Guest Post by Morbo
As the Carpetbagger noted earlier this week, federal court nominee Janice Rogers Brown took a much-deserved hit when a rather alarming speech she gave to Catholic lawyers in Connecticut was the subject of a Los Angeles Times story.
Brown griped about religion being excluded from public life and claimed that deeply religious people can’t make a go of it in this heathenish secular nation. She went so far as to assert that a religious “war” is under way in America.
“It’s not a shooting war, but it is a war…,” Brown said. “These are perilous times for people of faith, not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud.”
I am just flat-out tired of claims like this, which are on their face absurd. George W. Bush talks about religion all of the time — and you might say he has done pretty well for himself. He is president, after all. This country is soaked with religion. Far from being afraid to talk about faith, most politicians won’t shut up about it. Even Democrats are getting religion these days.
Critics slammed Brown for employing war imagery. She deserved it. Such shrill declarations and over-the-top exaggerations are to be expected from TV preachers; they sound jarring coming from someone who seeks a slot on the federal court system.
It gets worse, however. If you read Brown’s entire comments as reported originally in the Stamford Advocate, something equally disturbing shines through: Janice Rogers Brown is a bigot.
Brown complained about atheistic humanism crowding out religion in America. Humanists, she asserted, are to blame for a type of moral relativism that pervades the country. She made it clear she doesn’t think much of Humanists.
That’s too bad because Humanism is a distinguished philosophy with a long tradition that stretches back to the ancient Greeks. The non-religious variety, often called “Secular Humanism,” is a favorite Religious Right bogeyman. Over the years, the Religious Right has blamed Secular Humanism for everything from escalating crime rates and venereal diseases to lower SAT scores and bad breath.
Millions of Americans are Humanists. By buying into Religious Right paranoia, Brown has maligned them all. Imagine what would happen if she did that to Jews, Catholics or Presbyterians. Her nomination would have been revoked the next day.
Brown bashes Humanism because she is ignorant of its teachings. Humanism does not advocate “if it feels good do it,” as Brown and so many Christian fundamentalists seem to believe. That is a crude Religious Right mischaracterization. Although Humanists recognize that moral standards can evolve over time (an obvious point), they are not moral relativists.
Secular Humanists believe that because there is no god to save us, we had better treat each other decently. Among other things, it condemns sexism, racism and homophobia. It is impossible to be a Nazi and a Humanist. So if being a Nazi is what makes one feel good, one can do it, but one can’t be a Humanist at the same time.
Humanism does not seek the eradication of religion. True, Secular Humanists reject a belief in God or gods and the supernatural generally, but they support religious freedom. Humanists recognize that only complete religious and philosophical freedom, under girded by a secular state, can protect the right to worship or not worship as each person sees fit. They also maintain that state-sponsored religious coercion is always an affront to human rights and moral decency. (To learn more about Secular Humanism, visit Secular Humanism.org.)
Brown built up her crude little straw man and then blew it down. It’s a game that Pat Robertson plays every day. We expect no better from Robertson because he is a religious zealot. We have the right to expect a whole lot more from our federal judges.