Atheists - And Other Minorities - Need A Heads Up On Sessions' "Religious Liberty Task Force"

"And ah will ensure Dotard's.....errr.....Donnie's....religious liberty guidelines are followed by sidin' with the Devil!"


Atheists and other unwelcome minorities ought to be filled with trepidation at AG Jeff Sessions' new steps to implement a "religious liberty" task force and "guidance document". 

Unknown to many, on Monday, July 30th, the Department of Justice (DOJ) held a “Religious Liberty Summit” at which AG Sessions announced that the Department would be developing a “Religious Liberty Task Force.”  Sessions explained that the task force “will help the department fully implement our religious liberty guidance” — referencing a DOJ guidance document on “Principles of Religious Liberty” issued in October of 2017 — “by ensuring that all Justice Department components… are holding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations.”  

Sessions noted that the “next step” for the DOJ and the Trump administration is to ensure compliance to the “religious liberty guidance” issued by the Department of Justice in the fall of 2017. The guidance document that the task force is charged with implementing was promulgated in accordance with Traitor Trump’s “Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty.” Trump signed the Executive Order in question in a ceremony on May 4th, 2017, the “National Day of Prayer,” in the White House Rose Garden. The guidance document, “Principles of Religious Liberty” was issued by  Sessions in a Memorandum for all Executive Departments and Agencies, on October 7, 2017, and is available here.

Let us take time to note here that Trump, a malignant, lying swine, has no more religious appreciation than a Satanic acolyte of the late Anton LaVey.   This degenerate not only is an open traitor, hostile to his country's highest principles as well as the Constitution - but is also a demagogue on the level of Hitler as he seeks to foment internal civil strife, e.g.
'Blood on the President’s Hands': Conservative Writer Warns That Trump Will Get Someone Killed

His moral radar is so blunted it's allowed him to have cavorted with assorted nymphs and models even as his  wife was caring for a newborn infant. And we won't even go into his self-admitted penchant for "pussy grabbing" and assaulting contestants for past Miss Universe pageants. So don't even hand me any blarney about this POS being "religious" or "moral". And if he isn't, his "Principles of Religious Liberty”  are twaddle and worse.

While the idea of such guidelines, i.e. to ensure religious protections, may sound beneficial to the larger society - think again. First, look at the moral character of the reprobate signing the E.O. A confirmed carouser, pussy grabber, and serial female assaulter - as well as pathological liar - with the ethics of a slug. Second, look at the lot who this moral slug is appeasing: the amoral evangelicals, willing to even overlook child molesters like Roy Moore, to advance their sick, illiberal and anti-human, discriminatory agenda.

Break it down and you have a corrupt White House - and illegitimate (traitor) occupant -  tossing another "plum" to the  white, evangelical voters. This time by enabling faith -based organizations to ignore non-discrimination laws at their convenience while still receiving federal funding. Thus, while religious extremists cheered the announcement, [progressives, civil rights groups - including secular humanists and atheist organizations (including our local Colorado Springs Atheist, Freethinkers) saw a threat to a different kind of religious freedom: freedom from religiously motivated discrimination, i.e. for women, atheists, LGBT citizens, and non-Christian religious folk (Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc.)

As Rev. Al Sharpton correctly put it yesterday morning on his MSNBC broadcast:

"I am a Baptist preacher, but I do not believe I have the right to impose my beliefs on others, by law."

Exactly! Because his religious rights stop where my own begin.  More generally, AG Sessions' manifesto for religious protections isn't worth an ounce of doggie lickspittle if  my own non-religious  are not also secured. The problem is that religious faith underscores the belief of evangelicals and other religious extremists in the superiority of their protections over mine, or over a Muslim's, or a young woman who needs birth control pills, or an LGBT person.

One of the most salient and compelling references to the perversity of religious faith was rendered by Sam Harris in his superb book, The End of Faith (pp. 65-66):

"Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse – constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility and candor…In the absence of evidence, to the highest place in the hierarchy of human virtues goes ignorance – the true coinage of the realm (e.g. John 20:29): “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed”. And so every child is instructed that it is at the very least – an option - if not a scared duty, to disregard the facts of the world out of deference to the God who lurks in his mother’s and father’s imaginations..
This is the very same faith that will not stoop to reason when it has no good reason to believe…".

In the context of the above, Harris is saying that such beliefs, if strong enough, have the power to convince the religious brain that - despite the U.S. being founded on "religious freedom" - certain elements (e.g. white Christians)  have more than others.

But it gets worse given many believers from the Bible belt, namely hard core evangelicals of the type who supported Roy Moore in Alabama (for that state's special election last year), also accept their good book justifies slavery and worse. Some even want to return to bible -based morality.  Sure, it's comforting  for many of these yokels to crack open the King James Bible, turn to Psalms or some other book and mentally meander while delusionally believing one is suffused in righteousness - and has the god-ordained right to deny wedding cakes to gays or the sale of special coin collections to atheists. But in the end it's no more real than a coke addict's fantasies, because those rights are not inherent or fundamental in any religion. Thus, in the same way the deluded extremists believe they can withhold sales or services to fellow citizens whose lifestyles (or lack of beliefs) they don't like they similarly believe they can use a perverted, bogus law to impose their sexism, racism and xenophobia on the rest of us.

Clearly, the Bible - KJV or any other-   can't be taken literally. Further, the fact that evangelicals don't carry out their "good book's"  injunctions  (say in Leviticus) shows they don't take its verses literally.  Hell, they are even prepared to extol and seek comfort in an adulterer and pussy grabber like Trump!  See e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-do-white-evangelicals-worship.html

So why is this religious liberty twaddle being trotted out?  Well, mainly to address the Bible punchers, namely white evangelicals, sense of grievance. As WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin put it (see preceding link):

"These white Christians are now, for the first time, not in the majority of the American people.  So they're no longer just leaders, they are grievance leaders.  They feel  this put upon, discriminated against, angry sentiment that their fellowship voices. They don't like being displaced from authority in society. They think women, they think immigrants, they think gays are somehow displacing them taking what is rightfully theirs. And these people are out to claim it. "


There you have it in a nutshell: these religious liberty guidelines are merely the means for a bogus law - not so different from the Reich laws of the Hitler era - to  confer powers on the "besieged" bible punchers that they believe are rightfully theirs.  Don't buy it?  Then you need to peruse the work of Andrew Whitehead,  an assistant professor of sociology at Clemson University. He 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.  

The worst part of this travesty is that the DOJ, Sessions and Trump actually think we - normal citizens - are to subsidize this B.S. with our tax dollars. Like we subsidized  Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop who refused to sell a wedding cake to David Mullins and Charlies Craig.

As an ACLU civil rights lawyer appearing on "Politics Nation" put it yesterday, this case ought to have been a no brainer, given the precedent of a 1965 case where a barbecue pit franchise tried to refuse service to black diners. That was on the basis of invoking the Bible because it "forbids" racial integration. A religious excuse was tried, and found wanting, as it ought to have been in the Colorado cake case.   That ought to have been a slam dunk given 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.

Since Sessions cited this case in justifying the religious liberty task force guidelines, people need to be made aware of its limits, and indeed how it can veer into lawlessness.  The white religious extremists are making a final, desperate bid for a power grab - but they must be denied. It can't be on the back of a bogus law that endorses religious discrimination, or any other form.

See also:

Sessions’s “Religious Liberty Task Force” Sanctifies Discrimination

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