The polls are closed; the election is over; the results are in; and the Christian Right is out. Did you notice the participants at the two election-night gatherings? As they panned the audience at President-Elect Obama's victory gathering, it looked like America: All ages, races, religions and economic strata. At what turned out to be Senator McCain's concession gathering, it looked like a 40th high school reunion from a then-all-white suburb of some large city from the classes of 1960-65. That group, which one would bet all went to an all-white Christian church last Sunday and will be back next Sunday, is a group that finally will no longer have the reins of our Federal Government. The Democrats won an overwhelming majority in the House and a sufficient majority in the Senate which, while not filibuster-proof, is sufficient to carry the day even if both independent senators vote with the Republicans. America changed dramatically on November 4, 2008.
On January 20, 2009, the worst president in the entire history of the United States will leave office - a president who claimed to believe in the sanctity of human life, but signed more death warrants as governor of Texas than any in modern history; a president who started each day reading, not reports from his staff on world events while he slept, but the Bible; a president who slaughtered over 4,000 American soldiers and scores of thousands of Iraqis, including innocent women and children, solely to pacify his buddies in the Oil Patch; a president who turned an enormous budget surplus into the largest deficit in our Country's history, giving tax breaks to Big Oil notwithstanding its dizzying, record profits; a president driven by, first, Evangelical Christians and second, Mega-Corporate America, with nobody coming in third; a president who, with a majority in both houses of Congress, rammed through ultra-conservative justices and judges and right-wing legislation, until America wised up about the Iraq War in 2006 and upended both houses of Congress.
George W. Bush and his ilk are all about what is wrong with America. John McCain had "Joe the Plumber" as his model for what he claimed was wrong with the other side; this column has Shirley Phelps-Roper. Here's Shirley's deal, as chronicled by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals:
"Phelps-Roper is a member of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in Topeka, Kansas. Phelps alleges members of her church believe God is punishing America for what WBC considers the sin of homosexuality by killing Americans, including soldiers. As part of her religious duties, she believes she must protest and picket at certain funerals, including the funerals of United States soldiers, to publish the church's religious message: that God's promise of love and heaven for those who obey him in this life is counterbalanced by God's wrath and hell for those who do not. Phelps believes funerals are the only place where her religious message can be delivered in a timely and relevant manner. . . .
"Although the exact content of WBC's group speech at the funerals of soldiers is not part of the record to date, in previous funeral protests the WBC has conveyed messages including 'Thank God for Dead Soldiers,' 'God Blew Up The Troops,' 'God Hates Fags,' and 'AIDS Cures Fags.' See The Westboro Baptist Church Home Page , (last visited October 26, 2007) (describing the messages on the 'large, colorful signs' they display during their 'daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of souldamning, nation-destroying filth.')"
As an aside, she has challenged anti-funeral-picketing laws in Ohio and Missouri; and .500 is her batting average. Phelps-Roper v. Nixon, 2008 WL 4755559, ___ F.3d ___ (8th Cir., October 31, 2008)(Unconstitutional); Phelps-Roper v. Strickland, 539 F.3d 356 (6th Cir. 2008)(Constitutional). It would be wonderful if the Eighth Circuit would give such support to other kinds of speech. Sadly, she thinks she is right, that God caused the war in Iraq to punish the United States for approving of homosexuality. Thankfully, in increasing majority of Americans is now saying of her ilk, "Are you kidding me?"
The biggest problem with this country is that we have been throwing away our science books and replacing them with Bibles. Odds are that George W. Bush privately believes that Shirley is right; he could not say that publicly because of the political risk, but his behavior certainly has been consistent with such a philosophy. Whatever the Good Book says is what goes!
Hopefully, the pendulum is swinging the other way, and people - religious or not - will realize that it is not a legitimate function of government to proselytize on behalf of the Christian Right, like Bush and his crew have done. Let the pendulum swing back to where it was in September of 1960:
"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source-where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials-and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all." - John F. Kennedy, address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Rice Hotel, Houston, Texas, September 12, 1960.
(Clyde DeWitt is a Los Angeles and Las Vegas attorney, whose practice has been focused on adult entertainment since 1980. He can be reached through AVN's offices, or at [email protected]. Readers are considered a valuable source of court decisions, legal gossip and information from around the country, all of which is received with interest. Books, pro and con, are encouraged to be submitted for review, but they will not be returned. This column does not constitute legal advice but, rather, serves to inform readers of legal news, developments in cases and editorial comment about legal developments and trends. Readers who believe anything reported in this column might impact them should contact their personal attorneys.)
