#monuments can be erected without being accurate or moral

[gehayi]

History is the polemics of the victor, William F. Buckley once said. Not so in the United States, at least not regarding the Civil War. As soon as the Confederates laid down their arms, some picked up their pens and began to distort what they had done and why. The resulting mythology took hold of the nation a generation later and persists — which is why a presidential candidate can suggest, as Michele Bachmann did in 2011, that slavery was somehow pro-family and why the public, per the Pew Research Center, believes that the war was fought mainly over states’ rights.

The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation they spread, which has manifested in our public monuments and our history books.

Take Kentucky, where the legislature voted not to secede. Early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found “no enthusiasm, as we imagined and hoped, but hostility.” Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones.

Neo-Confederates also won parts of Maryland. In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) put a soldier on a pedestal at the Rockville courthouse. Maryland, which did not secede, sent 24,000 men to the Confederate armed forces, but it also sent 63,000 to the U.S. Army and Navy. Still, the UDC’s monument tells visitors to take the other side: “To our heroes of Montgomery Co. Maryland: That we through life may not forget to love the thin gray line.”

In fact, the thin gray line came through Montgomery and adjoining Frederick counties at least three times, en route to Antietam, Gettysburg and Washington. Robert E. Lee’s army expected to find recruits and help with food, clothing and information. It didn’t. Instead, Maryland residents greeted Union soldiers as liberators when they came through on the way to Antietam. Recognizing the residents of Frederick as hostile, Confederate cavalry leader Jubal Early ransomed $200,000 from them lest he burn their town, a sum equal to about $3 million today. But Frederick now boasts a Confederate memorial, and the manager of the town’s cemetery — filled with Union and Confederate dead — told me, “Very little is done on the Union side” around Memorial Day. “It’s mostly Confederate.”

Neo-Confederates didn’t just win the battle of public monuments. They managed to rename the war, calling it the War Between the States, a locution born after the conflict that was among the primary ways to refer to the war in the middle of the 20th century, after which it began to fade. Even “Jeopardy!” has used this language.

Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded over states’ rights. Yet when each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration of the Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede From the Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended the delegates: “Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa.” Governments there had exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some no longer let slave owners “transit” across their territory with slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding against. Texas also made clear what it was seceding for — white supremacy:

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

Despite such statements, neo-Confederates erected monuments that flatly lied about the Confederate cause. For example, South Carolina’s monument at Gettysburg, dedicated in 1963, claims to explain why the state seceded: “Abiding faith in the sacredness of states rights provided their creed here.” This tells us nothing about 1863, when abiding opposition to states’ rights provided the Palmetto State’s creed. In 1963, however, its leaders did support states’ rights; politicians tried desperately that decade to keep the federal government from enforcing school desegregation and civil rights.

So thoroughly did this mythology take hold that our textbooks still stand history on its head and say secession was for, rather than against, states’ rights. Publishers mystify secession because they don’t want to offend Southern school districts and thereby lose sales. Consider this passage from “The American Journey,” probably the largest textbook ever foisted on middle school students and perhaps the best-selling U.S. history textbook:

The South Secedes

Lincoln and the Republicans had promised not to disturb slavery where it already existed. Nevertheless, many people in the South mistrusted the party, fearing that the Republican government would not protect Southern rights and liberties. On December 20, 1860, the South’s long-standing threat to leave the Union became a reality when South Carolina held a special convention and voted to secede.

The section reads as if slavery was not the reason for secession. Instead, the rationale is completely vague: White Southerners feared for their “rights and liberties.” On the next page, the authors are more precise: White Southerners claimed that since “the national government” had been derelict ” — by refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and by denying the Southern states equal rights in the territories — the states were justified in leaving the Union.”

“Journey” offers no evidence to support this claim. It cannot. No Southern state made any such charge against the federal government in any secession document I have ever seen. Abraham Lincoln’s predecessors, James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce, were part of the pro-Southern wing of the Democratic Party. For 10 years, the federal government had vigorously enforced the Fugitive Slave Act. Buchanan supported pro-slavery forces in Kansas even after his own minion, territorial governor and former Mississippi slave owner Robert Walker, ruled that they had won an election only by fraud. The seven states that seceded before Lincoln took office had no quarrel with “the national government.”

