The Christian Right’s staging of Justice Sunday II provides an opportunity to learn more about the men and women behind this event and the people they are presenting as exemplars of Christian values. Let’s focus on the principals, James Dobson and Tony Perkins (and for the others, check out the very useful backgrounder on the speakers at Justice Sunday published by People for the American Way.)

James Dobson the founder and caudillo of Focus on the Family will deliver a prerecorded video message to this second rally for religious supremacism. (He appeared in person at the first Justice Sunday.) Dobson, who may be the most powerful Christian Right leader in the country, routinely uses his national radio broadcasts to demagogue his concerns about what he calls the “unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious” judiciary. He claims judges are “determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they’re out of control….”

Dobson could more accurately say these things about himself: he is unelected and far less accountable for his words and actions than judges at any level. Federal judges are vetted through a rigorous process, and ultimately our elected Senators get to decide who merits a lifetime appointment to a federal judgeship. Dobson wants to reduce that rigor in order to pack the federal bench with as many Christian Right nominees as he and his fellow theocrats can squeeze out of the Bush administration.

Interestingly, in the run up to the first Justice Sunday, Dobson (who is given to rhetorical excesses) compared the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan, and when called on the inappropriateness of the analogy, he later backpeddaled. But if Dobson were actually concerned about the Klan, he could probably get some inside information from the man he hired to run the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins. (The FRC was originally the official lobbying arm of Focus on the Family and Dobson remains on the board of directors.)

Perkins came up through the FOF farm team of state level family policy councils — state think tanks and political and legislative advocacy groups that function much like FRC does in Washington. (For a detailed discussion of these groups, see my 1999 report in The Public Eye magazine, published by Politcal Research Associates, titled Takin’ it to the States: The Rise of Conservative State Level Think Tanks.) Perkins founded and headed the Louisiana Family Forum before Dobson tapped him to head the FRC.

“During his unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 2002 information surfaced about Perkins’ willingness to associate with racist groups,” according to the People for the American Way profile. “During that campaign, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996, Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for Woody Jenkins, a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.”

Dobson hired Perkins to head the FRC in 2003 after Perkins unsucessful 2002 run for the Senate when the Duke connections surfaced.

Max Blumenthal published a detailed account of Perkins secret dealings with Duke in The Nation following the first Justice Sunday. As I commented at the time: “The Christian Right has a long and shifty history with white supremacist groups in the U.S. Certainly many do not and never have embraced racism. Others play ball.”

Throughout American history, racial and religious supremacism have often been deeply intertwined. The racism of the Klan and others has often been justified in terms of Christianity. And many contemporary conservative Christians, (including Ralph Reed) have acknowleged that conservative Christians were generally either on the wrong side, or on the sidelines, of the struggle for racial justice in the U.S. And just as that history informs the present so does the history of the role of the federal courts in ordering the racial desegregation of society, having determined that racial discrimination in all of its forms was and is unconstitutional. Just a generation ago, the leaders of “massive resistance” to the racial integration of the public schools routinely denounced the federal judiciary as unelected tyrants in black robes. This is the same rhetoric we hear today from the leaders of the Christian Right and their allies in Congress.

Consider this history when we hear Tony Perkins making claims like federal judges have not only “become hostile to Christianity” but that “they pose a worse threat to this country than terrorists,” and when James Dobson compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan.

If you believe in abortion rights, and are angry and frustrated by the harrassment, threats and violence against abortion providers, this story is a must read. Its a hair-raising,and ultimately inspiring story of one man fighting back; the community that rallies around him; and the power of a blogger (Moiv) to not only tell the story well, but to reach people who would never have heard the story any other way.

The story is posted over at Talk to Action and elsewhere around the blogosphere:

“Every summer Operation Save America takes a massive, weeklong protest to some fortunate city in America where their director, Flip Benham, leads them in “storming the gates of hell.” A couple of weeks ago, OSA swarmed Colorado in Operation Save Denver. But when Benham’s “saints” and “gentle Christian warriors” pack up to go marauding, they carry along so much hellfire and brimstone that they had plenty left over for Boulder, where they focused the wrath of their angry God upon Dr. Warren Hern.”

Dr. Hern is a provider of exemplary abortion care. He is also a renowned anthropologist, as well as an internationally recognized authority in his highly specialized field of medicine. Together with Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Dr. Hern has been at the top of the antiabortion mob’s hit list for over 20 years.

And this time was no exception….

Read the whole story at Talk to Action

“A focal point of Justice Sunday II apparently will be to underscore the argument that the court has been anti-faith,” writes Melissa Rogers at TomPaine.com. [Family Research Council head Tony] “Perkins has said that the Nashville event will focus on the Supreme Court’s ‘hostility toward religion and Christianity in particular….’”

