Gilead, Rising
If you think the overturning of Roe v. Wade is bad, wait 'til you get a load of what the Kennedy v Bremerton decision means...
I am fascinated by how many of my friends are suddenly Margaret Atwood aficionados. š. I donāt blame them. The events of the past weeks have been nothing short of a LARP of her dystopian novel, The Handmaidās Tale12, which predicts (??) a strongly patriarchal, āwhiteā supremacist, totalitarian, theonomic, and theocratic stateāGilead.
She evokes the readerās identification of the the Abrahamic faiths by naming the fictional state Gilead, referencing the Torahās use of the word which has multiple meanings but is basically a reference to all the region east of the Jordan River.
In the novel, Gilead has overthrown the US. The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, a member of a group known as the "handmaids" who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders" ā the ruling class of men in Gilead.
Yeah.
She started the novel in the early 80s; when the Christian Coalition was formed alomg with the Moral Majority, the Focus on the Family, and of course, the Reagan Administration. She called it speculative fiction, not science fiction. She wondered what would happen if the trends that those movements caused, and especially casually held attitudes about women were taken to their logical end.
Well, now we know.
As anticipated by a leaked3 internal court memo, the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, June 24th, 2022 holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion. Abortion rights will be determined by states, unless the US Congress acts. Already, nearly half of the states have passed laws that ban abortion while others have enacted strict measures regulating the procedure.
A White Woman Thang?
This issue is largely a matter controlled by American women of primarily Western European genetic heritage (i.e. white women)4. That block of voters has consistently been the tilting factor for why the progressive, pro-choice candidates for national offices win the popular vote, but lose the election. Al Gore. Hillary Clinton. Those two losses gave us the SIX conservatives on SCOTUS today.
Again, to be clear, progressive candidates (all pro-choice) have won the popular vote in every election this century with one exception, and yet, the ideological makeup of the court is six conservative, three progressive.
Three of the conservative jurors were appointed by D. Trump who LOST THE POPULAR VOTE TWICE. Juror Gorsuch is in the seat because the Republican politicians in Senate made up a rule about NOT confirming jurors during an election year. Juror Barret was appointed just WEEKS BEFORE a Presidential election, but I guess the Senate forgot the very rule that they made up the year before about not allowing that.
The plans hatched and conceived in the conservative circles of American nationalists going back into the 1950s were finally complete in June of 2022. It started when schools were first integrated in the 50s. Then, the Civil Rights movement of the 60s shone a light on the original sin of our history which put conservative American nationalists even further onto their heels. So when the Roe v. Wade ruling of the early 70s hit, the dominant culture saw the writing on the wall. American culture was not going to be āwhiteā for much longer. So, American Christian churches mobilized and put in place exactly what they needed to bring their god into our country. Thatās right. āPut in placeā. Read onā¦
As a result of this religious war thatās been waged against the US by American Christians, women, in about 2/5ths of our states, are principally without complete agency of their person.
Why?
I submit the reason why is the same reason that caused the public education system in this country to be designed the way it is. The majority of Americans (who are of primarily Western European genetic heritage) are seeing the continued influx of NEW Americans that come from OTHER genetic heritages and are concerned that they will lose their own genetic legacy. Thatās my honest, thinking.
You want evidence?
Okay.
Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute5 wrote a book in 1987 titled The Birth Dearth. The gist of the book was that the major problem confronting the United States today is there arenāt enough āwhiteā babies being born in America. He cites statistics and presents charts and graphs that demonstrate that in 1987, 60% of aborted fetuses were āwhiteā. The book looks at solutions to the āproblemā.
Like they used to in Europe, pay āwhiteā women to have babies. But that would mean in America, we would have to pay ALL women to have babies so that doesnāt solve the white baby birth dearth.
We could increase immigration flow, but a vast majority of folks that will emigrate would NOT be of primarily Wester European genetic heritage so thatās not going to work either.
Overturn Roe. v. Wade. Make aborting children illegal, across the US.
They went with #3.