Teaching or implying that the Confederate states seceded for states’ rights is not accurate history. It is white, Confederate-apologist history. “Journey,” like other U.S. textbooks, needs to be de-Confederatized. So does the history test we give to immigrants who want to become U.S. citizens. Item No. 74 asks them to “name one problem that led to the Civil War.” It then gives three acceptable answers: slavery, economic reasons and states’ rights. (No other question on this 100-item test has more than one right answer.) If by “economic reasons” it means issues with tariffs and taxes, which most people infer, then two of its three “correct answers” are wrong.

The legacy of this thinking pervades Washington, too. The dean of the Washington National Cathedral has noted that some of its stained-glass windows memorialize Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. There’s a statue of Albert Pike, Confederate general and reputed leader of the Arkansas Ku Klux Klan, in Judiciary Square.

The Army runs Fort A.P. Hill, named for a Confederate general whose men killed African American soldiers after they surrendered; Fort Bragg, named for a general who was not only Confederate but also incompetent; and Fort Benning, named for a general who, after he helped get his home state of Georgia to secede, made the following argument to the Virginia legislature:

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction . . . that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. . . . If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain that slavery is to be abolished. . . . By the time the North shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. . . . The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile Earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.

With our monuments lying about secession, our textbooks obfuscating what the Confederacy was about and our Army honoring Southern generals, no wonder so many Americans supported the Confederacy until recently. We can see the impact of Confederate symbols and thinking on Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine in a Charleston, S.C., church, but other examples abound. In his mugshot, Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, wore a neo-Confederate T-shirt showing Abraham Lincoln and the words “Sic semper tyrannis.” When white students in Appleton, Wis. — a recovering “sundown town” that for decades had been all white on purpose — had issues with Mexican American students in 1999, they responded by wearing and waving Confederate flags, which they already had at home, at the ready.

Across the country, removing slavery from its central role in prompting the Civil War marginalizes African Americans and makes us all stupid. De-Confederatizing the United States won’t end white supremacy, but it will be a momentous step in that direction.

Also, I urge you to take a look at these awful monuments at Vice.com:

Yup, America Still Has a Ton of Racist Monuments (December 13, 2015)

[maxwellyjordan]

Argument preview: Justices to consider constitutionality of cross-shaped war memorial on public land

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post ran on December 10, 2018,, as an introduction to this blog’s symposium on The American Legion v. American Humanist Association, as well as at Howe on the Court, where it was originally published.

Over the years, the Supreme Court has sometimes struggled to explain when and why religious symbols are permitted in the public sphere and when they are not. Next Wednesday, the justices will hear oral argument in a dispute over the constitutionality of a cross that sits on a traffic median in the suburbs outside Washington, D.C. The challengers say that the cross is an illegal government endorsement of Christianity, while its defenders counter that the cross is simply a secular war memorial. The justices’ eventual opinion will likely decide the fate of the cross, but the ruling could also clarify – or potentially even revamp – the Supreme Court’s test for resolving these kinds of challenges.

The Constitution’s establishment clause bars the government from both establishing an official religion and favoring one religion over another. In 1971, in a case called Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court struck down state programs that provided financial support for private schools, including religious ones. At the same time, the justices also outlined a test for courts to use to determine whether a government law or practice violates the establishment clause. They concluded that the law or practice will pass constitutional muster if it has a secular purpose, its principal effect does not advance or inhibit religion, and it does not create an “excessive entanglement with religion.”

Since then, the court has both tweaked the Lemon test and criticized it, with the late Justice Antonin Scalia famously comparing it to a “ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.” And in a 2005 case called Van Orden v. Perry, the court rejected an establishment clause challenge to the display of a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas state capitol without relying on the Lemon test.

Because Justice Stephen Breyer served as the crucial fifth vote to leave the monument in place, his concurring opinion in Van Orden provided the governing rule for the case. Breyer declined to apply the Lemon test, stressing that there is “no single mechanical formula that can accurately draw the constitutional line in every case.” Instead, he explained, judges should “exercise legal judgment,” staying “faithful to the underlying purposes of the” establishment clause and taking “account of context and consequences measured in light of those purposes.” In particular, he observed, the establishment clause does not require the government to remove all traces of religion from the public sphere. “Such absolutism,” he emphasized, “is not only inconsistent with our national traditions, … but would also tend to promote the kind of social conflict the establishment clause seeks to avoid.”