Rogers is an attorney and visiting professor of religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School.

“It has become fashionable,” she continues, “to say that the court is demonstrating hostility toward faith when it prevents the government from promoting faith for us. But those who make this argument are either ignorant of or willfully blind to the rationales expressed in Supreme Court precedent in this area. The court traditionally has refused to promote or to interfere with religion not because it is anti-religious, but because it wants to leave people free to make choices in matters of faith and to ensure that religious people and organizations may worship as they see fit, rather than as the government sees fit. Further, anyone who suggests that the court has scrubbed religion from the public square is inexplicably missing the rich religious landscape all around us–a landscape that has thrived in the midst of the Supreme Court’s so-called ‘hostility’ toward religion.”

“Family Research Council has every right to hold this event. The precise role religion should play in public life, the exact place where the court should draw the church-state line, and the morality of abortion as well as other policy and legal matters are all legitimate topics for public debate. Religious citizens have the same rights as non-religious citizens to argue their side. But disagreement with those positions is not automatically anti-religious bigotry or hostility to faith.”

Rogers is right on the money. There is no attack on faith, people of faith or religious institutions going on in America. Not by anyone, and certainly not by the courts. This is the strawman that partisans of the Christian Right has been relentlessly knocking down for a generation — abetted by some religious progressives who, attempting to occupy an equally false middle ground, denounce the so called “secular left” in the same terms used by the Christian Right.

This bogus crisis of faith under seige is the gasoline thrown on the fires continuously stoked by both the protestant and Catholic wings of the Christian right in the U.S. — and it will be on spectacular display next Sunday in Nashville.

I don’t often link to diaries on the big community blogs.

But I want to call attention to two diaries over at Booman Tribune for no other reason that I find them extraordinary.

I am not going to say anything about them, except to say that one writer, Ghostdancer’s Way, has a gift for telling the story of his life as a self-described “mixed blood” Native American and the tremendous obstacles he has overcome. The other, Kid Oakland is one of the most talented writers in the blogosphere. Both of them have the capacity to make you smile inside; to give you insight into surprising areas of life; to move you to tears. Don’t be surprised if one or more of those things happens to you.

Next weekend we will be treated to yet another rally for religious supremacism, Justice Sunday II, organized by the Family Research Council. Like the first Justice Sunday, the event will be broadcast to churches and Christian Rightist groups in hopes of whipping up support for some of president Bush’s controversial judicial nominations. And as before, the rally claims that anyone who doesn’t support these nominees is an opponent of “people of faith.”

Meanwhile, a coalition of religious leaders who affirm the importance of separating church and will be hosting events across the country and speaking out in the media. Among these will be Rev. Bob Edgar, president of the National Council of Churches, Dr. Susan Thistlewaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary, and Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, President, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

According to a general press release today:

“Different groups’ plans include a tele-conference Thursday with religious leaders, “Justice Everyday” events around the country and a counter-rally in Nashville preceding the Justice Sunday service on August 14th. That prayer service is being used as a platform for injecting right-wing religious views
into the upcoming Supreme Court nomination battle. Rep. Tom DeLay headlines a list of speakers intent on breaking down the wall between church and state and undermining the independence of the federal judiciary.

Though all groups are not participating in all events, they are united in their support for the careful balance struck in the First Amendment, supporting the free exercise of religion and preventing its imposition on the American people. In events throughout the week and in media appearances.

Here are the highlights:

Media Tele-Press Conference Thursday, August 11, with with progressive religious leaders including Rev. C. Welton Gaddy (Interfaith Alliance), Rev. William G. Sinkford (Unitarian Universalist Association), Rabbi David Saperstein (Religious Action Center) and others.

Freedom & Faith Counter-Event is planned for 3pm on Sunday, August 14th at the Cathedral of Praise church (8200 Macon Road, Cordova, TN), including national and local religious leaders. Details to come.

Across the country people of diverse faiths will participate in “Justice Every Day” activities to provide an alternative vision of justice and the courts to the one being promoted by organizers of Justice Sunday. Townhall meetings, letters to Senators, rallies and paid media will focus on what’s at stake with a new Supreme Court Justice-voting rights, the right to privacy and protections of religious liberty.

Meanwhile, editorial writers are continuing to voice their outrage against the campaign of “intimidation” being waged against the federal judiciary by Tom DeLay and his allies on the Christian right.

“At the end of the day,” writes the Austin American-Statesman, “Americans understand that the courts must be as free as possible of electoral politics.”

“DeLay and the unbending Christian conservatives might come to realize that the hard way — by defeat at the polls.”

My post about Deval Patrick’s keynote speech to the New Democracy Coalition’s 40th Anniversary teach-in on the Voting Rights Act has stirred a lot of discussion not only in Massachusetts, but the greater blogosphere.

