Will someone please tell her to stop?

        When, oh when, will someone tell Phyllis Schafly it's time at 91, to retire from her Far Right  ranting? A recent column is so rife with bad information that one scarcely knows where to start. The topic of her rant is her lamenting the recent fiasco in Kentucky revolving around a court clerk reveling in her 15 minutes of fame.

        Her first misstatement, is the leap from "The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection" which was stated in the USSC same sex marriage decision, to her inference that somehow that really means that persons are Constitutionally allowed to inflict their personal religious beliefs on others. Of course she just as readily ignores the Fourteenth Amendment's "equal protection" clause, which is really what Kim Davis violates when she refuses to do her job with equanimity without projecting her recently found religious beliefs in the process.

        She contemptuously uses the term "unelected federal judge." Who in Ms. Schafly's opinion should elect federal judges? Which voters? Federal judges typically move to different courts and, in many cases, different regions throughout their careers. Would they have to stand for  reelection in such an instance? In fact voters do have influence over the selection of federal judges. This particular judge, son of a Republican Senator, was nominated by George W. Bush, the nation's highest elected official and confirmed by a majority of the Senate judiciary committee, also fairly influential elected officials. He will serve for life or until retired or impeached.  This process was stipulated in the US Constitution specifically to remove a federal judge, once so appointed, from political influences and pressures. It is the reason Justice Marshall, Justice Warren, Justice Roberts, and now Judge Bunning and others were, and are,  free to vote their consciences vice some flavor of the month partisan line, regardless of their political affiliations.

        She then asserts that the Supreme Court by declaring same sex marriages protected by the constitution, were "implicitly declaring that Christianity and the Bible were wrong!" Not only was that not what USSC  said, but the real import of the ruling is that  that even if one's theology is so twisted that they believe same sex marriage is prohibited by the Bible, (it certainly isn't, per se but has been interpreted as such  in some extremist sects, such as the one to which the multiply divorced Ms. Davis adheres), there is no right for a believer no matter how devout or  how convinced they are, to force the consequences of that belief on another.  The USSC ruling does no more or less than when it issued the historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing school segregation. One wonders how Ms Schafly felt about the latter.
 

        The real issue here isn't a "war on Christianity," like the one levied by American "Christians " against Mormons for some years. It's not even a war like the Bible riots in Philadelphia in the 1840s, pitting Catholic against Protestant. What we are hearing from Schlafly and her ilk is rather the whining of a spoiled child  losing their special privileges. Leveling the playing field for all, believer or non-believer is not unfair, it's simply the right thing to do. Like all groups, professing Christians run the gamut from the Pope, Churches who build habitat homes and  pastors who minister to aids patients or  the homeless,  to Fred Phelps, Mike Huckabee ,and Pat Robertson, all vile, hate filled men. This is the sort of Christian who is so convinced of the rectitude of their belief that they will go to great lengths to force you to act in accordance with those beliefs. Men of faith like the Pope and the Dalai Lama  must shake their heads in wonderment in privacy.

        Kim Davis has no more right to refuse to issue marriage licenses to any who apply than a Jewish waitress has to refuse to serve a ham sandwich. In either case, loss of job should ensue. If Ms. Schafly's pharmacist refused to issue her anti-depressants based on his or her belief in Scientology, she would be outraged. The arrogance of the woman and those like her is staggering in its hubris. Interestingly enough, the closest parallel we see today in  any other group is Muslim extremists. Go figure!