On A Crusade!

[Essay]

We are on a mission from god! We can do no wrong, anything we do in his name we do it for a greater good. We can lie, cheat, fabricate evidence, there are no limits on the greater glory of god accord to an article in Them.

A Far-Right Group Used Fake Claims to Win Anti-LGBTQ+ Lawsuits, According to a New Report
The Alliance Defending Freedom appears to have founded companies and staged fake weddings to claim their clients’ religious rights were being violated.
Them
By Samantha Riedel
October 5, 2023

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right Christian group at the forefront of recent anti-LGBTQ+ business lawsuits in the U.S., founded companies and staged fake weddings to claim their clients’ religious rights were being violated, according to a new investigation in the Washington Post.

The ADF has for many years represented conservative clients who claim anti-discrimination laws violate their religious rights, and scored a major victory in 303 Creative v. Elenis this summer when the Supreme Court ruled that a web designer could not be compelled to create a wedding site for a gay couple, even if they provided the same service for straight couples. In their arguments to the Court, ADF attorneys cited several of their previous victories on behalf of wedding vendors like Masterpiece Cakeshop who demanded the right to refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers. But in its investigation, Post reporters found that not only did many of those clients leave the wedding industry entirely after their lawsuits were over, some of them did not even have such a business until the ADF established one on their behalf.

According to the Post’s report, ADF lawyers signed off on incorporation documents and drafted policy frameworks for several new companies, which in turn were used as justification to bring lawsuits challenging local nondiscrimination statutes. To promote some of the lawsuits, the ADF distributed “videos and images of plaintiffs photographing women in bridal gowns,” reporters found, which were fabricated at “staged events featuring ADF employees.”

They are the knights in shinning armor who are out there defending their right to discriminate against minorities and other people who are different in the name of god. They are warriors defending the good people of the world against those trans people and gays.

“Owing to ADF’s efforts, it is now an article of faith both on the Christian right and on the high court that a secular government will ‘force’ Christians to do things against their will in order to advance the interests of LGBTQ people,” Posner wrote. “We are just beginning to see how much this myth will justify when Christian nationalists seize both political and judicial power.”

Onward Christian soldiers! Onward!

The Washington Post cites a case where,

Such developments led an opposing lawyer and a judge in two of the cases to separately question whether ADF’s plaintiffs truly intended to exercise the rights they sued for — or if their claims were instead manufactured to be test cases in a national litigation campaign.

[…]

Legal advocacy groups that challenge federal law in court often seek out individuals who are well-suited to serve as the face of their lawsuits. But ADF’s behind-the-scenes involvement in the businesses and public profiles of a nationwide roster of similar clients — some of whom subsequently showed wavering commitment to the weddings industry — reflects how aggressive the group has been in pursuit of that goal as it sought to overturn laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Carry our banners high for we do gods work!

ADF was founded in 1993 by conservative Christian leaders who opposed LGBTQ+ rights. As states began introducing the first wave of laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexuality, ADF founders devised a plan to fight back. One of them, the talk-radio pioneer Marlin Maddoux, argued in a book published that year that Christians should “shift to an all-out culture war” and build a “well-funded, well-trained army of religious rights attorneys” to prosecute it.

In the three decades since, ADF has become one of the nation’s most powerful legal nonprofits. Tax records show the legal group, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., collected nearly $97 million in contributions in the 12 months ending June 2022 — a 27 percent increase over the previous year and almost double its 2016-17 total.

Trump and the Republicans have put judges on the bench who believe the Bible is more important than the Constitution.

Salon magazine wrote...

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, however, voters started to wake up to the fact that a well-funded right-wing movement, led by the Federalist Society, had stacked the court with a bunch of hacks who care little for law or precedent. Added to the pile were well-publicized stories highlighting the corruption of justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who shamelessly enjoy free vacations funded by right-wing billionaires. The result is that only 31% of voters approve of the Supreme Court, according to an NBC News poll, which is down from 44% in January 2021.