First, Michael Wilcox, who was present for the speech, noted in a comment, that “What you can’t tell from the transcript is that Deval got a standing ovation at the end.” Over at his blog, Michael noted the contrast between the life and values of Deval Patrick and John Roberts, president Bush’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court:

“Mr. Patrick spoke eloquently of the importance and the history of this landmark legislation, and the role he had in helping defend it as a young lawyer working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I was struck by the contrast to what I had just read about the work done around this issue by another lawyer, of about the same age, who was working on the other side of the road. [see MSNBC and The New York Times]

“John Roberts, the current nominee for a Supreme Court seat, was working to quash renewal of certain provisions of the Act, and also to defeat a proposed new provision (a response to an unfavorable Supreme Court interpretation). The new provision would make it explicit that discrimination occurred when voting rights were denied, with no burden of proof that the denial was intentional. As Vernon Jordan had declared in a NY Times Op-Ed piece, ‘Intent to discriminate is impossible to prove.’ Roberts was keen on fighting back, and drafted a response for AG William French Smith, warning that the bill would ‘gradually lead to a system of proportional representation based on race or minority language status.’”

Then, conversation went national when a diarist on The Daily Kos, the most popular political blog, picked up the story and in a widely read piece noted “the clash of two young lawyers, John Roberts vs. Deval Patrick.” A difference, diarist Troutfishing notes, that couldn’t be more stark.

Deval Patrick was a young lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when he sued the Governor of Arkansas in a voting rights case. That governor — Bill Clinton — later appointed him Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights — making him the top civil rights enforcement officer in the United States.

This week, Patrick was the keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by the Boston-based New Democracy Coalition, celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.

Here are a few excerpts from his inspiring speech — which is well worth reading in its entirety.

“My first experience with the voting rights act was as a young lawyer with the NAACP legal defense fund. I joined the fund about a year after the act was reauthorized. It had been in effect for twenty years already. And yet we had to sue the then-governor of Arkansas to challenge barriers to registering that persisted. That’s how I first met the man I would serve as president. In fact that settlement formed the basis of what would later become the motor voter law.”

“Just a few years after that, I was in a federal courtroom in Selma, in the shadow of the Edmund Pettus bridge, defending three aging black activists from nearby Perry county who had helped to organize the Selma-to-Montgomery march two decades before. They were indicted by the Reagan administration for trying to use absentee ballots to help poor, elderly black farmers and others vote. Take a minute and absorb the irony: three people who had spent their lives helping these same neighbors get the right to vote then stood accused of trying to steal it. After a bitter and lengthy trial — during which the home of one the defendants was burned — the jury acquitted on all counts.”

“A few years later, I found myself at the justice department, overseeing an active preclearance program and a slew of redistricting cases in the Supreme Court about the constitutional balance between equity and politics. In fact, I remember having to defend the principle in the Supreme Court that evidence of intentional racial discrimination by redistricting officials was still sufficient basis to deny preclearance in a Louisiana parish. (I even got Scalia to vote with me – but not Clarence!) ….”

“Why have we worked so hard to make voting easier and failed so miserably at making voting more meaningful. Fewer citizens care. And I think that has much to do with politics itself.”

“Increasingly, the political class is insular. We have perfected a conversation with ourselves about how elections get won, while everyone else wants to know why it matters…. while insiders and political ‘wags’ focus on who votes, where they live, how the hot-button issues move that vote, what time of day they vote, etc., most people see that the game is not about principle but power and too many just check out…”

“…. while we parse the language, tone and reasoning of supreme court opinions, there are millions of children all over this nation who are left out and left back — who will never become doctors or lawyers or teachers or police officers or much else — who cannot even imagine coming into a hall like this one — whose latent idealism will never be freed to grow into compassion and action — because there was no teacher, no friend, no one like you, who by action or example, quietly inspired them; showed them how to look up, not down; helped them to see their stake in their own and their neighbors dreams; touched a life in some private, but powerful way, and gave someone else a reason to hope.”

“And so what is the lesson of the civil rights struggle? What is the perspective without which America has no hope of becoming what she has dedicated herself to become? That civil rights today is, as it has always been, a struggle for the American conscience. And that we all have a stake in that struggle. so, when an African American stands up for a quality, integrated education, he stands up for all of us. When a Latina stands up for the chance to elect the candidate of her choice, she stands up for all of us. When a person who uses a wheelchair insists on access to a public building, she stands up for all of us. when a Jew stands up against those who vandalize his place of worship, he stands up for all of us. Because civil rights is still about good citizenship. its still about the perennial American challenge to reach out to one another — across the arbitrary and artificial barrier of race, across gender, across ethnicity, across disability and class and religion and sexual orientation, perhaps most of all across our fear and hopelessness — to seize our common humanity and see our stake in that.”

