THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito
Justice Alito's Bizarre And Offensive Attack On Atheists https://t.co/nnJzlmOdoT pic.twitter.com/SzgBTtIO8W
— Zaibatsu News Ⓜ️ (@ZaibatsuNews) June 28, 2016
“This case is an ominous sign,” Justice Samuel Alito begins one of the final opinions released on this last day of the Supreme Court term. He then proceeds to complain for 15 pages that pharmacy owners do not have enough control over whether women can fill their birth control prescriptions. Along the way, he manages to imply that anyone who does not believe in a god or gods is inherently immoral…. First, he complains that the state “specifically targeted religious objections.” Then he supports this claim by noting the Board’s warning that “the rule does not allow a pharmacy to refer a patient to another pharmacy to avoid filling the prescription due to moral or ethical objections.” But “moral and ethical” objections are an entirely different concept than “religious” objections. The implication of Alito’s opinion is that the only basis for a moral or ethical viewpoint is religious faith.
It’s distressing enough when Right-wing politicians and others in the American Taliban denigrate those of us who are good without God as “less than” and unworthy of full membership in the America they consider to be their property. That sort of offensive, self-righteous arrogance can be passed off as the product of ignorance and lack of compassion. When a sitting Supreme Court justice does the same thing, it takes on a much more serious tone…because Justice Samuel Alito really should know better, and he can inflict some significant damage via his religious prejudice.
I don’t much care what Alito believes or who/what he worships. That’s his personal choice, one that should in no way be considered superior or inferior to mine or anyone else’s. What he absolutely does NOT have the right is to use his religious faith as a basis for interpreting the law. You’d think a sitting Supreme Court justice would recognize, understand, and honor the separation of Church and State, the biggest reason American governance works. You’d think he’d respect the fact that the Founding Fathers intended to create a system of governance that didn’t duplicate the same mistakes England had made.
Alito claims that the state must also provide an exception for religious objectors or else it is unconstitutionally singling out religion for inferior treatment. “Allowing secular but not religious refusals is flatly inconsistent with” a 1993 Supreme Court decision, Alito claims. “It ‘devalues religious reasons’ for declining to dispense medications ‘by judging them to be of lesser import than nonreligious reasons,’ thereby ‘singl[ing] out’ religious practice ‘for discriminatory treatment.’”
In essence, Alito claims that if a state wants to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill erroneous or fraudulent prescriptions, they must also give special rights to religious objectors. It’s an extraordinary kind of extortion. Give religious objectors what they want, or else you are required to have laws that could endanger your citizens — or, at the very least, laws that could make it very difficult for pharmacies to operate their business.
Alito is certainly free to believe as he chooses; that the essence of freedom of religion- but his God doesn’t get to be our government and he doesn’t get to play the “freedom OF religion doesn’t mean freedom FROM religion” card.
His absurd argument regarding the provision of an exception for religious objectors shows just how far he’s willing to go to blur the line separating Church from State. It also equates denying exceptions for religious objectors with refusing to dispense inaccurate on incorrect prescriptions. Granted, I’m not a great legal mind or a Supreme Court justice…but I’d argue that Justice Alito is only one-for-two on those counts.
The belief that the only basis for a moral or ethical viewpoint is religious faith is as absurd as it is incorrect and offensive. Morals and ethics, it can be argued, are most effective and impactful when they exist independently of religion, which too often founder on doctrinal issues having more to do with social control.
If you honestly believe that you can’t be a moral and ethical person without the knowledge that an unseen and often malevolent force is monitoring your every thought, word, and deed 24/7/365, there’s a very good chance you’re neither moral nor ethical. Indeed, the odds are good you may well be a sociopath.
However ever absurd Alito’s argument vis a vis religion, morality, and ethics may be, his God still doesn’t get to be our government.
