Smart people saying smart things (9.21)

Smart people saying smart things (9.21) September 21, 2015

Steve Schmidt on NPR’s “Morning Edition”

We’re at this moment in time when there’s a severability between conservatism and issues. Conservatism is now expressed as an emotional sentiment. That sentiment is contempt and anger.

Amy Davidson, “What Does Marriage Equality Have to Do With Dred Scott?”

In the Fourteenth Amendment, which was added after the Civil War, the due-process clause is followed, in the same sentence, by the equal-protection clause, which says that a state cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Roberts Court was considering Obergefell as a Fourteenth Amendment case. Kennedy, after arguing, based on a long series of Court precedents, that marriage is a fundamental right, relies on both clauses. He writes that they inform each other, a line of reasoning that Roberts refuses to deal with by saying that it is “quite frankly, difficult to follow.” It is not. The Fourteenth Amendment, with its joining of these concerns, was consciously framed as a riposte to Dred Scott; and this is Obergefell’s lineage. But there are even more ways in which, after reading the Dred Scott opinions, that one can see that Roberts got it backward.

Reggie L. Williams in Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus (quoted by Alan Bean)

The project of theology in colonialism was split in this [European] assembly; it was primarily doctrinal and conceptual, lacking content for Christian conduct. That split was necessary to justify the domination of foreign bodies that accompanied classifying human beings by race, securing the advantages of whiteness, and accommodating the practices of colonialism.

Benjamin E. Park, “Kim Davis and the Anxieties of Christian America”

One of the dangers of seeing America as a “Christian Nation” is that it infuses religious meaning into every political action. Conservative appeals to religious freedom, then, are often not so much born of a desire for everyone to believe and practice what they wish, because that form of liberty would threaten America’s righteousness and moral foundation; rather, they reaffirm an unspoken assumption that religious freedom is meant to guarantee the perpetuation of true religious belief and practice in the face of threatening opposition, whether secular or heretic. In other words, the appeals aim to perpetuate the myth of Christian America.

George P. Topulos, M.D., Michael F. Greene, M.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D., “Planned Parenthood at Risk” in the New England Journal of Medicine

We strongly support Planned Parenthood not only for its efforts to channel fetal tissue into important medical research but also for its other work as one of the country’s largest providers of health care for women, especially poor women. In 2013, the most recent year for which data are available, Planned Parenthood provided services to 2.7 million women, men, and young people during 4.6 million health center visits. At least 60 percent of these patients benefited from public health coverage programs such as the nation’s family-planning program (Title X) and Medicaid. At least 78 percent of these patients lived with incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Planned Parenthood’s services included nearly 400,000 Pap tests, nearly 500,000 breast examinations, nearly 4.5 million tests for sexually transmitted illnesses (including HIV), and treatments. The contraception services that Planned Parenthood delivers may be the single greatest effort to prevent the unwanted pregnancies that result in abortions.


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