Over the weekend I had the distinct pleasure of getting up close and personal with the religious right at the Values Voter Summit held in Washington, DC, on September 18 and 19. Sponsored primarily by FRCAction, the Washington lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, and co-sponsored by all the major religious right heavy hitters and also by the right-wing corporatist think tank the Heritage Foundation, the annual summit is the premier religious right organizing event of the year. This year around 1,800 people attended, including activists, pastors, journalists, and some of the leading right-wing politicos of today (not to mention of the last few decades too).

I was struck by several ideas over the course of the experience. First, as fellow attendee Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State noted in a blog entry after the event, the Values Voter Summit was an explicitly partisan affair. Obviously the religious right has never really found a welcoming audience in the Democratic Party, while at times in recent history they’ve practically held the reins of the Republicans. Even so, this movement is ostensibly nonpartisan, as it is primarily religious in nature and is presumably more attached to particular values than to particular politicians (not to mention the nonpartisan tax exempt status of all the sponsoring organizations). Nevertheless, several leading aspirants for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012 made speeches there, including Governors Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty (Governor Rick Perry made a well-received speech as well; he’s not planning a run for president, but rather is going to face a hard primary fight for another term as governor of Texas). In addition, several of the leading Republican voices in Congress, including Senator Mitch McConnell and congressional representatives Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Mike Pence, and Roy Blunt, all addressed the summit attendees.

Between all of those political speeches, it seemed to me that only about four ideas were expressed: 1) Anything President Obama wants to do, from health care reform to negotiating with America’s supposed enemies to fighting climate change, is bad. 2) Abortion and marriage equality must be stopped. 3) America has suddenly run completely out of money, and it is all Obama’s fault. 4) Values Voters need to rise up and take their country back. I think that I listened to about a dozen speeches centered around those ideas, all of them packed with pandering applause lines that kept the audience repeatedly rising and sitting, rising and sitting, until the room looked like an exercise class.

While politicians were the big stars of the show, they weren’t the only people to appear on stage. In an effort to motivate the millennial generation (Americans between the ages of 18 and 29), the summit featured several younger speakers who mainly discussed activism and outreach (although Carrie Prejean, the dethroned Miss California who became a heroine to the religious right after making a statement against marriage equality at the Miss USA pageant, decided rather to make a stunningly narcissistic speech about her experience as a fallen beauty queen). Sandhya Bathija of Americans United, also in attendance, discusses more about the youth angle in a blog post here; what really struck me, though, was the enormous elephant in the room that no one, not even Esther Fleece, the director of millennial studies for Focus on the Family (and a millennial herself) ever mentioned, not even once, which is the increased secularization of young people in the United States. While several speakers noted that the vast majority of young voters voted for President Obama, they never noted that from 30 to 40 percent of people in their twenties are now unaffiliated with any religion. Needless to say, this has some profound implications for the future of the religious right, if the younger voters in America are not only less to the right, but also less religious!

Most enlightening for me, though, out of the entire weekend, was the opportunity to hear a succinct and impassioned explanation of the religious right’s general view on the separation of church and state and religious freedom in the United States. This was delivered by Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who presented the stunningly radical view that the First Amendment of the Constitution not only does not prevent the government from favoring Christianity (he argued that the establishment clause only prevents the government from favoring a particular denomination of Christianity over another), but also that the wording of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) indicates that it applies only to Congress and not to any other level of government. He stated:

What that means is that by the First Amendment the Founders intended to restrain only the actions of Congress…if Congress is the only entity that is restrained by the First Amendment, it is constitutionally impossible for a governor, or a state legislature, or a mayor, or a city council, or a school administrator, or a school teacher, or a student speaking at graduation to violate the First Amendment. Why? Because they’re not Congress!

Key to his interpretation is his push back against the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment applies the Bill of Rights to the actions of state governments. But without this constitutional principle, a lot of the Bill of Rights would be moot in the day-to-day lives of Americans; imagine what it would be like if the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment did not apply to state governments! I doubt that the applauding audience thought through the implications of Mr. Fischer’s ideas.

Right Wing Watch has more to add on Fischer’s extremist views. Needless to say, this is a terrifying and radical view of religious liberty in the United States.