Oh, and by the way. Deval Patrick is running for governor of Massachusetts. This speech can be found in its entirety on his campaign web site.

He could use your help.

I confess that my crystal ball is more like a pint glass, so it is fitting that fellow MA political blogger Left Center Left and I have wagered a pint and a road trip on an aspect of the unfolding gubernatorial campaign here in Massachusetts.

It all started when I predicted that “Deval Patrick’s race for governor of Massachusetts will be one of the most talked about, reported on and influential races for any office anywhere in the United States in 2006.”

Left Center Left felt that this was either brilliantly prescient or an absurd overstatement — but apparently leaned to the latter. He countered with the prediction that “no race in Massachusetts this time around will be influential, talked about or heavily reported on outside our borders.”

So yesterday, I proposed that whomever’s prediction turns out to have more reality to it receive a pint at the establishment of their choosing, and that we allow our fellow political bloggers to judge. Left Center Left has graciously accepted. If he wins, I will travel to an exotic neighborhood in Boston and serve him a pint of Boddington’s at the Brendan Behan. If I win, he will head west to Northampton, and provide me with a pint of Berkshire Brewing Company’s Steel Rail at Packard’s.

So far, I see that bloggers Michael Wilcox, Nohomissives, Charley on the MTA and Left in Lowell are in for the judging or the drinking or both. But all are welcome to join in the discussion and the pint at the end of the journey.

Admittedly, the standard by which to measure whose prediction has more reality to it, could be a bit subjective. But I think that both of our predictions are strongly stated enough for others to say who was mostly right or mostly wrong on this. (Thanks to various search engines and Google News, we are rarely more than a few keystrokes away from knowing quite a bit about what the news media and the blogosphere is doing and saying.)

So as Left Center Left wrote today, “Bet’s on.”

Out here in the blogopshere, we are a pretty feisty bunch. We are all in this together — but we do not always see eye-to-eye. And sometimes, we need to sort out our differences of opinion. Like this time.

The Boston-based Left Center Left has responded to my recent post about Deval Patrick’s campaign for governor of Massachusetts — and has offered a radically different prediction regarding the level of interest the rest of the nation will have in his candidacy:

“Frederick Clarkson considers the rising momentum of the Patrick campaign, then engages in what has to be either brilliant anti-CW [conventional wisdom] prescience or absurd overstatement: ‘Deval Patrick’s race for governor of Massachusetts will be one of the most talked about, reported on and influential races for any office anywhere in the United States in 2006. He is progressive, prochoice, pro-marriage equality, antideath penalty — and he has a good shot at being the next Democratic governor of Massachusetts.’ Let me venture this: no race in Massachusetts this time around will be influential, talked about or heavily reported on outside our borders.”

Hmm. LCL’s prediction could be brilliantly prescient (in a CW kind of way), or absurdly overstated.

So there you have it, blogospherians: Two pretty clear positions staked out well before the governor’s race starts to really heat up this fall. Whose prediction will turn out to be brilliantly prescient — or absurdly overstated? What do you think? Only one of us can be right (or even mostly right) about this.

So here is my proposition:

If my prediction holds up better than LCL’s, I would like a pint of Berkshire Brewing Company’s Lost Sailor India Pale Ale at a bar in Northampton. And if LCL’s prediction turns out to have more reality to it than mine — the choice of brew (or comparable beverage) and an excellent location for consumption, is his.

I invite our fellow MA political bloggers to referee — and to join us when the loser brings the winner his pint.

Justice Sunday II, the Family Research Council’s retread rally for religious supremacism slated for August 14th in Nashville, has shaken up its line up.

Country singer Lee Greenwood originally scheduled to appear is out — and House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay(R-TX) is in. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN, once considered the favored candidate of the Christian Right for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, seems to have fallen out of favor.

DeLay and Frist have long hitched thier political futures to the leaders of the Christian Right. Speaking at a secret conclave hosted by the Family Research Council early this year, they each pledged their fealty to the lords of the Christian Right. The tape of the proceedings obtained by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and released to the media generated national outrage.

Sen. Frist who was the marquee pol at the first Justice Sunday, (via video) faced a firestorm of criticism for appearing with gang of theocrats who had equated opposition to president Bush’s controversial nominees to the federal bench, with opposition to “people of faith.”

Nevertheless, Frist was not invited to speak this time — even though the rally is being held in his home state of Tennessee. He has apparently fallen out of favor for having flip-flopped on stem cell research.

In any case, over the next ten days, the event promises to draw national attention, considerable opposition, and throw into sharp relief the still-formidable role of the theocratic Christian Right in national politics.