Well, any hope that the court has moderated itself was dashed late last week, with a series of decisions that weren't just awful but involved the conservative justices thumbing their noses at any law, precedent, or even facts that got between them and their preferred far-right policies.

They are the ones who brought the case of the trans athlete here in Connecticut and the case is winding its way through the court system, so far they have lost but now it is destined fro the Supreme Court.

 

The case is not dead, in February NBC News reported,

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City said the full court will rehear the appeal of four cisgender runners who said they were unfairly forced to race against transgender athletes in high school competitions.

The court said in a decision Monday that a majority of its judges voted in favor of rehearing the appeal, a rare move by the court. The court did not say why it voted on whether to rehear the case, and none of the parties to the lawsuit requested a rehearing.

The court has become more conservative in recent years, with five of its 13 judges — excluding several senior judges — having been appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Onward Christian soldiers we defend our right to hide our bigotry behind a cross.

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With the conservative and right-wing Christians MAGA coalition calling the shots on the Republican party have packed the courts. They concentrated their judges in major appeals courts including the Supreme Court judges who put their religion first.

Supreme Court is increasingly putting Christians’ First Amendment rights ahead of others’ dignity and rights to equal protection
The Conversation
By Pauline Jones and Andrew Murphy
October 5, 2023


When the Supreme Court ruled in 303 Creative v. Elenis in 2023 that a businessperson could not be compelled to create art that violates their religious beliefs – specifically, a wedding website for a same-sex ceremony – supporters of the decision celebrated it as a victory for freedom of religion and expression.

On the day the ruling was issued, the conservative Family Research Council called it “the latest in a trend of victories for free speech and religious liberty,” while the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression hailed “a resounding victory for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience.”

But contrary to these claims, the Supreme Court’s decision does not protect the freedoms of all Americans. Rather, it represents the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians – known sometimes as the Christian right – to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove. On issues where the Christian right’s First Amendment claims directly threaten the equal citizenship of sexual minorities, for example, the court left no question about which side it was on.

The Republicans have followed a long term strategy that started back with Roe vs. Wade, their thinktanks cranked out guidelines design to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

The Christian right emerged during the 1970s in response to a range of cultural and political upheavals in American society, including the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution and Supreme Court rulings that struck down public school prayer and guaranteed rights to contraception and, later, abortion.

[…]

Its embrace of traditionalist conservatism – support for school prayer, outlawing abortion, opposition to gay rights – did not always yield concrete successes, but the movement played an important role in the political process and grew influential within the Republican Party from the 1980s into the 21st century.

By the early 2000s, the Christian right focused its efforts on countering the growing public support for same-sex marriage on both the federal and state levels.

Take a look at the court ruling on pray in school, according to the New York Times,

A high school football coach in Washington State who won a Supreme Court case last year over whether he could pray on the field after his public school team's games and rejoined the coaching staff this season said on Wednesday that he had resigned.

The coach, Joseph Kennedy, who had successfully argued to the Supreme Court last year that he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games, said on his website that he had resigned after just one game back because he needed to take care of “an ailing family member out of state” and because he believes he can “best continue to advocate for constitutional freedom and religious liberty by working from outside the school system.”

You want to guess what was one of the legal teams that handled his case?

The Conversation article goes on to say...

By the mid-2000s, the limitations of this strategy were becoming apparent, including a stark rise in support for same-sex marriage and an equally stark decline in religiosity among Americans.

These changes were reflected in Supreme Court decisions like United States v Windsor in 2013, which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which had banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage, and Obergefell v Hodges in 2015, which guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry.

So the leaders of the Christian right decided on a different strategy. Rather than seeking to change laws or policies that conflicted with their religious views, conservative Christians sought to be exempted from following them.

Those creating a two-tiered legal system where you can get out of obeying the laws just by says a few magic words... "It is against my firmly held religious beliefs."

The success of this strategic shift, from seeking to overturn objectionable policies to seeking exemptions from them, threatens to upset the delicate balance among the cluster of core-related rights and freedoms – religion, speech, press and assembly –protected by the First Amendment.

