Justice Sunday II: Condemning Those Accidentally Passed Over Last Time
Sunday marked the second Justice Sunday, the sequel to April's original rally designed to remind Americans that just because you're crazy doesn't mean you can't lead a nonprofit organization and attempt to run the country. The full title for the Aug. 14 gathering was "Justice Sunday II: God Save the United States and this Honorable Court!," presumably because "Justice Sunday II: Why Do Minorities Smell Weird?" would have been a little too esoteric.
Despite the title, the rally was actually designed to foster an atmosphere of limiting the abilities of Supreme Court justices. James Dobson, Focus on the Family founder and curious embarrassment to many of the nation's less frightening Christians, said that the justices were "unelected, unaccountable and arrogant." This seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle unstable, because many conservatives seem to embrace the judiciary only when it does what they want it to do. Indeed, the cries from the far right against "activist judges" are often untrue, but critics have latched onto the word "activist" as a comfortable way to incite fear in their conservative constituents; "activist" is scarier when it's left undefined.
Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and voted Most Likely To Expose The Nation's Moral Decay in high school, also spoke at the gathering. DeLay spoke out against the bench in April when they declined to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, who was being kept alive via feeding tube. Back then, DeLay had urged the Court to be more activist and intervene, and his sudden about-face so confused the bench that Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down 3 months later just to avoid any further dealings with "that odd man from Texas." In response to the Supreme Court's nonresponse, DeLay vowed that the judges would have to "answer for their behavior."
In a true showing of their own exclusivity, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist wasn't invited to speak at the conservative meeting because of his recent opposition to President Bush on the matter of stem cell research, a surprising show of dissent and fortitude for which Turd Blossom will surely have Frist sent to Gitmo for a "visit."
The two things make sense together: accusing the bench of activism when it's really being objective, and denying one of the right's strongest voices an invitation to the rally simply because he has a slightly different view of only one of the issues at hand. They're indicative of a larger problem, mainly the perception that because most Americans claim belief in God, that all will naturally share the same opinions on topics like gay marriage or abortion rights. The attendees at Sunday's meeting seem to be forgetting that Americans choose their faith, and prefer not to have it handed down to them from the state. One of the members of Sunday's crowd (which frequently responded to DeLay's speech with shouts of "Amen!") said that American laws "are based on the Ten Commandments," a statement that would be laughable if it weren't so frighteningly popular in parts of the country. There is no federal statute designed to punish citizens for coveting their neighbors' houses or failing to honor their parents, and to insist that federal laws should literally interpret scriptures that not all Americans believe in would be to deny those Americans the most basic of freedoms that things like Justice Sunday seem to overlook. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness don't look the same for everyone.