Breyer acknowledged that the Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas state capitol “undeniably has a religious message,” but he added that the context in which the monument was displayed indicated that the state intended the monument to convey a secular message. And the fact that the monument had been on the capitol grounds for 40 years without any challenges, Breyer continued, suggested that the public also regards it as “part of what is a broader moral and historical message reflective of a cultural heritage.”

The cross at the heart of the current case was erected in Bladensburg, Maryland, to honor 49 soldiers from Prince George’s County, Maryland, killed during World War I. In 1922, the local American Legion post took over responsibility for the project after the private organizers ran out of money; the fundraising drive included a Christian prayer for the invocation. When the 40-foot-tall cross was finished in 1925, the dedication ceremony featured only Christian prayers, with no other religions represented.

In 1961, the state government acquired the cross and the land it sits on, due at least in part to concerns about safety as traffic around the cross increased. The cross is part of a larger park honoring veterans that also contains much smaller memorials remembering the War of 1812, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the September 11 attacks. The symbol of the American Legion – a small star inscribed with “U.S.” – appears at the top of the cross, while a plaque at the bottom contains the names of the fallen soldiers and a quote from President Woodrow Wilson.

The plaintiffs in the case are local residents who are offended by the presence of the cross on public land, along with the American Humanist Association, a group that describes itself as a “non-profit organization that advocates to uphold the founding principle of separation of church and state.” They contend that the presence of the cross on government land and the state’s maintenance of the cross violate the Constitution’s establishment clause, and they asked a federal district court to order the state to either remove the cross or alter the monument so that it is no longer in the form of a cross.

The district court rejected the plaintiffs’ plea. In its view, the state’s involvement with the cross had less to do with religion than with maintaining traffic safety and honoring veterans.

The challengers appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which reversed. Using the Lemon test, the court of appeals ruled that the cross violates the establishment clause because it “has the primary effect of endorsing religion and excessively entangles the government in religion.” First, the court of appeals explained, it was impossible to “ignore the fact that for thousands of years the Latin cross has represented Christianity.” The cross is part of a larger park that includes other war memorials, but the cross is so much larger and more prominent than the other war memorials that “the historical meaning and physical setting of the Cross overshadows its secular elements.” Therefore, the court of appeals concluded, the average citizen “would fairly understand the Cross to have the primary effect of endorsing religion.”

The court of appeals found that the cross also violated another prong of the Lemon test: The cross creates “excessive entanglement” with religion because the state owns and maintains the cross on public property and does so in a way that suggests that the state “either places Christianity above other faiths, views being American and Christian as one in the same, or both.”

Both the American Legion (which entered the case to defend the cross) and the state asked the Supreme Court to review the 4th Circuit’s ruling. They warned that allowing the lower court’s decision to stand would endanger not only the Bladensburg cross, but other war memorials as well – including two crosses commemorating World War I at Arlington National Cemetery – and the American Legion lamented what it described as the “confused state of this Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence.” Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in Atlanta characterized the court’s establishment clause cases as a “hot mess” even as it concluded that the presence of a cross in a Florida park violates the Constitution. On November 2, the justices announced that they would take up the case.

The state points to the Supreme Court’s decision in Van Orden, and in particular Breyer’s concurring opinion, as confirmation that the cross does not violate the Constitution. The cross was constructed for a “wholly secular” purpose, the state contends: When you look at its “dedications, its inscriptions, its context, and nearly a century of practice,” it becomes “abundantly clear that this monument was erected to serve—and, for 93 years, has served—as a secular commemoration of American servicemen in World War I.”

The American Legion argues that all of the Supreme Court’s establishment clause tests have a common theme that focuses on “the importance of historical tradition and an objective assessment of the government’s reasons for putting up the display” – a standard that the cross can clearly pass. But the Legion urges the justices to go further and adopt a less stringent test that focuses on whether a religious display is consistent with the country’s historical traditions; if it is, there would be no violation of the establishment clause as long as the government is not “exploiting the tradition to coerce religious belief or observance by” people who are not religious.