These core rights and freedoms are placed at risk when anyone is exempted from the constitutional requirement to treat their fellow Americans as equal citizens under the law.

[...]

 

 As Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the 303 Creative case makes clear, these burdens include one group of Americans being denied access to goods and services that are otherwise publicly available, and consequently, a loss of dignity for that group.

Sotomayor provides several concrete examples, including one about a gay man going to a funeral home and not being able to bury his husband. Thus his grief is compounded by humiliation based on his sexual orientation.

We are, of course, not the first to point out the tensions between religious freedom and democracy in American history. Anti-discrimination laws are one way to address these tensions because they can level the playing field among citizens of different faiths and between those with and without faith. Liberty pertains to both freedom of and freedom from religion.

How many times have you heard Republicans claiming we are a "Christian Nation"?

 

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Nones!

The
NONES!
AP News

In many countries around the world, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people who are nonbelievers or unaffiliated with any organized religion. These so-called “nones" — atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particular — comprise 30% or more of the adult population in the United States and Canada, as well as numerous European countries. Japan, Israel and Uruguay are among other nations where large numbers of people are secular.

Why?

I think most liberals know why religion is declining. Fortune writes,

A dislike of organized religion is behind the now 30% of Americans who claim no religious affiliation: ‘I can’t buy into that’
By Peter Smith and The Associated Press
October 5, 2023

Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.

Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.

“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.

As Dulak rejects being part of a religious flock, he has plenty of company. He is a “none” — no, not that kind of nun. The kind that checks “none” when pollsters ask “What’s your religion?”

The decades-long rise of the nones — a diverse, hard-to-summarize group — is one of the most talked about phenomena in U.S. religion. They are reshaping America’s religious landscape as we know it.

I’m a “None” but I believe in God but not in organized religion. I separate religion in to two types. Type I is fire and brimstone and Type II is love your neighbor. If I was leaning toward one religion it would be Episcopal Church, they seem to one of the better ones the less authoritarian.

So who are they?

They’re the atheists, the agnostics, the “nothing in particular.” Many are “spiritual but not religious,” and some are neither or both. They span class, gender, age, race and ethnicity.

While the nones’ diversity splinters them into myriad subgroups, most of them have this in common:

They. Really. Don’t. Like. Organized. Religion.

Nor its leaders. Nor its politics and social stances. That’s according to a large majority of nones in the AP-NORC survey.

When my father died we had the funeral mass in a Catholic Church, it was with Jesuits priest and when it came to the Communion the priest announced that only Catholics in good standing could have communion. Now I have been to many, many Catholic funeral masses and I never heard that siad before. I thought that many of the people at the mass had traveled far to attend and to me it seemed like a slap in the face.

My aunt was a Congregationalist she attended the local Congregational church that was within walking distance. When she could no longer attend the minster came to her house and said mass for her.

The nones also are people like Alric Jones, who cited bad experiences with organized religion ranging from the intolerant churches of his hometown to the ministry that kept soliciting money from his devout late wife — even after Jones lost his job and income after an injury.

“They should have come to us and said, ‘Is there something we can do to help you?’” said Jones, 71, of central Michigan. “They kept sending us letters saying, ‘Why aren’t you sending us money?’”

My father was on the parish council and a knight in the Knights of Columbus. When he became unable to attend mass he still mailed in his tithe. Did any priest come out and visit him? Nope.

Although he doesn’t believe in organized religion, he believes in God and basic ethical precepts. “People should be treated equally as long as they treat other people equally. That’s my spirituality if you want to call it that.”

Like I said, I divide them into “Fire and Brimstone” and “Love thy neighbor”

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I am not against religion, I am only against religion that wants to tell me how to live. There are many, many religions who support us and are against the Republicans wanting to make the United States into another Iran or Afghanistan but instead of a Muslim nations that want to make us into a Christian nation.

I have worked alongside of priests, ministers, rabbis, and Imams on committees with no problems either from them or me. When we were trying to pass the non-discrimination law, at the legislative hearings an Episcopal Bishop spoke in support of the bill. Don't condemn all religions because the fanatical Type I.

[/Essay]