I saw a photograph of Judge Barrett’s family this morning. I was intrigued because she has two black children and having an adopted black daughter myself, I did a bit of Google searching to learn something of her story. The top story was from the New York Post and I was very disturbed. The tenor of the article was that her adoption of these two black children by an “ultra-religious” American was sketchy and further went on to say that trans-racial adoptions were fraught with trauma and potential harm! Geez, man. All kids deserve a chance in this world and this woman has the moral character to give these kids a chance. I suppose that I wouldn’t be shocked if it were 1965 but I truly believed we were way beyond this sort of thought process now. Is this going to be the tenor of her upcoming hearings?
The Democrats are going to say whatever it takes to discredit this woman. Whatever good she has done will be overshadowed by their hate and bigotry.
The New York post is a bit trashy and sensationalist. Somewhere between news and tabloid. I would be surprised and disappointed if they brought up her children, but I do think her religious nature will be discussed
We used to regard people with Christian principals as people of high moral standard. Certainly an ideal that we would want in a Chief Justice. Is that no longer the case?..... I know that we all can recite stories of crummy Christians. That’s not what I am talking about. Is having a Christian foundation now considered a negative standard these days?
Personally I don't equate religiosity with morality, but it's not that. It honestly has a lot more to do with the "election year" hypocrisy. That Garland couldn't get a hearing nearly 9 months from the election but she supposedly deserves one 6 weeks from one is quite frustrating. I don't know much about her personally, but there was nothing wrong with Garland either. Just trying to lay it out candidly, and I know it's not a perfect answer. There's also some fear on the left she is a religious zealot, but I haven't personally found that to be well substantiated by her previous rulings.
You have an interesting intersection with Barrett. I personally hate religion and politics comingling because this is supposed to be a secular government but the Christian factions keep pushing and pushing to indoctrinate the halls of government with their belief systems. If you think theocracies are some kind of blessing, try living under one some time. God can and has been used to justify the worst atrocities in human history. When God is on your side, anything can be justified no matter how evil. Better to keep religion out of government. How is Right Wing Conservative Evangelical Law any different than Sharia Law?
I agree with this, but I'm having trouble actually finding places her religious nature has explicitly influenced her rulings. I am opposed to her, but I don't want to be opposed for the wrong reasons.
This is a pretty balanced article from the Nation about Barrett's religion. Amy Coney Barrett’s Extremist Religious Beliefs Merit Examination Her Catholicism is irrelevant. The worldview of the fringe right-wing sect she has grown up in definitely isn’t. By Joan Walsh President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, is a devout Catholic. Obviously, that has no bearing on her fitness to join the court. The Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is a devout Catholic. Justice Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, as are four conservatives currently on the court: Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh. It is hard to make a case that Catholics, who make up roughly 23 percent of Americans, face discrimination when nominated to the high court (though Biden, if elected, would be only the second Catholic president in our history). Raised Catholic (and still a much-derided “cafeteria Catholic”), I’ve grown up sensitive to anti-Catholic prejudice. The questions about Barrett’s religious beliefs are not that. They stem from her long membership in the small, charismatic South Bend, Ind.–based Christian sect People of Praise. Although it is open to all Christian denominations, an estimated 90 percent of its 1,800 members are Catholic, the Jesuit magazine America reported this week, adding,“The group also tends to skew conservative, at least politically,” In a 2018 interview with the South Bend Tribune, Barrett’s home paper, the group’s current “coordinator,” Craig Lent, confirmed that People of Praise opposes abortion, gay rights, and marriage equality, and believes that “men are leaders of their families, but that they should be ‘servant leaders,’ as Jesus Christ was.” Still, Lent insisted the group “stays out of politics,” the paper reported. (Barrett and Trump made no mention of the religious controversy at her nomination ceremony Saturday evening, but the nominee did make a point of talking about her husband, Jesse, as her “partner,” not leader.) Yet many conservatives, and even a few liberals, are making the specious argument that Barrett’s religious views should be off-limits. Writing for the Boston public radio site WBUR, in a piece headlined, “It’s 2020. Stop Talking About Amy Coney Barrett’s ‘Devout’ Catholicism,” Eileen McNamara argues, “Let’s leave her religion out of it, shall we?” McNamara chides Democrats for examining Barrett’s religious views in 2017 hearings on her nomination to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, attacking Senate Judiciary Democratic leader Dianne Feinstein of California in particular. cont'ed...
