Conservatives’ Dishonest Use of ‘Religious Bigotry’ To Deflect Attention From Nominee’s Disturbing Records
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Happy New Year! Well, for most of us it should be — unless you are fighting to protect our courts. New year, same old tactic by conservatives, who are hoping to insulate narrow-minded judicial nominees from scrutiny by smearing people who ask critical questions about their records and rhetoric.
This dishonest “religious bigotry” strategy has been around as long as the organized effort to shift the federal judiciary to conservatism and reverse decades of precedent that protect Americans’ legal and constitutional rights. In the recent past, for example, these groups have charged some Catholic senators with wanting to keep Catholics off the federal bench.
The latest smear is being pushed by the notoriously right-wing editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which has run an attack on Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono. The Journal’s editorial is an over-the-top response to written questions submitted by Sens. Harris and Hirono to federal court nominee Brian Buescher about his commitment to upholding legal equality for LGBTQ Americans and American women’s legal right to abortion.
In their questions, the senators noted Buescher’s long-time membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization that does much laudable charitable work, but which was also a top funder of anti-marriage-equality efforts and supports restrictions on federal family-planning funds. Before the 2016 election, the group’s influential leader declared that Catholics cannot vote for candidates who support abortion rights .
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Where is the deflection? There's nothing to deflect from because the questions don't cite a judicial record. They just identify a religious affiliation and the question asked presumes a bias.
The affiliations show a history that raises a concern. A person who belongs to an anti-gay organization may be unable to be unbiased when it comes to legal rights for gays, so the question is worth asking to make sure he will be able to uphold his oath of office.
How do you prove a comment like that.