Jay Michaelson: ‘While You’ve Been Watching the Election, the Supreme Court Is Set to Transform “Religious Freedom” and America’

 

From The Daily Beast:

The Supreme Court is not accountable to public opinion. But to give you a sense of how out of step this conservative-packed, minority-party-packed, and religious-extremist-packed institution really is, consider this week’s major case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, about whether taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies should be able to discriminate against would-be parents.

A poll released last week says 70 percent of Americans say no. Of course, taxpayer money shouldn’t be given to organizations that discriminate, regardless of those organizations’ religious affiliations. If you take government money, you should play by the same rules as everyone else.

And yet I’ll eat a bug if the Supreme Court agrees.

Why? Because a majority of the court’s members have now been vetted by religious fundamentalists with a pipeline to the White House. And while the public’s focus is understandably on abortion rights, that battle is just one skirmish in a much larger Kulturkampf (culture war, a 19th century German term invoked by Justice Scalia back in 1996) about the relationship between church and state.

Here’s how Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas and Barrett (and sometimes Chief Justice Roberts) see the Fulton case, based on their past votes and writings: this is about religious freedom. Never mind the prospective parents — Catholic, gay, Jewish, interracially married — turned away by an agency for religious reasons. The real victim is the agency.

 

Read the full article.