Feinstein framed her questions clumsily, at best—another reason I wish she had retired rather than run again in 2018. “You have a long history of believing that your religious beliefs should prevail,” Feinstein told Barrett. “The dogma lives loudly within you.” (I don’t even know what that means; it brings to mind The Exorcist.) Barrett’s religious views themselves would not be of concern, if we didn’t have ample evidence that they influence her legal views. And it’s important to note that People of Praise is significantly more restrictive than Catholicism. The group has gotten some exaggerated and unfair coverage—while it traditionally termed male community leaders “heads” and their female counterparts “handmaids,” it didn’t inspire Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (though, to be safe, it changed “handmaids” to “leaders” after the Hulu hit debuted). Cult experts say it’s not a cult. If you check out its Facebook page, most posts are inspiring stories of charity and grace. Also: Its post-Covid events feature people making, distributing, and wearing masks! But there is no denying that the group opposes abortion and gay marriage and bars “out” LGBT people from membership. Its South Bend school, Trinity, where Barrett was on the board for several years, teaches male and female students separately and prohibits dating. In 2017, The New York Times reported that while group members confirmed that Barrett and her husband were part of People of Praise—in fact, both their fathers had been leaders—she didn’t disclose her membership in Senate confirmation documents. Meanwhile, links that mentioned her in the group’s magazine Vine and Branches—some recent, according to the Times—vanished from its website. So why have even liberals insisted that Barrett’s eccentric religious views are off-limits when considering her SCOTUS appointment? “You can’t say that our faith on the one hand has ramifications for politics, law and the common good and on the other hand expect not to answer questions about it,” Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology at Boston College, told America in 2017. Catholic scholar Massimo Faggioli wrote in Politico that Barrett’s association with People of Praise should be “front and center” in the discussion of her qualifications, given the group’s “highly authoritarian internal structure,” which by many accounts requires a “covenant” between members and God. But in Slate, Molly Olmstead warns that conservatives have already set a trap for Democrats who raise questions about Barrett’s affiliation with People of Praise. If they go there, she argues, “the right already has its response ready to go.” But what else is new? The right relies on a culture of grievance, and SCOTUS battles are no different. Clarence Thomas complained about “a high-tech lynching” when asked about genuine charges of workplace sexual harassment, and Brett Kavanaugh’s angry, almost weepy denial of credible (albeit long ago) charges of attempted sexual assault likewise won him confirmation. Trump is currently charging that Biden’s eventual victory, indicated by most polls, will be the result of rampant fraud—an obvious lie—and threatening not to leave the presidency. This is what they do. Still, I understand why people think it’s risky to engage Barrett’s religious views—especially given that Democrats botched it three years ago. There’s already plenty of evidence on the record without examining her relationship with People of Praise. She signed an open letter to Catholic bishops in 2015 supporting traditional gender hierarchy and opposing abortion and marriage equality. She has declared abortion “always immoral” and routinely mischaracterizes the law as Roe v. Wade established it. As my colleague Elie Mystal wrote this weekend, “Barrett has put herself on the record against abortion rights generally, and Roe specifically, more than any person I can think of nominated for the Supreme Court after that 1973 decision.” She is also, as Mystal argues, a hypocrite. She has written that Catholic judges who believe their church’s teachings against the death penalty should recuse themselves from death penalty cases, but she goes out of her way to get involved in cases involving abortion. If she believes her religious views would prevent her from impartially enforcing secular law on capital punishment, why can’t she admit they do the same when it comes to women’s established legal right to make their own health decisions? (At her confirmation hearings, she seemed to backtrack on her suggestion that she would recuse herself from death penalty cases.) Still, as a Catholic I find it offensive to see Barrett’s extremist beliefs equated with Catholicism or the views of American Catholics. We support a woman’s right to choose in most circumstances. An