Defending the 4th Circuit’s ruling, the challengers argue that the cross at the center of this case “sends a much stronger message of Christian favoritism” than a privately donated creche in a courthouse, which the Supreme Court has already deemed unconstitutional.

In the challengers’ eyes, the 4th Circuit’s decision is squarely in line with the Supreme Court’s other cases on religion because the entire picture, history, and context of this cross all point to the cross being an endorsement of Christianity, rather than conveying a secular message.

What the American Legion is really asking the Supreme Court to do, the challengers stress, is to “overturn decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in favor of a” rule that would allow religious displays as long as the government isn’t trying to coerce or convert anyone. But the court can stick with a much simpler rule, the challengers tell the justices: There is general agreement that the government violates the Constitution when it uses religious symbolism that “has the effect of endorsing religious beliefs, and the effect of the government’s use of religious symbolism depends on its context.”

When the justices hear oral argument and then decide the case, there are two different things to watch for. The first, obviously, is whether the cross will survive, or whether the court will instead find that it is unconstitutional. The second question is how broadly the justices will rule. Will they issue a narrow opinion that resolves this case and future cases that are very similar, but without saying much more? Or will they instead issue a more comprehensive decision that provides more extensive guidance about when religious symbols are permitted in the public sphere, possibly even jettisoning their old establishment clause rules in favor of a new rule, as the American Legion as suggested? Given Chief Justice John Roberts’ penchant for “judicial minimalism” generally and what seems to be a recent effort by the court to try to avoid more controversial issues, a narrower opinion seems more likely, but we’ll have a better idea soon enough.

* * *

Past cases linked to in this post:

Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005)

[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of the petitioners in this case. The author of this post, however, is not affiliated with the firm.]

The post Argument preview: Justices to consider constitutionality of cross-shaped war memorial on public land appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/02/argument-preview-justices-to-consider-constitutionality-of-cross-shaped-war-memorial-on-public-land/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[davidarthurgraver]

Remedies for the Problem of Confederate Monuments.

The following statute stands prominently on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It has a certain charm. The simple youthful features are seductive and the pose echoes elements of warrior monuments from the Archaic Greek period forward. Granted, he is facing north, but he seems less a rebel filled with aggression and hate than an honor guard of his homeland, at ease and comfortable in his familiar surroundings. He has been christened by custom “Silent Sam” because he is a kind of everyman and remarkably silent, neither speaking or communicating any clear intention by his gestures. The elevated glance and relaxed stance bespeak self assurance and an occupation with higher ideals. He is not striding into battle so much as sauntering into the promise of his own future. It seems a fitting memorial for the idealistic naiveté of the college undergraduates who were swept into the mad slaughter on an ineluctable wave of lies they never managed to face or understand. The statue stands in welcome contrast to the more typical memorials to the generals and politicians who drove the South to destruction for the sake of their self-interested allegiance to slavery. Silent Sam’s abstracted upward gaze and confident jaw embody a bitter sweet confidence in the orders of his elders. He will do what he has been told is right because those with experience of the world and power over it should know what is right. In such a way, since the dawn of time, the energy and enthusiasm of youth has been fed to the flames of battle for the benefit of criminal rulers. Here stands the innocent sacrificial victim, unaware of the demonic cause for which his blood will be spilled.

Unfortunately, this approach to the monument is sharply under cut by its insidious placard, which reads as follows:

Most remarkable in this mealy-mouthed mumble of patriotic clichés is the unusual absence of proper nouns. The statue has no name as one would expect for an idol extolling the sacrifice of the young but neither does “the war of 1861-65,” the “country” that called the young men, the “great commander” who extolled duty, and the very nature of the “duty” he extolled.

On one level these are dark and damning words. Anonymous sons have perished in a nameless war for a nameless country that clings to an undefined duty and a unidentified commander. Of course, everyone knows the war of 1861-65 was the Civil War when citizens faced off against citizens and states that had been united peacefully for almost a century tore at each other with fire and sword. So why not call it by its name? Because acknowledging the fratricidal carnage will under cut the dreamy preoccupations of the young soldier? Because any attempt to describe in any concrete terms what the war was about will inevitably put in question the undefined duty that fueled the fighting?

