Sometimes when I drive home early enough, I catch the tail end of Sean Hannity's Hate Hour radio show on 1210 am, "The Big Talker," in Philadelphia, PA. This is only because the idiot FM stations are in their commercials and Howard Eskin is on 610 WIP (the sports station). As aside, Eskin, while sharing our politics, is evil. But I digress.
Yesterday, he had some Republican Senator on, although I did not catch his name as I turned the station because I was angry.
However, the discussions of how Judge Roberts' wife is a member of Feminists for Life and how that influences him are called a horrid attack on his wife.
Sean Hannity:"Have the Democrats no decency? How dare they attack his wife?"
(Pssst...Sean....remember a woman by the name of Hillary Clinton....wife of President Clinton...you attacked her pretty good. Teresa Heinz Kerry...remember her? Yeah, another wife of a presidential candidate....Tipper Gore...yeah, you went there too.)
Then the unindentified Senator concurred in Sean's righteousness, but went further. It would seem that inquiring into how Judge Roberts' faith and religion would influence his judicial thinking and rulings is also improper. Indeed, it is un-American.
Senator: "The Left just hates people of religion and faith, and would prefer that all religious people just stay to the sidelines of government while the secular ruled supreme."
At this point, I would like to point out some statistical data from 2001-2002:
- 81% of American adults identify themselves with a specific religion.
- 76.5% (159 million) of Americans identify themselves as Christian. (This is a major slide from 86.2% in 1990. Identification with Christianity has suffered a loss of 9.7 percentage points in 11 years -- about 0.9 percentage points per year. This decline is identical to that observed in Canada between 1981 and 2001. If this trend continues, then by about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S..)
- 52% of Americans identified themselves as Protestant.
- 24.5% are Roman Catholic.
- 1.3% are Jewish.
- 0.5% are Muslim, followers of Islam.
- The fastest growing religion (in terms of percentage) is Wicca -- a Neopagan religion that is sometimes referred to as Witchcraft. Numbers of adherents went from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001. Their numbers of adherents are doubling about every 30 months. Wiccans in Australia have a very similar growth pattern, from fewer than 2,000 in 1996 to 9,000 in 2001. In Canada, Wiccans and other Neopagans showed the greatest percentage growth of any faith group. They totaled 21,080 members in 1991, an increase of 281% when compared with 1990.
- 14.1% do not follow any organized religion. This is an unusually rapid increase -- almost a doubling -- from only 8% in 1990. There are more Americans who say they are not affiliated with any organized religion than there are Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans taken together. The unaffiliated vary from a low of 3% in North Dakota to 25% in Washington State. "The six states with the highest percentage of people saying they have no religion are all Western states, with the exception of Vermont at 22%."
A USA Today/Gallup Poll in January of 2002 showed that almost half of American adults appear to be alienated from organized religion. If current trends continue, most adults will not call themselves religious within a few years. Results include:
- About 50% consider themselves religious (down from 54% in December 1999)
- About 33% consider themselves "spiritual but not religious" (up from 30%)
- About 10% regard themselves as neither spiritual or religious.
So, what does data tell us? First, the unidentified Republican Senator is partly right in that religion and people of faith are a very important part of American life. He is right that people of faith, given their representation in the American public, absolutely should be involved in government. But what Sean Hannity wants, and what the Republican Senator wants, is government run by the religious to the exclusion of the secular, which is the opposite of what they falsely claim Democrats want, government run by the secular to the exclusion of the religious. And I imagine what they really want is the government by evangelical Christians to the exclusion of all else. And given the data, that would be the tyranny of the minority.
The data proves that neither extreme is warranted. Government must be inclusive. All are welcome to participate. And if someone is nominated to one of the most important positions in our government, a position that is guaranteed for life and that is without public scrunity, all inquiries are warranted.
If a Jewish person was nominated, questions about the influence of his religion will be asked and conservatives would be fine with it. How do I know that? Because when Orthodox Jew Joseph Lieberman was nominated for the Vice Presidency in 2000, the issue of him not working on the sabbath was openly discussed to the point that Mr. Lieberman had to comment on it. Yet, these people discussing the affect of Mr. Lieberman's religion and faith on his public duties were not called anti-religious or Un-American.
So, Mr. Hannity and Mr. Republican Senator, we Democrats are simply doing our constitutional duty to advise and consent on the President's nomination. That is our job. A man's religion and faith and their affect on his public duties are perfectly valid inquiries. Indeed, if the shoe were on the other foot, and a Democratic President had appointed someone with no faith, I can safely say you would be inquiring as to how the nominee's lack of faith will affect his future rulings. Further, looking at the man's wife and her affliations are also valid and especially relevant given that abortion is a huge issue facing the court and society. She is not being disrespected. She is not being attacked.