There is no doubt that the religious right has less influence than in years past. But we ignore them at our peril. They still envision a future of Christian supremacy, where no one’s rights must necessarily be respected except for their own. And with so many leading politicians and aspiring presidential candidates pandering to the activists in attendance, it’s clear that the path to success for many aspiring national leaders still goes through the religious right, at least for now.

At stake is our vision for a more tolerant future for America, where diverse religious viewpoints flourish and everyone’s rights are respected. Progressive secular and religious people alike must push back and hasten the demise of the influence of the religious right in America.

Monday’s LATimes contained an interesting piece on the Bald Eagle. In essence, many Indian tribes have religious practices, such as the Sun Dance, that require Bald Eagle… ahem…parts. The Bald Eagle is a protected species—even more so than other listed species due to a special act of Congress—and so an obvious tension emerges; how can the federal government protect the animal while simultaneously protecting the religious rights of native Americans?

Currently, the federal government runs a depository of dead birds and has a licensing program. The licensing program has been plagued with problems—many people are apparently unaware of it—and the depository has a long waiting list for many Eagle parts. To avoid long waits, some Indians occasionally shoot birds without a license and find themselves fugitives as result of their religious beliefs.

Larger than the Indian issue, this does raise some moral and political questions for those of us who avow a separation and church and state. I think many people would agree the Indians have a right to these birds; Indians have been hunting and shooting the birds since before the Europeans arrived. Simultaneously, government has an interest in protecting all endangered species. How do we rectify these conflicting priorities?

We could make like the soviets and just outlaw religion. Problem solved. But, of course, that’s absurd. On the opposite end of the spectrum we could say any religious belief is a right, but that’s a slippery slope. The government would then be in the business of defining what is and isn’t a religion (granted they already do this for tax purposes but look at the fight it causes over things like Scientology). Also, someone could have some insane beliefs that direct them, for example, to extinguish a species that is the devil incarnate or to practice human sacrifice. Do we really want to play an even worse version of the snake-handler game?

Obviously, then, the answer lies somewhere between these two extremes. At some degree between zero and 180 is where we have been situated throughout history. The attempt to move the needle slightly one way is why groups like that AHA exist. Even though we claim to be proponents of religious liberty we cannot sit here and seriously say all peoples with a religious need have a right to shoot Bald Eagles at will. Defining that need is the purpose of the licensing program. To eliminate that is to open a can of worms so messy as to all but sign an extinction warrant for the Bald Eagle.

The current Bald Eagle services provided to the Indians by the federal government are pretty reasonable; they are by no means perfect, but the only other option I can see is to farm raise the birds. We do it with fish, why not birds? Is it even feasible, or will it devolve into the shame that is poultry production? Does a farm-raised bird even have the same essence as a wild one? Is that better, is that worse?

I hope that this doesn’t fall under the category of too good to be true (hat tip to Feministing):

Operation Rescue, one of the nation’s highest-profile groups in the anti-abortion movement, has told its supporters it is facing a “major financial crisis” and is very close to shutting down unless emergency help arrives soon.

The group’s president, Troy Newman, blamed the economic downturn for its money woes in a desperate plea e-mailed Monday night to donors. But the Wichita-based organization has also been under attack from both fringe anti-abortion militants and abortion rights supporters since the May 31 shooting death of Dr. George Tiller.

The Associated Press goes on to report that, according to Troy Newman, donations to the organization are down 30 to 40 percent this year.

Why could that be? Could it be that people have had enough of the violent anti-abortion rhetoric that may have emboldened Tiller’s assassin, Scott Roeder? Could it be that more people have come to realize that Operation Rescue represents the most extreme elements of the anti-choice movement? Or perhaps people were put off by idiotic stunts like this?

The Associated Press makes a note of how Operation Rescue was linked in the media to the assassination of Dr. Tiller:

Tiller’s killing has also been a public relations nightmare for the group — despite its public condemnation of the slaying — since the name and phone number of the group’s senior policy adviser was found in Roeder’s car when he was arrested. A television crew zoomed in on the scrawled note inside the car in images that made their way to the Internet.

