Amy Coney Barrets religious community under scrutiny

[lfromnj]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-barrett-religion-idUSKCN26D2RR

Ooh boi this will be interesting.

Theill left People of Praise in 1984 but said she has remained in contact with others associated with the group, believing little had changed. Last year she wrote a blog post entitled “I lived the Handmaid’s Tale.”

“A lot of us suffered Stockholm syndrome and many of the women were on anti-depressants and tranquilizers,” Theill said. “If you were super submissive, maybe you wouldn’t be dragged in the middle of the night to an interrogation meeting.”

Thomas Csordas, a scholar of comparative religion at the University of California, San Diego, said he would not consider People of Praise a cult, instead saying it was “very conservative.”

[Alben Barkley]

Someone should ask her why she's seeking a position of power when biblically a woman's place is in the home, submitting to her husband and remaining quiet while the men are talking and leading in the church and elsewhere.

By the way, they actually, unironically used to call women "handmaids" all the way up until the show came out, and Margaret Atwood said she was inspired by the group when writing the book. So... it's not just people making leaps when they compare the two.

Also, the whole things sounds like a cult.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

[Alben Barkley]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

The GOP will just say it's "Bork and Kavanaugh all over again, trying desperately to defame a justice because they didn't get their way." Doesn't matter if we were right in all three of these cases. They will spin it as us being sore losers. And worse in this case, attacking someone "for her faith!"

[Devout Centrist]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

Hold off until she's formally nominated

[GeneralMacArthur]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

Hold off until she's formally nominated

Why?  She's probably going to be nominated, and at that point everything will kick into very-very-high-gear.  Mitch will want to usher the nomination through in a matter of weeks, and this is information that needs to be well-known at the start of the hearing, not at the end as some sort of last-minute bombshell.

Get the story out there, and fast.

[Where's the Epstein Client List?]

Someone should ask her why she's seeking a position of power when biblically a woman's place is in the home, submitting to her husband and remaining quiet while the men are talking and leading in the church and elsewhere.

Didn't stop Phyllis Schlafly.

[Devout Centrist]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

Hold off until she's formally nominated

Why?  She's probably going to be nominated, and at that point everything will kick into very-very-high-gear.  Mitch will want to usher the nomination through in a matter of weeks, and this is information that needs to be well-known at the start of the hearing, not at the end as some sort of last-minute bombshell.

Get the story out there, and fast.

There are still plausible, and more politically viable, options out there. Rushing and Lagoa in particular strike me as dangerous picks, because they share most of Barrett's jurisprudence without any of the baggage.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

[KaiserDave]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

Hold off until she's formally nominated

Why?  She's probably going to be nominated, and at that point everything will kick into very-very-high-gear.  Mitch will want to usher the nomination through in a matter of weeks, and this is information that needs to be well-known at the start of the hearing, not at the end as some sort of last-minute bombshell.

Get the story out there, and fast.

There are still plausible, and more politically viable, options out there. Rushing and Lagoa in particular strike me as dangerous picks, because they share most of Barrett's jurisprudence without any of the baggage.

I dearly hope Rushing is not the pick. That’s the worst result.

[Benjamin Frank]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

You're probably right politically, but I don't know how the two can be disentangled: her religious background is directly related to the rights she wants to dismantle.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

Yeah, Dems in Congress should focus on the judicial issues and let the media stir up a circus of public opinion against ACB based on the cult stuff.

Ultimately it may be enough to torpedo the nomination if the public can be made to oppose her by like 30-70 or something.

Really depends whether this stuff would break through the Fox News firewall.  If Fox News just treats it like a liberal conspiracy then 40% will support her no matter what.  But it may become too obvious and loud to ignore.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

You're probably right politically, but I don't know how the two can be disentangled: her religious background is directly related to the rights she wants to dismantle.