And what exactly is this duty? We arguably have a duty not to mistreat fellow human beings, and a duty not to be brutes, murderers, or rapists, yet many southern states withdrew from the United States so that they could pursue the continuing degradation and exploitation of their brethren. Knowing that the “great commander” who thought “duty” the sublimest English word was Robert E. Lee does not help clarify the nature of the duty in question here because Lee spoke of this sublime duty in a letter to his son who was studying at West Point while Lee himself was pursuing a well rewarded career in the U.S. military, well before the Civil War. The duty was, therefore, the duty that citizens owe to their country, but that was a duty Lee betrayed when he turned his back on his country in its hour of need and joined its enemies in their insurrection.

On another level the placard is the craven shibboleth of a cold-hearted conspiracy, the invisible empire of the South dedicated to the continuing oppression of African Americans by any means possible. The placard need not be rational, coherent, or historically accurate; it need only call the faithful together and exclude all others. The less it communicates to the world, the more comfortable the conspirators feel in their indefensible and largely unacknowledged prejudices. They can cynically appropriate the banners of “country” and “duty” to their struggle against the core principles of the constitution and human decency by simply refusing to give much thought to what “country” and “duty” mean.

The plaque, I think, either reads too little or too much into what the statue tells us. Either Silent Sam is left clinging to completely meaningless slogans or he is part of an oppressive conspiracy. Neither reading credits the scholarly detachment of his gaze, his decorous trust in the appropriateness of taking up arms, or the oblivion into which he walks with such heart-wrenching cluelessness. The statue would be better without the plaque, although the plaque is certainly worth study in its own right for the breathtaking way it embodies some of the core crimes of our history.

There is talk of removing Silent Sam from the campus. It was erected in 1916 in celebration of the triumph of Jim Crow. One can understand the desire to erase the blighted oppression it represents, but I am not sure this is the best response. What the South needs are memorials that acknowledge the crimes of its past, not more empty spaces. The words on the plaque are already empty. Removing the statue would only deepen the silence and allow the prejudice to fester in an airless world where it is never called out by name. I would advocate leaving the statue as an indictment of the Confederate insurrection and the terror of Jim Crow but making the indictment speak its name more clearly with a more pointed placard. Here are some suggestions:

It was a rich man’s war,
 But a poor man’s fight.
 The enslaving class escaped the gore,
 But all must bear the moral blight.

Answering the call to duty 
 is often just an excuse for moral cowardice.

It is easier to face death from an invading army 
than to face the moral crimes of one’s own community.

Woe betide the watchman, 
 blind to the wrongs behind him 
 and the redress that has not yet arrived.

[veliusthewanderer]

Would You Rather...? Politics Edition

In recent weeks, a slew of sexual misconduct allegations have been flying back and forth, on both sides of the political divide. As if the trauma of the recent Harvey Weinstein sexual scandal wasn’t bad enough for Democrats, now former comedian-turned-senator Al Franken faces allegations from one-possibly two-accusers of sexual misconduct both before and during his senate tenure.

But before Republicans start playing the “you got busted” game, let me remind you of another politician who has been busted for sexual misconduct and pedophilia: Roy Moore, former Chief Justice of the state of Alabama and current contender for the Alabama seat in the US Senate. So far it seems that he has nine accusers alleging sexual misconduct going back to the 1970s, when Moore was in his thirties. While some of the women-then girls-were at least 16 years old, one was 14 at the time of her encounter with Moore, which makes that particular case one not just of misconduct, but statutory rape, and pedophilia. Moore, of course, is no stranger to controversy, having been elected-and removed-twice for his stance on same-sex marriage, abortion, and the erecting of a stone monument to the Ten Commandments outside the Alabama Judicial Building.

