Supreme Court Blows It On Wedding Cake Case- Caves To White Christian Nationalist Nazis

Pawn of White Christian Nationalists, Jack Phillips, who convinced a dumb Supreme Court that his wedding cakes are "religious expressions" and baking one for a gay couple would violate his "religious beliefs and freedoms".

Well, we've now seen the legal rathole that the Hobby Lobby case has opened up with the Supreme Court actually voting in the 7-to-2 decision in favor of  delusional Christian cake maker Jack Phillips. This was in respect to his case brought against the Colorado  Civil Rights Commission . The Commission  had declared Phillips’ religious beliefs about marriage to be discriminatory when he refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.   

At the time the case first drew media prominence in December, supporters of Phillips argued that if he lost his legal fight then like-minded "entrepreneurs", i.e.  with a religious objection to LGBT or same-sex marriage,  effectively would be "barred" from doing wedding work. (In fact,  it would be their choice not to do such work, i.e. opt out.)  The claim was that a loss would also “provide a road map for litigation against Christian photographers who are bound by religious conviction not to offer their artistic talents to photograph a same-sex wedding ceremony or celebration,” according to the International Christian Photographers in a brief filed to the high court.

Evidently, the Supremes bought this malarkey hook, line and sinker, thus conveying further proof the whole country is undergoing a mental meltdown - and no longer able to process rational thought.   Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Colorado Civil Rights Commission  showed:

 “hostility to Phillips’ religious beliefs in ordering him to undergo anti-discrimination training."

This is absolute poppycock and twaddle. In fact, the CCRC showed mercy in not dispatching him to a psych hutch to undergo electro-convulsive  therapy - which is what he really needed. As I noted in an earlier December post on the case, the SC judgment should have been  essentially a no brainer. I even cited  the words of one of the lawyers for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce:

"It is not hard to imagine the claims that will follow this case: A jeweler may argue that his religion forbids him from selling wedding rings to an interfaith couple; a shop owner may refuse service to women customers to avoid contact prohibited by his religion,” 

What would there be to stop it? Well, nothing, if each little special "private business"  decided to whom it will sell and who will be rejected as miscreants. Here's the bottom line truth: The restaurateur, cake maker, photographer is afforded certain privileges (via a licensing) to trade or provide services (such as food) in the public domain. However, their so called "freedom" (e.g. to trade)  is limited. Hence,  that can't include refusal of service unless there are extenuating circumstances, i.e.  customers entering drunk and disorderly.  

THIS is the rational way to interpret the wedding cake case, but which the 7 justices flouted, evidently terrified they will be the targets of the white Christian nationalists backing Phillips - which I will get to shortly.  But did Justice Kennedy do justice to the case? Nooooo....He launched out further in his reckless screed:

“The laws and the constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.”

Yes, Justice Kennedy, the  objections to LGBT, gay marriage etc. are protected views, which Phillips et al are entitled to exercise in their own home or group.   But they absolutely have NO latitude to do so in the business sphere!  Not because the excluded ones are gay and gay people "deserve a break".  But because the operation of the law  in the commercial trade sphere cannot be a free for all where everyone does what he wants. That is,  selling services to some because they conform to notions of  deserving one's "religious self expression", but rejecting others out of a sense of violating one's religious faith or personal dignity. That is a prescription for economic anarchy.

Thus, Justice Kennedy's words amount to a load of recycled  codswallop which mixes apples and oranges within a civil,  legal framework.  But even Kennedy's  mumbo- jumbo doesn't come close to the drivel spouted by  Clarence Thomas, e.g.:

"Custom baking the wedding cake would have made Mr. Phillips an active participant in the wedding celebration."

Uh, no you deplorable dumbass.  Phillips would have had to actually have gone to the event to be an "active participant."  But this is the sort of inflated rhetoric that discloses how far down the rabbit hole of irrationality we've traveled.