Christian Republicans have endeavored to change the dynamic of our nation in the course of the past 70 years to effectively eradicate the establishment clause of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Establishment clause
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Just listen to Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe from the Roe v. Wade case of ā73. She was used by the Christian Republicans to go AGAINST her own case. She was paid to say she was wrong about her case. Donāt believe me? Listen to her own confession.
But Iām not concerned as much about the Roe v. Wade overturning matter than I am the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District oneā¦
Kennedy v. Bremerton School District
At the same time that Congress passed MINOR improvements to gun laws, and Roe v. Wade got turned over, SCOTUS issued an almost childlike decision in the area of what religious activities are permissible by public school employees.
A Washington state high school football coach sued the district after being released from his coaching position in 2015 for participating in what the Court concluded were private religious exercises, specifically, three sessions of post-game, 50-yard line prayers.Ā As an assistant coach, Kennedy led post-game prayers on the 50 yard line after games, with members of his own football team as well as with coaches and members of opposing teams.Ā No students were required or encouraged to participate, although many did.Ā
The district directed him to stop and Kennedy complied with the directives around leading students in prayer, however, Kennedy purposefully and publicly decided to continue his practice of kneeling in personal prayer on the 50-yard line of the football field after games.Ā The prayers took place during a time when the teamās coaches were still on duty but allowed to attend to personal affairs.Ā No students were present during these prayers, except from the other
In response, the school district disciplined Kennedy on grounds that his conduct was not only disruptive and a violation of its policies and prior directives but it put the district at risk of violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as Kennedy was engaging in prayer while he was still on duty at a public school activity.Ā
But thatās not how SCOTUS saw it.
SCOTUS held that the districtās actions violated the Free Exercise and Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment.Ā In doing so, the SCOTUS wholesale rejected a long-standing line of cases upon which public school districts around the country have relied to evaluate religious activities and speech of public employees.Ā In doing so, the SCOTUS focused on whetherā¦
The prayer was made as a public employee or private citizen
Whether it was impermissibly coercive on students
Finding the prayer to be private speech that had no coercive effect on students, SCOTUS held that the coachās conduct was protected by the First Amendment.
Although this case involved a walk-on coach engaged in activities at an after-school athletics event, the decision has far-reaching implications for permissible regulation of religious activities and speech of public school employees both during and outside of the school day.Ā
If a teacher or professorās right to free speech supercedes the requirement for them to maintain a balanced, nearly-objective perspective when working with pupils, then they can unduly coerce behavior in the student based on the imbalance of authority in such relationships.
I anticipate that subsequent cases will serve to flesh out what restrictions on governmental employee, and more specifically public school employee, religious speech/activities will be permitted.Ā
The Lemon Test
Traditionally, SCOTUS has used the three-pronged Lemon test when it evaluates whether a law or governmental activity violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The Lemon test, considered aptly named by its critics, derives its name from the landmark decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). There are three prongs to this test; specifically, the government has violated the Constitution unless its actions meet the following examples of Lemon Test criteria:
Have a secular, or non-religious, purpose
Do not advance or inhibit a religion
Do not promote an extreme entanglement with religion on the governmentās part
As of this month, the Lemon Test is official out the window. We donāt have a way now to evaluate whether or not governmental activity violates the establishment clause. That renders the clause, effectively non-existent.
Boards of Education, Trustees of public institutions, and university Regents across America better start taking a very close look at their current policies and internal practices/procedures to ensure that theyāre consistent with the SCOTUS decision.
First a book, then a movie (1990) starring Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall, then the Hulu smash multi-season episodicā¦
Did you know Atwood wrote a sequel novel to the Handmaidās Tale? The Testaments.
By āleakedā, I mean released on purpose to see how people will react to it when itās actually announcedā¦
2016 polls and a 2018 analysis from Pew Research showed that women from primarily Western European genetic heritage (white women) voted for D. Trump instead of Hilary Clinton by at least a two point margin, on up to a possible seven point margin. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
Conservative think tank; think the scummery of Dinesh DāSouza