overwhelming majority support contraception, and Catholics are slightly more likely to back marriage equality than other Americans. Most American Catholics support parity in gender relations, and reject the notion that the man is the “head” of the family. (Not even Pope Francis preaches that, though he opposes abortion, contraception, and the ordination of women.) Also as a Catholic, I find it hard to square Barrett’s conservative morality with her decision to accept a nomination from a thrice-married adulterer credibly accused of sexual harassment or assault by between one and two dozen women. I also question the morality and the judicial integrity of anyone who would agree to be nominated by someone who has all but said he expects the Supreme Court to weigh in on his side in the case of election “fraud.” If Barrett won’t recuse herself on the issues of abortion or, now, apparently, the death penalty, she should be required to recuse herself if the matter of Trump’s presidency comes before her as a justice. I doubt that she’d do that, but Democrats should grill her on that moral question just the same. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/amy-coney-barrett-religious/
See, they say that, but I'm gonna need some actual court rulings or legal opinions she's written backing this claim up
Anyone that carries religion to its extreme is dangerous. David Koresh and Osama Binladin come immediately to mind..... Religion does not define character any more than gasoline defines a car. However those of us that live in Christ need him as much as that car needs gasoline to function..... And I wasn’t trying to raise an argument for or against the division of the church and state. But I also do not feel it is a foundation upon which to define a person’s ability or inability to hold a high office. By all appearances that I have been able to find so far, the woman has a very high moral compass. To me anyway, that is a meaningful reason for her to be considered to sit on our high court.
I guess that I don't find that I look to any government official in any capacity for my moral compass. That's not their function. They should perform the duties of their office without regard to anyone's beliefs influencing their decisions. We don't have a religious test in this country to hold political office and that is for a very good reason. Freedom of religion means that nobody's religious beliefs are any more important than anyone else's beliefs. In other words, justice should be blind to all faiths. And then there is the question of people with no faith at all. Why should they be subjected to laws and policies that are religious based when they do not believe in the entire idea of God, which is well within their rights as free Americans? What about those people that worship Satan for reasons of their own? Aren't they entitled to have a government free of references to God? How is their faith and less valid? Just keep God out of politics and we'll all be better off.
I view religion with reservations. The basic Christian values as defined by the Ten Commandments is basically sound. So is “Do unto others has you would have them do unto you.” The troubles come in when people use religion for fund raising purposes and when bad people use it as a shield for their wrong doing. One example is the evangelist who got caught with a hooker. He came on TV crying like a baby, asking for forgiveness. Then, after he gave his word to reform, he got caught doing the same thing. He was on TV crying again. Anybody who gives a dime to that clown is an idiot. I have gained far more respect for religious values after I have seen what the socialists have to offer. Their program is to take from those who have worked and saved and make life worse for those innovate and provide jobs. They offer government ownership and control, and, under the table riches to the politicians who are in power. Look at Biden. He’s made his son rich. Obama now owns an $18 million house on Martha’s Vineyard. All I want to do is keep what I have earned, but that’s too much for the socialists. That’s “immortal” in their world.
Funny how any topic comes down to Socialists. How to bake a pie...Socialists. How to open a jar of pickles....Socialists. How to pay hush money to a porn star....Socialists.
And one could post a similar meme for you about your attitudes toward capitalism and Adam Smith. When you write a paper about how to solve the production and distribution of goods problems inherent in socialism, you can come back here with some of your clownish pictures and have them mean something. Until then you just a programmed ideologue parroted back the misinformation you learned in school or college.
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge. "Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
