To listen to George W. Bush, Tom Delay, Bill Frist and Rick Santorum, the entire court system in the US is populated by "activist judges" who "rewrite" the law with their own personal interpretations. Let me translate that doublespeak into common language. "Activist judge" is a judge who makes a ruling that goes against the RRR agenda espoused by the current misadministration. "Rewrite" means interpret the law according to the US Constitution rather than according to long-standing traditions that have no real foundation in actual law.

The above four politicians (along with many others) decried the decision of Lawrence v Texas that overturned the Texas sodomy laws: laws that pertained ONLY to gay men. (And, as I think I've mentioned before, while the grand state of Texas outlawed sodomy (which includes oral sex in Texas (and most other states)) among consenting adult males, it permitted it between consenting adults of the opposite gender in addition to allowing bestiality.) Santorum claimed there IS no privacy clause in the US Constitution. (Sen. Santorum needs to read the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.) The others claimed that the "activist" judges of the US Supreme Court were undermining the US Constitution, but in truth, they were only upholding it by overturning a law that was unconstitutional. How many people support the law is irrelevant. If the entire white race (more than 75% of the US population) wanted to reinstitute slavery and wrote it into law, the US Supreme Court would be utterly correct in overturning such a law as unconstitutional. If the civil rights of one individual are violated by a law, then such a law is unconstitutional regardless of how many people support it and such a law MUST be overturned by our courts.

When the state of Massachusettes ruled that gays were unconstitutionally being denied the right to marry, once again the pocketed politicians of the radical religious right started screaming about "activist judges" who were thwarting the will of the American people. Again, the "will of the American people" is not what ultimately rules this country because we do not live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional republic, which means the will of the people rules only if the will of the people does not violate the civil rights of even one individual. There is an alarming piece of legislation being posed called the "Constitutional Restoration Act" that would prohibit any federal court from hearing any case that involved complaint against a public official involving said official's "acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." In other words, good-bye freedom of religion.

Just last month, Congress took an unprecedented step of intervening in a personal family matter by passing a law that ordered the federal courts to once again review the Terry Schiavo case despite the fact that every single court that every made a ruling on that case had ruled the same way. (The only courts that one might be able to say didn't rule the same were those who granted injunctions to stop the removal/order the reinsertion of her feeding tube until the case could be reviewed by a higher court.) And despite the fact that Congress over-stepped one of the checks and balances in our system of government by ordering the courts to review a case, it was the judges who upheld Michael Schiavo's legal right to make choices for his wife— a right that every single heterosexual married couple has in this country— who were called "activist judges".

But I'd like to introduce you to a real activist judge. His name is Cale J. Bradford and he's the Marion Superior Court's chief judge. Last year, Judge Bradford was hearing a divorce case that came before him. The case involved parents of an 9 year old boy who was attending a nearby Catholic elementary school. However, the parents of the boy were not Catholic— they're Wiccan. Here's where the judge went activist. He inserted a clause into the final divorce decree— pay attention now, because this is big— a clause that prevents either parent from exposing their son to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals." Both parents vehemently protested the inclusion of such a clause, but the judge refused to remove it because a social service's report said that such exposure might cause the child confusion. Is that not outrageous?

My two kids were raised in a non-mainstream faith. They had no problems with confusion regarding faith until they were exposed to the fundamentalist faith of their father's new wife. I remember my youngest coming home one day in tears from a visitation with his dad when he was about eight because he said the people at the church had tried to make him drink blood. It turns out the Sunday school was having a recreation of the Last Supper and my son didn't understand that the grape juice he was given was a representation of the blood of Jesus. I attempted, at that point, to try to get a court order prohibiting by ex-husband from taking them to that church, but my attorney told me it would be a waste of my time and money since the courts saw no harm in exposing the child to different faiths.

Cases like mine— where one parent seeks to prevent their child(ren)'s exposure to a faith different from theirs— are the norm. In this case, however, you have parents who share a faith, who both want to teach that faith to their child and have that faith reinforced by the other parent and yet are ordered by a judge not to teach that faith to their own child! What is this judge thinking? Where is the outrage from Bush, Frist, Delay and Santorum in this clear-cut case of an activist judge utterly trampling on the First Amendment right of freedom of religion?

Sadly, cases like this are not unusual. They're not usually as blatant as this one is, and most don't gain the national attention that this one is getting, but they happen every day. And with this current misadministration in office, it's only going to get worse. The goal of the RRR is to use the Republican party to install a theocracy based on Judeo-Christian beliefs— and a very fundamentalist interpretation of Judeo-Christian beliefs at that. If that day should arrive, it won't just be the "activist judges" and the "liberals" that they come for. It will also be the Catholics (who aren't Christians in the eyes of most fundamentalists), the atheists, the pagans, the pro-choice and anyone else who doesn't agree with their narrow-minded bigotry disguised as religion.

I once again leave you with the words of Pastor Martin Niemoeller:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Speak up, America.

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