Sen. Rick Scott: "The left discredits those who believe in a supreme being or the commitment of marriage, and doesn't place value in family." pic.twitter.com/TVTDm9CRCC
— The Hill (@thehill) September 24, 2020
Watch this entire video. I'm a leftist. I don't hate religious people, hard work, Mom or apple pie. I feel like I just got personally reamed out by this elected official, Senator Rick Scott. This man told me I had no values. He told me I don't care about marriage or the deeply-held values of faith communities, that I disrespect the troops and law enforcement, that I am not American in the sense that he understands America from the Pledge of Allegiance and so on.
The pledge of allegiance was written by a socialist minister (because socialists can also be believers--not that there's anything wrong with not being one) and did not include the words "under God" originally. Just as we have civilian leadership over the military--it's the decision of the people through their elected representatives whether a nation should go to war and those elected representatives determine our treaties. Some protestors have a radical view regarding the future of law enforcement, but no one is saying that there will be no laws, nor that no mechanism of enforcement should exist.
And this man needs to back off entirely about the concept of family and the sanctity of marriage. Is he saying couples can not divorce? (Because for what it's worth, I've been divorced and it worked out great for both me and my ex.) (I doubt that's what he's referring to, though.) I think he might be implying that some marriages are not created equal to others because of the genders of the partners involved. But I am a big fan of marriage. I think marriage is a great institution, and I love that LGBT people can enter into marriages and create warm, loving families. If he is against those bonds, maybe the marriage-hater is him, ok? Maybe he's disrespecting those families.
And I don't have a problem with people of faith--I just don't think they need to tell me I have to believe as they do, which is no more than any person of any religion would say to a person of a different religion.
So, let me get stupid and hold up a Senator Marsha Blackburn Tweet:
In Chuck Schumer’s America — only atheists can be Supreme Court Justices.
— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) September 25, 2020
A Jewish Senate leader who is, with all of us liberals, mourning a Jewish Justice, only wants atheist Supreme Court Justices, like, maybe, Sonia Sotomayor, a Catholic, who is, according to some protestants, not really a Christian? If what she said seems stupid, it's because it is.
What is all of this religious signifying for? Is it squid-ink to warn liberals off of challenging Trump's preferred SCOTUS choice, Amy Coney Barrett, on religious grounds? I already can't with her on the grounds that Republicans have chosen her, and they clearly believe a atheist woman of childbearing age and alternative sexuality who wants to do her own thing is the entire problem with this country, and nope, I am not the fucking one.
So I am not going to pick a fight over the unfortunate choice of Judge Barrett's religious affinity group's covenant female leader's former titles of "Handmaidens" and wax weirdly on about how this is like a SF novel. That isn't the problem. The problem is Trump got two of his SCOTUS picks by dubious engineering (the Scalia seat held open throughout 2016, and Kennedy's retirement) already, and Trump never was the popular choice, polls badly, and unless I miss my mark, should not get re-elected.
Barrett is the same age as I, and I do not think she represents most women of my generation in terms of reproductive choice and gay rights. I do not want her on a court for the next, possibly 30-40 years. Not because of her beliefs, but because I think she will find a reason to bend the 14th amendment against the way so many have been pulling it, like the arc of history, like the definition of justice, for so long.
The right wing opines that the problem is that people like me are discriminating against her. To do so, they have shown no problem in discriminating against people like me. I worry that this country is reinforcing racist values, but I know in my guts that we are also at risk for theocracy.
2 comments:
I still haven't figured it out, fifty years of study: which is it, doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, faith, or insanity?
When do we get equal protection under the law?
Religion exists for many reasons, but most problematically as a cost-effective tool (less than police/military, since it's self-funded) for the powerful to subdue the masses. This is how the evangelicals are letting themselves be used, and it's not just the underlying conservative ideology (though that greases the slide of the "faithful" and keeps them in the pit at the bottom).
"people of faith" however is a very problematic term, as it effectively excludes many people that do believe in and act in accordance with ("faith", to me) the common underlying moral and societal values of "good people", but do not anchor (or subvert) their faith in those values to religion.
What is considered "good" is another matter. For the evangelicals, notions of good include the self-justified tools used by televangelists (elected or not) to ensure compliance to dogma, such as blind faith, know/keep your place, and appreciate the crumbs that fall off the table of those placed above you.
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