To paint the picture a bit more broadly, Al Franken has admitted to the misconduct he is accused of, and even called for an investigation into himself. While conservatives would shout “remove him!” and threaten to destroy all SNL DVDs featuring Franken (as they likely did with all movies and comedy shows featuring Bill Cosby), I personally see this as a brilliant and welcome move by Franken. He apologized to the victim, who showed equal graciousness by not only accepting the apology, but even making it clear she did not seek his removal from the Senate. This is in stark (very stark) contrast to Roy Moore. Granted he isn’t actually IN the Senate (yet), but that matters little in this discussion. Alabama politics has already shown itself to be devisive on the Republican side, with ‘President’ Donald Trump supporting Moore’s GOP rival Luther Strange and former White House Chief Strategist, Trump Worshipper Par Excellance and Leader of the fake news Breitbart Stephen Bannon backing Moore. Considering the backing of the most powerful (and narcissistic) Republican in the country, Strange should’ve won the nomination (how Strange....get it?) But it was the tiny-pistol toting, cowboy hat wearing Moore who won. Trump inevitably-and possibly out of fear the Too Far Right would attack him without remorse should he not do so-endorsed and pledged to campaign for Moore in Alabama. This makes more sense considering the six (on record) women alleging sexual misconduct by Trump pre-politician, whom he attacked on the campaign trail, going so far as to even threaten legal action against them. Those accusations and allegations were reinforced by the ‘Access Hollywood’ audio tape where Trump boasts of “grabbing women by the p*ssy”. Even more shocking, ridiculous, but no less expected, Kayla Moore, Roy Moore’s loyal subservient wife of 33 years, not only refuted the accusations against her husband, but even attacked the Washington Post, the accusers, and (for whatever stupid reason) the Clintons (specifically Hillary) for their so-called concerted attack against the character of her husband, practically DARING anyone to step up to her and challenge her counters.

It seems that the political divide just got wider as a result. On the one hand, conservatives are demanding the head (figuratively speaking) of Al Franken while at the same time trying to slut-shame the victims of Roy Moore. On the other hand, liberals like myself are satisfied that Franken is willing to cooperate in an investigation, yet find that aside from the ‘establishment’ GOP, many conservatives are fully prepared to pull every dirty trick out of their collective rear-ends to defend Moore and slut-shame his victims. Worse, those same conservatives who still believe that pedophile Moore is their champion of moral values, voted in the other sexual predator, Trump, into the Oval Office. They make claims that “God has forgiven Moore, as have I, and as should everyone who is truly a Christian”. Let me be clear on this point before I go further: SEXUAL MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS SHOULD BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY, REGARDLESS OF ONE’S POLITICAL BACKGROUND. It was done successfully in the Weinstein case, is being done as successfully in the Al Franken case, and is being brushed off as “fake news attacks” in the Moore case.

My mind returns to the interview I seen a few days ago, of a resident of Gadsden, Alabama who was asked whether in light of the allegations, she would still vote for Roy Moore. Her response of “Well, God has forgiven him for his past sins, so he’s okay in my book” (not an accurate response, admittedly, but close enough to the substance) made me personally sick to my stomach. How far has Alabama fallen that we would not only support a sexual predator for POTUS (and before anyone thinks to bring up Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, that was a private affair between consenting adults....note those two words: consenting adults), and a US Attorney General with a racist past, but will even consider bringing a pedophile into the hallowed halls of the US Senate? And to those ‘Christian’ conservatives who maintain that “God has forgiven Roy Moore”, how do you know? Do you have a direct line to the Almighty? Did you plant a bug in the prayer-line between Moore and God? Suppose God is simply biding his time, waiting for the right moment to exact punishment on Moore, perhaps a sudden, lethal heart attack, or cancer? Can you honestly say that you know God’s heart and mind better than God Himself?

I end this blog with a game called “Would You Rather?” The first question, sadly was answered back in November of 2016: Would you rather a sexual predator, misogynist, sexist, narcissistic, hispanophobic, Islamophobic, racist rich white guy be president, or a white, female Democrat not intent on causing World War III be the president? For many, the choice was denied them because the rest made that choice for them...or rather, a foreign government enabled the rest to choose for them (Yes, Russia). Now, would you rather have a Democrat who is pro-choice, anti tax cuts-for-rich-people, pro-gun safety become the next Senate representative from Alabama, or a gun-loving, “pro-life”, sexual predator and pedophile former Chief Justice be the new senator? Would you rather see Al Franken or Roy Moore get the boot from the Senate? Would you rather actually vote for Roy Moore, that child predator, or write in Luther Strange or even (unlikely as it is he’d return to the Senate) Jeff Sessions? December 12th will answer those questions. If there are truly Christian people in Alabama, then you know what you must do is prevent Moore from becoming the Voice of Alabama, even if it means holding your noses up and voting for Doug Jones. Don’t repeat the mistake of 2016 by letting another sexual predator (and in Moore’s case, a pedophile) attain government office.