 At issue then, is whether the cake maker - and the assorted Xtian photographers for that matter- have entered into a business or not. If not, if they simply follow their art or self-expression - with NO public sales or commerce- then they are not  obliged to do anyone's bidding. They are not in the commercial marketplace but operating in their own private (e.g. family, neighbor-to-neighbor) domain.If, however, they are businesses and operating in the public, commercial sphere, no such rights apply.  They have to play by the same rules as all other commercial franchises, sellers. That's why this ought to have been a no brainer for the Supreme Court.
 

Meanwhile, deep politics researchers have logically connected the wedding cake case to multiple others being brought, all part of an organized bid to impose hardline Christian values across American society. In other words reduce us to a Theocratic Nazi type fascist state but with crosses replacing swastikas. 

At the point of the spear is "Project Blitz".   Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a thinktank which studies the political right, was first to write about Project Blitz, which he said had been hiding in plain sight.  According to Clarkson:

“It’s very rare that you come across a major primary source document that changes the way you view everything, and this is one of those times. This is a 116-page strategy manual hidden away on a website explaining at least what a section of the religious right are doing in the United States. To me that’s astounding.”

The Blitz playbook came to wider attention in April after Clarkson was tipped off to its existence. He also highlighted recordings of conference calls where leading figures in the CPCF set out their plans to flood state legislatures with their specious religious bills..

Clarkson, whose research first highlighted Project Blitz, said: 

“It’s a Christian supremacist agenda, the idea that God intended and mandates Christians to lead and control the United States for the religious vision that they hold and the policy implications that flow from it.If you are a more liberal Christian, a Jew, or a Muslim, or a non-believer of any sort, or whatever you happen to be, you’re a second class citizen at best.”

Andrew Whitehead, assistant professor of sociology at Clemson University, recently published a study titled Make America Christian Again which  described the so-called quest for “dominion” as the aim of Christian white nationalists who consider that the Christian faith and their particular interpretation should be imposed nation wide.  

Who exactly are these imps taken in by this crap?  Well, the usual suspects. Whitehead also concluded that the more someone believed the United States was and should remain a Christian nation, the more likely they were to vote Trump in 2016- and probably in 2020 if the swine is still hanging around - and hasn't yet been hung as a traitor.

The one saving grace in the wedding cake case?  The ruling left open the question of whether anti-discrimination laws should supersede religious beliefs in future cases.  In other words, just because the religious Right fascists won in this case doesn't necesarily mean they will win in a future one.  But that assumes the court will not be contaminated by the Project Blitz fanatics, their sordid agenda for domination and their grievances.  Especially one justice in particular:  Neil Gorsuch, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/02/neil-gorsuch-needs-to-be-borked-along.html

See also:    

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/rob-boston/79482/here-are-5-founding-fathers-whose-skepticism-about-christianity-would-make-them-unelectable-today

Neil Gorsuch Needs To Be "Borked" - Along With Every Other Trump SC Nominee

The Donald crawled out of his chaotic rat warren last night to make his first Supreme Court pick. As predicted, it was a conservative extremist albeit straight out of central casting. The guy named? Neil Gorsuch whose trail of judicial terror was revealed last night in the course of several Dem Senatorial comments. 

Before I get to them, let's go through a few of Gorsuch's recent cases to show what a pathetic loser he is and why he needs to be "Borked" - the term derived from when Robert Bork was advanced in 1987 as a Reagan nominee and he had to be jettisoned by the Gipper.

1) Ryan Wilson excessive force and wrongful death case:

In maybe the most infamous, young Ryan Wilson, 22, was tasered in the head and side by aggressive cops in Lafayette, CO after an MJ grow was discovered near Hecla Lake and Wilson ran from the scene. The death came as a result of the kid having a heart condition and his parents subsequently  filed a lawsuit asking for a trial based on excessive force in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Judge Neil Gorsuch tossed the case out on the basis of "holofied immunity"  which protects all law enforcement from civil liability for damages. So even if the cops crashed into your home  in a patrol car while on a chase, and accidentally killed grammy sitting in her rocker, they'd get off. This is the putz the Reepos put up.