It's not as if everyone with her religious background is guaranteed to have the same worldview/judicial philosophy, so analysis of what hers will look like is probably better drawn from her actual record as opposed to (predictably breathless) inferences from her upbringing. The decisions she's likely to make matter more to the millions they will affect than her backstory.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Well, we know how not to criticize Barrett's religious commitments, which is to use the flirting-with-the-limits-of-the-No-Religious-Test-Clause type of rhetoric that Dianne Feinstein used during her Seventh Circuit confirmation hearings. If someone had written "the dogma lives loudly in you, and that's a concern" as a line of dialogue in a novel, it would have been savaged as the sort of thing no real human being would ever say. If the Democrats really want to go down this road, it shouldn't be difficult to do better than that.

Having said that, yeah, People of Praise is a cult, or at the very least a high-control group. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is by and large terrible in general, and PoP is one of the worst examples of it. I'd honestly rather she were a Scalia-style trad.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

Yeah, Dems in Congress should focus on the judicial issues and let the media stir up a circus of public opinion against ACB based on the cult stuff.

Ultimately it may be enough to torpedo the nomination if the public can be made to oppose her by like 30-70 or something.

Really depends whether this stuff would break through the Fox News firewall.  If Fox News just treats it like a liberal conspiracy then 40% will support her no matter what.  But it may become too obvious and loud to ignore.

Fox News is not going to drop their defences when that risks denying Republicans an extra justice.

Edit: IMO it is going to be easier to turn public opinion against her on the basis of "She's going to take away your healthcare," than "Her background is weird [which Republicans could cast as Democratic cultural elitism]."

[Alben Barkley]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

Well, for a judge, showing very poor judgment like joining a literal cult might be at least a bit relevant.

Never mind that yes, being part of such an extreme group is obviously going to influence her judicial philosophy. You really can't untangle the two.

And I don't know why lefties always seem to think the public cares about nothing but bread and butter economic issues. Part of me wishes you were right, but you're not. People care far more about social issues, "sensationalist" or otherwise. Trump won with no coherent economic platform whatsoever, it was entirely culture war BS and "owning the libs."

[7,052,770]

Republicans are going to confirm Trump's nominee no matter what. They aren't going to pass up the chance to replace Ginsburg with an anti-abortion judge. Even if it costs them seats in November, it will be worth it.

Better to tread lightly on religious issues. The last thing we need is a Catholic revolt within the Biden voter ranks or whatever else the Republicans will spin up

[Alben Barkley]

Republicans are going to confirm Trump's nominee no matter what. They aren't going to pass up the chance to replace Ginsburg with an anti-abortion judge. Even if it costs them seats in November, it will be worth it.

Better to tread lightly on religious issues. The last thing we need is a Catholic revolt within the Biden voter ranks or whatever else the Republicans will spin up

This group is hardly representative of Catholics. In fact it's not even a Catholic-only group.

That said, part of me does think it might be for the best to just let them fill the seat without too much of a fight (they're going to get it done anyway) and let them pay for it at the ballot box. Then pack the court.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Republicans are going to confirm Trump's nominee no matter what. They aren't going to pass up the chance to replace Ginsburg with an anti-abortion judge. Even if it costs them seats in November, it will be worth it.

Better to tread lightly on religious issues. The last thing we need is a Catholic revolt within the Biden voter ranks or whatever else the Republicans will spin up

This group is hardly representative of Catholics. In fact it's not even a Catholic-only group.

That said, part of me does think it might be for the best to just let them fill the seat without too much of a fight (they're going to get it done anyway) and let them pay for it at the ballot box. Then pack the court.

Yeah, the issue with People of Praise isn't that it's Catholic or even that it's very conservative on muh social issues, it's the high-control aspect. Same reason an Opus Dei supernumerary tends to set off more alarm bells for a lot of people than, say, a similarly-conservative Dominican or Carmelite tertiary.

[Benjamin Frank]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

You're probably right politically, but I don't know how the two can be disentangled: her religious background is directly related to the rights she wants to dismantle.

