(1) Harvard professor: Start treating Christian conservatives like Nazis
In a Friday blog post at Balkinization, Mark Tushnet said conservatives and Christians have lost the culture wars, and now the question is “how to deal with the losers.”
“My own judgment is that taking a hard line (‘You lost, live with it’) is better than trying to accommodate the losers,” he wrote.
“Trying to be nice to the losers didn’t work well after the Civil War, nor after Brown,” Mr. Tushnet wrote, citing the Supreme Court case on segregation. “And taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945.”
Mr. Tushnet said liberals should stop being so hesitant to advance their agenda through the judiciary, saying a majority of federal judges have been appointed by Democratic presidents, and they need not worry “reversal by the Supreme Court” now that former Associate Justice Antonin Scalia is dead.
(2) ACLU sues Mississippi over ’Religious Rights’ law (AP)
The men suing the state, Nykolas Alford and Stephen Thomas, are both 26. They live in the eastern Mississippi city of Meridian and have been engaged since 2014. They said they hope to marry in Mississippi.
“Our grandparents experienced discrimination for being black, and my parents probably did as well,” Alford said. “My parents were born in the ’60s and grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, and so it’s always been a part of our lives. We thought this movement was over, you know? We thought that we would be fine. We thought that we would be equal, and here we are today saying that we’re not, and we want equality.”
The couple and the ACLU are asking a federal judge to declare that House Bill 1523 violates the equal-protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment and to issue an injunction blocking the state from enforcing the law.
(3) Evangelicals raise hell over Trump’s VP search, by Katie Glueck (POLITICO)
Donald Trump’s primary run left him with few friends among evangelical leaders, who are now weighing sitting out the general election entirely. But there is one way, they say, to win them back: picking a vice presidential candidate socially conservative enough to compensate for Trump’s many heresies.Several of the country’s top socially conservative leaders, from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council to Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, said Trump’s choice of running mate would be among the most important factors in deciding whether to activate their extensive grass-roots networks on on the real-estate billionaire’s behalf.
Several of the country’s top socially conservative leaders, from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council to Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, said Trump’s choice of running mate would be among the most important factors in deciding whether to activate their extensive grass-roots networks on on the real-estate billionaire’s behalf. …
(4) David French: North Carolina Bathroom Law — Obama Administration Provokes a Legal Crisis
A public-relations battle over bathrooms and showers has transformed into a fight over the meaning and indeed authority of the Constitution itself. In its zeal to advance the sexual revolution, the Obama administration has defied the will of Congress, unilaterally rewritten federal law without even bothering to go through a statutory rulemaking process, and now seeks to bring a sovereign state to heel through a combination of threats and lawsuits.
Let’s make this simple. Title VII prohibits private and public employers (including state governments) from discriminating on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.” Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating on the basis of “sex.” Neither statute prohibits sexual-orientation or gender-identity discrimination. For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have sought to amend federal law through the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would essentially add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes within federal nondiscrimination law. For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have failed. ENDA hasn’t passed even when Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.
(5) 6 things to watch at the Methodist General Conference (RNS)
Beginning Tuesday (May 10), 864 delegates, half of them clergy, will converge on the Oregon Convention Center in Portland for 11 days for the General Conference. More than 40 percent of those delegates will come from outside the U.S. They’ll consider 1,043 proposals … Here are six of the most talked-about issues:
- LGBT inclusion
- Abortion
- Religious Freedom
- Welcoming immigrants and refugees
- Divestment from companies supporting Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- Gun violence
Please read our comment policy before commenting.