2) Hobby Lobby case:

Gorsuch was the guy who put forward the initial whacko argument for the Hobby Lobby case, in which the company's owners were entitled to exemption from the ACA's contraception provision based on their individual religious beliefs.  The outrage at the time was upper decibel level, with one Philly-based federal appeals court pithily objecting that:

“Businesses do not pray, worship, observe sacraments or take other religiously motivated actions.”

This was important, given historically  the Court has never recognized a for profit corporation's "religious rights" under federal law or the Constitution.  But Gorsuch's ruling took no account of that at all, apart from the nonsense of referring to corporations as "people"- which only a madman would do.

3) Little Sisters of the Poor case:

This howler of a case was also ruled on by Gorsuch. To quickly summarize: the Little Sisters yelped about being "forced" to provide artificial contraception to public employees of theirs against their conscience. This was via the Affordable Care Act. They were then offered a way out where all they had to do is simply sign a form to be granted an exception and they pitched a fit about that too. They claimed the very act of signing the exemption form would also detract from their "religious freedom" - and in his ruling in their favor Gorsuch concurred.

Apart from these cases which clearly show Gorsuch has a background we don't want and can't afford (especially as he's only 49 years of age, and could be on the Court decades) there is the other matter of that Supreme Court seat having been "stolen" by the Repukes. They sat on their asses for nearly a year after Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland and didn't even have the grace or courtesy to allow a hearing. Not even a hearing. Some Reepo Senators went so far at the time to insist that even IF Hillary won they'd hold off any Supreme Court hearings for her picks - whether 4 years, 8 years, whatever. In other words, the unspoken new rule was that Democrats didn't get to make SC picks.

Hence, liberals now are enraged and not prepared to see the Senate Dems allow anyone to get through a Supreme Court nomination. Gorsuch, nice guy though he may  be  - and even relatively "mainstream" as extremists go, is simply caught in the crossfire of political  polarization. Which is too bad, but then Merrick Garland was too, and at least Gorsuch will get his hearing.

Anyway, Sen. Elizabeth Warren had this to say about Gorsuch last night, with which I totally concur:

"President Trump had a chance to select a consensus nominee to the Supreme Court but to the surprise of absolutely nobody he failed that test. Instead he kept a promise to select a nominee from a list drawn up by far right activists and groups that were financed by big Business interests.

Judge Gorsuch has been on this list for four months. His public record, which I have viewed in detail, paints a clear picture of his record. Before even joining the (federal) bench he advocated for making it even easier for public companies to defraud investors.

As a judge he twisted himself into a pretzel to make sure rules favored giant companies over workers and individual Americans. He sided with employers who denied wages for improperly fired workers and retaliated against whistle blowers for 'misconduct'.  He's ruled against workers in all manner of discrimination cases.

He's demonstrated hostility toward women's access to basic health care. For years, powerful interests have executed a full scale assault on our federal judiciary, trying to turn the Supreme Court into one more rigged game that works only for the rich and powerful. 

They spent millions to keep this seat open and Judge Gorsuch is their reward."

This is why the Democrats must now put aside all memes or fantasies that they are engaged in a "debate" with Marquis of Queensberry rules. No, this is now full throttle political combat and requires them to go all out, not only denying this nominee but the next as well.  And if the Repukes are stupid and brazen enough to remove the filibuster - which they might be, knowing "Bitch" McConnell -then all out blockage, and procedural sabotage must be used - as well as huge protests from the base -including in front of Republican Senators' homes.

See also:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/marjorie-cohn/70999/trumps-choice-of-gorsuch-endangers-civil-human-and-environmental-rights

And:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/70973/trump-s-supreme-court-pageant-a-silly-show-to-fill-a-stolen-seat

Update:

Now that we've learned Gorsuch helped found "Fascists Forever" at his Catholic High School, we have much additional fodder for the Dems to do some "brain" surgery probes into his background. One thing we know, they must not be deterred by media editorials taking them to task.

