Sunday, January 29, 2012

The Supremes Strike Again


The “Ministerial Exemption”

The Supremes have done it again. Churches no longer have to obey secular laws regarding discrimination against the handicapped. It may still turn out that their ruling has a limited effect, i.e., that churches should have the freedom to choose their own ministers and that is all.  But it is by no means clear that they have not opened the door to a gradual change under which churches are allowed to adopt their own legal system, avoiding secular laws. It may seem absurd to extrapolate this ruling to mean that, sometime in the not too distant future, Islamic mosques will be able to institute their own Sharia laws to overwhelm secular laws in many areas. Or, to take a more current example, that Mormon men may once again be able to practice polygamy openly.  Or that the Catholic Church will be able to ban family planning.

Yes, it is a stretch.

But who in their right mind would ever have even considered as a remote possibility that the Supremes would have given us corporate-people (pseudo-people)? That decision surely is the most absurd and destructive decision ever rendered by our high court. It has already transformed our electoral process, turning “free speech” into a bad joke. Speech is no longer free, it is rather open mainly to the “pseudo-people”, since they have all the money.

It is hard to imagine that our highest court has turned into this enemy of our Constitutional safeguards against the imposition of religious bigotry. But it seemed equally hard to imagine that the Court would  pollute the main democratic process by which we elect our leaders.  

So thanks Supremes. You now pose an even greater danger to our democracy than Newt Gingrich . . . and that says a lot.

No comments: