Tune in to Edouard Tahmizian's one-hour-and-twenty-minute interview with Los Angeles constitutional lawyer Edward Tabash as he surveys how the religious right-wing majority on the US Supreme Court is imposing religious tyranny and discarding science in the United States. The Court has demonstrated its disrespect for civil liberties precedent and overtly tried to impose a theocracy by, for example, ordering the state of Maine to make available its public education funds for the purpose of funding tuition specifically earmarked for religious indoctrination. In his dissent to Carson v. Makin, Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that there's no meaningful difference between the state paying the salary of a religious minister and that of a teacher who proselytizes to children. Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent that in the last five years, the Court has systematically dismantled the separation between church and state by shifting from a rule that permits states to decline to fund religious education to one that requires them to subsidize it. This, she notes, is leading us in the direction of treating those who uphold the separation of church and state as having engaged in a constitutional violation. The current Court's attack on Enlightenment values gives power to inherently unreliable voices to have sway in court and even permits the inadmissibility of scientific evidence under the guise of the "free exercise of religion," using the free exercise clause as a sword to wield against groups, rather than as a shield to protect them. Tune in as Tabash canvases growing threats to government neutrality in matters of religion, such as cases authorizing prayer at public school events, whether atheists could be excluded from testifying in court, whether states could have an official church under the new Court, the religious footing for anti-choice laws on abortion, and how voters' choice of the members of the US Senate directly affects who sits on the Court.
Tune in to Edouard Tahmizian’s two-hour-long interview with atheist debater Edward Tabash, a
constitutional lawyer in Los Angeles who chairs the board of directors of the Center for
Inquiry and has amicus briefs with the US Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court to
preserve the separation of church and state. Tabash lays out how the new religious right-wing
majority on the US Supreme Court (and other right-wing judges) are threatening government
neutrality on matters of religion. The dangers posed to atheists' legal rights (such as
religious organizations gaining the right to endorse candidates for public office while secular
ones cannot) are compounded by those that flow from giving special legal privileges to
religious special interests and no one else (such as churches being exempt from COVID
restrictions placed upon all other establishments, or being able to bar same-sex couples from
becoming foster parents who would otherwise be protected by antidiscrimination laws). What is
particularly under threat today is the long-established principle that no branch of government
can favor religion over irreligion, or aid all religions against nonbelievers, but there is
also no shortage of attempts to allow religious individuals (and no others) to jeopardize the
health and safety of the public or prevent government from meeting its obligations. In the
second half of the hour the discussion turns to religious opposition to abortion rights, which if fully successful would represent the first time in history that the US Supreme Court has retracted a constitutional right that it had once granted.
In this nearly hour-long speech to the Center for Inquiry, constitutional lawyer and secular activist Edward Tabash warns of the consequences of the horrific two-thirds religious right-wing majority on the United States Supreme Court: a rapid move toward ever-greater legal privileges that only the religious can enjoy. Religious objectors are quickly becoming the only members of society who are now permitted to discriminate against third parties. The Court is allowing them to use their faith to avoid complying with our country's anti-discrimination and employment protection laws.