Little Sisters of the Poor Set To (Mostly) Lose Next Court Round

The Little Sisters of the Poor gamboling chuckling in front of the Supreme Court - waving banners and signs to push their anti-ACA birth control case.

The Little Sisters of the Poor, waving their assorted images of a faux saint and former pope, as well as signs reading 'Help a Sister Out', are nothing if not circus conscious. They sincerely believe with every fiber of their 'holier than thou' chanting and parading that they will sway the 4-4 deadlocked Supreme Court to deliver a ruling in their favor on the bogus "religious liberty" case before it.

All I can say is 'good luck'. The sobering reality is that given Scalia's absence and no intent on the part of repukes to replace him, the Court will split along ideological lines and end up in a 4-4 tie. That means the existing appeals court 'wrokarounds' will be left for them to deal with - which may be for a year or more depending on how long it takes for Mitch McConnell and his fellow Reeptards to approve a SC nominee. It may well be over a year.

In the meantime, the lower court rulings will find the Obamacare contraceptive alternative (for religious institutions) operating in most of the nation (43 states), while a swatch of seven states in the Midwest (under the jurisdiction of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis) will allow exemptions, having found that the  workaround is "insufficient" under the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act"

Let us recall that contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the ACA health care law. The administration pointed to research showing that the high cost of some methods of contraception discourages women from using them. A very effective means of birth control, the intrauterine device, can cost up to $1,000.

Houses of worship and other religious institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith are exempt from the birth control requirement. Other faith-affiliated groups that oppose some or all contraception have to tell the government or their insurers that they object.

In 2014, the justices divided 5-4, with Scalia in the majority, to allow some "closely held" businesses with religious objections to refuse to pay for contraceptives for women. That case involved the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores and other companies that said their rights were being violated under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

As one  editorial (Dallas Morning News. March 31, 2014) framed it:

 “the deep-seated personal convictions of  Hobby Lobby’s executive and Conestoga’s Mennonite owners are not in question. What is at issue is whether a private, profit-making business can dictate religious beliefs on employees.”

In other words, the SC affirmative verdict  de facto  and incomprehensibly extended the religious rights of individuals to corporations that are legal artifacts – not persons – and exhibit no explicit religious missions!

Moreover, as I noted before, legal artifacts – whether corporations, municipalities, counties or states do not have rights!  Only flesh and blood people can have rights – as per Prof. Garry Wills famous assertion ( 'A Necessary Evil: A History Of American Distrust Of Government', Simon & Schuster, 1999, observes, p. 108). Thus,  those legal artifacts, including states – retain prerogatives which are artificial not natural - since they are things made by contract.  Thus:

Governments and legal entities  have prerogatives, people have rights

The five Justices who found for Hobby Lobby essentially  torched over 200 years of how rights are defined, and instead conflated prerogatives of a contractual, legal entity with personal rights. The result was a legal atrocity that Citizens United paled beside. The egregious decision also opened a ‘Pandora’s box’ allowing corporations – businesses to pell mell deny employees a host of other previously assumed benefits or rights. As the Obama Administration has persuasively argued:
 

“The owners of Hobby Lobby aren’t entitled to exemption for their business based on their individual religious beliefs”

Or, as the Philadelphia-based federal appeals court pithily put it:

“Businesses do not pray, worship, observe sacraments or take other religiously motivated actions.”

 

 Apart from this, the Little Sisters' argument that their religious convictions and rights are being violated by providing contraception for SECULAR employees is totally bogus. If indeed, they’re all about preventing SECULAR employees – say atheists like me – from accessing artificial  birth control- then they are indeed imposing their faith.  Besides - what if the tables were turned? How would Catholic purists and dogmatists react if a Hindu-run corporation took over a Catholic Hospital? Would such a happenstance be called a "forced conversion" or  "violation of religious liberty"? OR - would it be considered a business transaction only? Also, if the newly merged entity produced subsidiary corporations - what religious principles would rightly apply? Catholic blowhards need to think such questions through before they get all sanctimonious on us.