It's not as if everyone with her religious background is guaranteed to have the same worldview/judicial philosophy, so analysis of what hers will look like is probably better drawn from her actual record as opposed to (predictably breathless) inferences from her upbringing. The decisions she's likely to make matter more to the millions they will affect than her backstory.

I'm not looking at anyone else with her same religious background though.  I'm looking at her and how she chooses to interpret the Bible.  She is the one who brings who religious background into her job.  I think it is perfectly fair game to question her on this.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

In particular, I'd worry about the freedom from outside influence of someone whose spiritual director is also her husband. You don't get that in most other conservative Christian organizations.

[Abolish ICE]

Yeah, she’s literally part of a deranged cult...so basically a generic Republican

[7,052,770]

Republicans are going to confirm Trump's nominee no matter what. They aren't going to pass up the chance to replace Ginsburg with an anti-abortion judge. Even if it costs them seats in November, it will be worth it.

Better to tread lightly on religious issues. The last thing we need is a Catholic revolt within the Biden voter ranks or whatever else the Republicans will spin up

This group is hardly representative of Catholics. In fact it's not even a Catholic-only group.

Agreed, I'm just a little worried how it's going to be spun by right-wingers.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

If anyone wants to really make their name in journalism, they should be ALL. OVER. THIS.

If you can quickly and convincingly tell the story of this being what sounds like a bizarre cult, and you can get a bunch of people together who escaped from it who can testify about it, possibly even people who knew ACB, you could torpedo a Supreme Court nomination singlehandedly and possibly even flip a Supreme Court seat.

Anyone?

This is far less politically relevant to ACB's nomination than her judicial history - the decisions she's made and the signals she's given about precedents. Those will have clear, direct impacts on policy.

I hope Democrats do not follow this sensationalist reporting, go after her character or invoke the Handmaid's Tale (obligatory #RESIST). They are far better off outlining the threat her nomination would pose to the ACA and basic social protections. If they really want to make it about abortion (and I don't think that's the best territory for them), they should focus on the rights she'd dismantle, not her religious background.

Well, for a judge, showing very poor judgment like joining a literal cult might be at least a bit relevant.

Never mind that yes, being part of such an extreme group is obviously going to influence her judicial philosophy. You really can't untangle the two.

And I don't know why lefties always seem to think the public cares about nothing but bread and butter economic issues. Part of me wishes you were right, but you're not. People care far more about social issues, "sensationalist" or otherwise. Trump won with no coherent economic platform whatsoever, it was entirely culture war BS and "owning the libs."

They care about social issues too, but as of right now, in the coronavirus pandemic, "They're coming for your healthcare" is probably the best message Democrats have. The kitchen table issues are the ones they get the highest margins on and they do turn voters out. Obviously Democratic campaigns really can't afford to remain silent on obvious injustices like the need for criminal justice reform, but they should always be putting out criminal justice reform policies instead of generic culture war schtick. Democrats can win on culture war issues, but are far more likely to win by emphasising their (generally more popular) policies as opposed to social divides. The reason why culture war strategies are favoured by Republicans is because they tend to embrace policy that either is less popular or vulnerable to becoming so without the culture war backing.

I did lay out that Democrats might want to make this about abortion specifically, but even then, it is still better to focus on the specific threats to women's bodily autonomy as opposed to the nominee's spooky sexist cult. Smart messaging will keep the threat she poses immediate and central as opposed to building up an ACB mythology.

The "cultist = can't be trusted" argument only holds so much water now she's already on the federal bench and hasn't done half of the absolutely wild things she's about to be accused of.

[Badger]

Someone should ask her why she's seeking a position of power when biblically a woman's place is in the home, submitting to her husband and remaining quiet while the men are talking and leading in the church and elsewhere.

Didn't stop Phyllis Schlafly.

40-ish years ago....