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Where the Christian Right Meets Neo-Confederacy [Updated]
A January 1, 2006 op-ed by Parker from The Birmingham News, is currently posted over at the Alliance Defense Fund, a key Christian Right legal strategy organization.
Parker starts out with a breathtaking assertion, by contemporary standards, regarding the Alabama Supreme Court's recent overturning of a death sentence of a juvenile. He declares that the Alabama court should ignore the U.S. Supreme Court's ban on juvenille executions because it is "the unconstitutional opinion of five liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court," and is therefore not binding. He invokes the discredited notion of "interposition," which argues that the states may defy the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
But a diarist on The Daily Kos has an excellent analysis of Parker's piece, noting Parker's neo-confederate ties -- and neo-confederate legal theory. Here is a taste:
When Justice Parker calls for Alabama to interpose its authority on that of the Supreme Court, he not only flouts the Constitution, but he also proclaims his allegiance to the same lawless arguments which drove post-Brown resistence to integration. Given his ties to white supremacy, this shouldn't come as a surprise.Check out the whole piece. In Parker's op-ed he also repeats a refrain I have heard from Christian Reconstructionist leaders of the Constitution Party, the third largest political party in the U.S. (Christian Reconstructionists generally believe in creating an Old Testament style theocracy based on what they call "Biblical Law.") Parker claims that decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court "bind only the parties to the particular case." So for example, since in thier view, like Parker's Supreme Court decisions apply only to the parties before them and do not constitute the law of the land, then Constitution Party candidates for president and vice-president argued in speeches and in a press conference after thier nominations that states should not view Roe v. Wade as the law of the land; that state or local officials should shut down clincs and prosecute doctors for murder. I wrote about this the following year in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy in 1997. [Howard] Phillips and [Herb]Titus argued that Roe v. Wade and other Supreme Court decisions are unconstitutional and should be neither enforced nor obeyed. These decisions included overturning the "male only" admissions policy a the state sponsored Virginia Military Institute, and declaring unconstitutional Colorado's Amendment 2, which would have barred localities from enacting civil rights protections for gays and lesbians. Titus said that if he and Phillips were elected they would appoint federal district attorneys who would prosecute abortion providers on murder charges. Although a candidate espousing such views may never be elected, similar opinions are beginning to enter higher levels of public discourse."
Where the Christian Right Meets Neo-Confederacy [Updated] | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
Where the Christian Right Meets Neo-Confederacy [Updated] | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
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