 2009 confirmation hearings provide clear insight into her future judicial philosophy.

"Will President Obama's nomination of Solicitor General Kagan be another example of his continued disregard for human rights in favor of advancing his favorite pet political agenda – abortion on demand courtesy of the American tax dollar?

"With the nomination of 50-year-old Kagan, will President Obama assure his long-lasting assault on the most fundamental human right of personhood?

"As President Obama races against the election clock, he has worked to undermine many of the American values and principles that make this nation the greatest on Earth.

Life Issues Institute:

"Mr. Obama has once again made it clear that he strictly follows a pro-abortion litmus test for anyone he nominates to the Supreme Court," said Bradley Mattes, executive director of Life Issues Institute. "We should not be surprised that his legacy will be the intentional killing of our nation's most vulnerable citizens--unborn babies. This nomination is a tragedy for America's women and their unborn children."

Concerned Women for America:

“In her disdain for the military, Elena Kagan considers her own views and opinions as more important than obeying the law and equipping the country with the best fighting force in the world. We need justices who put national security over the feelings or demands of special interest groups.

“We urge the US Senate to oppose the nomination of Elena Kagan. We want a justice who will defend the Constitution, support our families and uphold the right to life and traditional marriage.”

Operation Rescue:

Elena Kagan's support for abortion and her predisposition for judicial activism makes her a poor selection. We need a justice that will uphold the Constitution, not rewrite it though judicial activism. It is clear that as long as Obama is president, we cannot expect anything other than the nomination of radical liberal pro-aborts, even though those with that political philosophy and agenda are opposed by the majority of the American people.

Family Research Council:

"Elena Kagan's lack of legal experience will be discussed by both sides of the aisle but her record of liberal activism should not be overlooked.

"As the Harvard Law School Dean, Elena Kagan tried to bar the military from recruiting on her law school's campus during the height of the Iraq War based on her opposition to the federal law restricting homosexuals in the military. She fought the issue all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled unanimously against her, an extraordinary rebuke to her legal and substantive reasoning.

"Ms. Kagan's incredibly hostile view of the military suggests she is out of touch with mainstream sensibilities and obedience to the rule of law. President Obama promised a nominee committed to the 'rule of law,' but, instead, he appears to have nominated a hard-left activist to the Supreme Court.

Traditional Values Coalition:

“President Obama’s pick of Elena Kagan demonstrates his willingness to subvert the Constitution for his personal agenda and impose his leftist ideology on our nation for the next 30 to 40 years,” continued Lafferty. “The Obama Administration has already saddled the next two generations of Americans with a mountain of debt, and the lifetime appointment of Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court will extend the radical Obama agenda over them.”

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness:

“It is unfortunate that President Barack Obama has chosen to replace the only military veteran on the Supreme Court with a nominee whose only significant record indicates deliberate hostility and opposition to laws protecting the culture and best interests of the American military.”

Donnelly continued, “Senators considering this nomination should question Elena Kagan’s flawed logic and anti-military attitude that she expressed by signing an amicus brief challenging the Solomon Amendment in Rumsfeld v. Fair. It is significant that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that legislation, which protects equal access for military recruiters on college campuses, with a unanimous (8-0) vote. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg did not agree with Kagan’s anti-military views.”

National Organization for Marriage:

Don’t be fooled, Pres. Obama today has nominated a radical justice who will vote to overturn Prop 8 in California, the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the laws protecting marriage in all 50 states.

NOM has reviewed her record, and today we told the press. “A vote for Elana Kagan will be a vote for imposing gay marriage on all 50 states.”

• Dave Meyer says that Mel Martinez should join Senator McCain in denouncing Tom Tancredo's smear against La Raza, while Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that "Tom Tancredo knows very little about Latinos, La Raza or the KKK. He is the embodiment of conservative ignorance. He is the apex of Schiavo, 'white hands,' creationist museums, and, presently, the notion that the thrice-married should carry the banner for marriage."
• Media Matters catches Rush Limbaugh being his usual charming self regarding Sonia Sotomayor, while Think Progress catches G. Gordon Liddy doing him one better.
• BarbinMD notes that Republicans have been trying to keep Sotomayor off the Supreme Court for ten years.
• Watertiger at FDL offers a tough little quiz called "Which Judge Said This?"
• Brian Beutler points out that if Wendy Long wants to complain that the Sotomayor nomination "is turning into an argument about race and identity politics," she has only herself to blame.
• Jeremy highlights Peter LaBarbera's hypocrisy.
• Finally, Mother Jones' legal adviser James Chadwick sets Liz Cheney straight on the meaning of libel.

Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, has not been particularly popular with the leaders of the Religious Right in recent years.

For instance, last year James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bayer and other tried to get him fired from his job at NAE because they feared that his efforts to get evangelicals to care about issues like global warming would undermine their own narrow anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda. 

And then, earlier this year, when NAE tried to host a dialogue between Christian and Muslim leaders, the Right again reacted badly, calling it a “sellout” and accused those who participated of “betraying the Christian faith."

And considering that, at the moment, the Right is busy fawning over John McCain and his decision to name Sarah Palin as his running mate, it is probably safe to assume that Cizik’s already low popularity among Religious Right political powerbrokers is not going to be increasing any time soon:

Richard Cizik is one of the country’s most powerful and outspoken Christian evangelical leaders. He happens to be a Republican, and he has known the GOP’s presidential nominee for many years. “I thought John McCain was a principled person,” Cizik says. “But John McCain has backed off, not just on climate change but on torture and a sensible tax policy — in other words, he’s not the John McCain of 2000. … He seems to be waffling on issue after issue.

“It’s not illogical for someone to conclude that John McCain is going to be more like George Bush than John McCain is going to be like John McCain in 2000.”

…

“It is pretty obvious that the Palin nomination plays to identity politics and cultural war issues,” says Cizik. “Her selection is more than an acknowledgment that evangelicals are an important part of the Republican base, and everyone knows that John McCain is not that exciting to religious conservatives.”

Palin, Cizik says, has certainly excited the Republican base, and picking her was certainly a deft, if cynical, political move by McCain — at least in the short term. However, in the longer view, his running mate may do just as much to energize the opposition and prove a turn-off to independents.

“Not everyone in the evangelical movement is fawning over Sarah Palin,” Cizik says … “He’s playing that card, and many of us thought he didn’t need to do it — it just polarizes the country,” Cizik says. “The irony of it is that John McCain can’t speak with an evangelical voice of faith — let’s face it, it’s just not his thing — so I guess the substitute is this other [Palin]. I guess that’s pretty cynical, but maybe his actions are cynical.

“The consequences of going to identity and culture-war politics is that experience is denigrated, authority is questioned and ignorance is strength,” Cizik says.