 If instead the nuns and their eager beaver defenders confined their natural law moralism to Catholic employees only, there’d be no objection. “Imposing one’s faith” means taking away rights of secular citizens– based on invoking one’s own imagined religious principles.  In other words, extrapolating their “principles” beyond their proper moral domain to take away the rights of citizens who aren’t part of that domain other than in an employee capacity.

 

While we’re at it, let’s take a closer look at these principles which they profess to hold so dear. Biologist Elizabeth A. Daugherty  has asked ('The Lessons of Zoology'. in Contraception and Holiness, p. 110):

"Why do we call secondary the ends of the sexual act which have been accorded in fullness to us, and why do we call primary the end which we share with the lower animals?"

Prof. Daugherty is referring to the fact that the core of Pius XI's  original encyclical Casti Connubii was that the "sin" of artificial contraception inhered in making primary a sexual aspect that in reality is only "secondary". According to that pontiff:

"Since therefore the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature."

Which is irredeemable codswallop. As Daugherty notes in her chapter (op. cit.)  what the pontiff and his ilk really sought to do is reduce humans to the state of lower animals, at the behest of their "natural" reproductive cycles. In this sense, unlike the lower animals, humans have the intellectual capacity and sense of novelty to introduce a vast variety of pleasure-play into their sex relations. They aren't yoked to  primitive instincts to simply mount and hump at specific times. As Daugherty notes (pp. 96- 97):

"After ovulation, all mammalian females are under the influence of progesterone from the corpus luteum. This is a period of rapidly declining estrogenic activity which ends the sexual receptivity of the lower mammalian female, whether or not fertilization occurs. 

But (in humans) marital relations continue during this progesterone -dominated period before the abrupt onset of menstruation. It is the period of lowest estrogenic activity and the progesterone-dominated period after ovulation which are known as the 'safe period' for marital relations."

 

This then, is what the Catholics'  “rhythm method” (of  Ogino-Kaus)  seeks to do: establish the "safe period" for a particular woman and then ordain that this is the time to safely have sexual relations if one wishes to not have any kids. The trouble is, it requires meticulous temperature taking at various times during a cycle to establish where that safe period begins and ends, and often this will be for no more than 10 days or so in a given month. Presumably, the couple is quite happy to do without sex the other two thirds of the time! 

Thus, the moralizers of the Vatican are actually demanding that married couples act UNNATURALLY, since as Daugherty observes (ibid.):

"Humans are free from physiologically determined sexual desires so we possess a more or less permanent sexuality from adolescence to old age"

Julian Pleasants has observed (op. cit., p. 88) the Vatican  has always been hostage to:

 

"Aristotelian modes of thought which tend to fix behaviors within very limited and fixed definitions and categories."
 

Thus, the Church once believed it "natural" that some men be enslaved because they were “unable to manage their own affairs”  (ibid.)So why be surprised  now when the same Church - including the Little Sisters-  seek to ordain all her members abide by a sexuality more fitting of lower primates?  

 

It seems to me the Little Sisters desperately need education from a fellow nun - who actually inhabits the 21st century as opposed to the late Middle Ages. I refer to Sister Margaret Farley (of Yale Divinity School) who's already schooled the Vatican's ossified, anti-sexual relics in a practical sexual ethics that nearly all normal, non-psychotic people would be able to live by. This she did in her (2006) book, Just Love.  

Evidently, this daring and insightful book only got onto the Vatican's radar screen later, after it had taken issue with American nuns standing for reason (and especially the Obama Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - including the revised contraception aspects).

It's needed now more than ever as we learned (in yesterday's WSJ) that if the Church doesn't alter its birth control stance the gulf between what it teaches and what its people actually do will widen - already nearing the point of a breach.

I strongly advise the Little Sisters to read it, one at a time, or maybe have someone read it out line by line.