Cathy Young writes:
On April 24, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is set, at the time of this writing, to participate in a “Justice Sunday” telecast at which America’s most prominent evangelical leaders will lambaste the Democrats who are blocking conservative Bush nominees for federal judicial posts. A flier for the event, organized by the Family Research Council, decries “the filibuster against people of faith,” accusing Democrats of an anti-religious bigotry comparable to “racial bias.” . . .
This is not the first time Republicans have made this charge. Two years ago, Senate Democrats blocked the nomination of Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr., an orthodox Catholic with strong antiabortion views who had described Roe v. Wade as an “abomination,” to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Conservative activists complained of anti-Christian bigotry and ran an ad showing a “Catholics need not apply” sign over a courthouse door.
Of course, the issue isn’t simply “faith,” but a nominee’s views on public policy issues. A pro-abortion-rights litmus test for federal judges may be wrong, but it’s preposterous to claim, as some conservatives have, that it amounts to a religious test that disqualifies “serious” Catholics and evangelical Protestants from public office. Surely, it would apply just as much to atheists or agnostics who oppose abortion on secular grounds.
What if the issue was not abortion? Let’s say that a Democratic president had nominated to the federal bench a judge known for passionate, Christian-based hostility to capital punishment. Would it be “anti-Christian” for Republicans to oppose the nomination? To take an even more ridiculous example: Would it be “religious bigotry” to oppose the presidential candidacy of a devout Quaker who declared that his policies would be rooted in his religious belief that all use of military force is wrong? . . .
Young’s analysis strikes me as quite right. One can plausibly fault the Senate Democrats’ opposition to the President’s judicial nominees on various grounds, but “religious bigotry” is not one of them. As best I can tell, the Senators care about the nominee’s politics, ideology on contested legal questions, and likely future votes on such questions, not about the nominee’s religion.
Of course, there may well be a correlation between certain political or judicial views and religion. But as Young’s examples show, this doesn’t turn political and ideological hostility — whether that hostility is justified or excessive — into religious bigotry.
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