Furthermore, the president of the National Abortion Federation, Vicki Saporta, noted in the article that there is no way that Operation Rescue can be separated from Tiller’s murder, especially since the organization moved itself to Wichita, Kansas, in order to maintain a constant level of harassment at Tiller’s clinic, and because Roeder obviously had dealings with Operation Rescue’s staff.

Time will tell what this will spell for the anti-choice movement in the United States. But I welcome the possibility that Operation Rescue will fade from the scene. While I doubt that all of us will ever reach consensus on reproductive rights, I do hope that this is a sign that Americans are becoming less tolerant of open harassment and violent rhetoric on the part of the anti-choice movement.

The current Utne Reader (their 25th Anniversary issue) features an article by Tom Jacobs called “Liberals Aren’t Un-American. Conservatives Aren’t Ignorant” (excerpted from the magazine Miller-McCune), which highlights the theories of Jonathan Haidt. Haidt, a University of Virginia Psychology Professor, believes both conservatives and liberals skew the moral argument and demonize each other even though they are interdependent. Haidt believes, perhaps correctly, that conservatives strive to uphold authority while liberals challenge it. He believes that if conservatives ran the world we would resemble North Korea and if liberals ran the world it would be chaos.

Haidt believes that morality is built on “five foundational moral impulses.” These impulses are

• Harm/Care: It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.
• Fairness/ Reciprocity: Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.
• In-Group Loyalty: People should be true to their group and wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty, and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.
• Authority/ Respect: People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.
• Purity/ Sanctity:The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination, and associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

In the broadest sense, a moral entity would be one that contains all the above categories to some extent. According to Haidt, liberals are focused on the first two while conservatives are focused on the last three. He may be onto something; his website, YourMorals.org, allows you to take a quiz and see the results for not just yourself but also other self-identified liberals and conservatives. According to his results, in the aggregate liberals do emphasize the first two and conservatives the last three.

I’ve heard conservative/liberal morality arguments before; George Lakoff’s Moral Politics comes to mind. I’ll say exactly what I said in my review of that book in college, it’s all bunk. Haidt’s questions are so devoid of context and so complex as to be stupid. Here are a few examples:

• Respect for authority is something all children need to learn
• People should not do things that are disgusting, even if no one is harmed
• People should be loyal to their family members, even when family members have done something wrong
• If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer’s orders, I would obey anyway because it was my duty

After each of these questions, and more, you are given the choice to strongly, moderately, or slightly agree or disagree. These are complicated questions, how on earth are you supposed to answer with a bubble sheet?

Children do need to learn to respect authority but they should also learn to challenge authority and call a teacher out when they say something wrong. Where on the agree/ disagree scale is that choice?

Should people do disgusting things? Who is going to answer that people should? And individuals might disagree, for example, on just how disgusting it would be to defecate in the woods out of necessity.

Should people be loyal to their family? What exactly does this mean, do I not turn my sister into the cops for a triple homicide, or do I act civilly the day after we have a fight? These are very different things with different answers and you cannot express it on the agree/disagree scale.

Would you follow orders if you were a soldier? Yes and no. If my commanding officer told me to hook electrodes to a guy’s testicles for fun I would have him court marshaled. If he decided to enter a town from the south as opposed to the north I would shut my mouth and do it. It depends on the context, it depends on the order, and it depends on your relationship with that officer.

All of these questions have a lot of context and complicated answers that this test does not allow for. All Haidt is really measuring is responses to key words that appear throughout the questions: authority, harm, loyal, duty, and more. So self-identified conservatives react more favorably to the word loyal, I fail to see what that has to do with morality or politics.

Politics is a complicated area. It does derive from people’s morality, I don’t deny that. But it is so much more complicated than Heidt’s test allows; there is the cult of personality, self interest, and parental party affiliation all playing into how people vote. Politics is much more about who gets what, when then it is about legislating morality. Haidt’s research is interesting, I give him that, he has shown that self-identified conservatives and liberals react differently to loaded words, but it is a mistake to believe that anyone’s politics, much less their morality, can be measured.

Columnist Bob Herbert has a must-read piece in today’s edition of the New York Times about what happened when justice failed and an innocent man was put on death row in Texas.

Referencing an article appearing in this week’s New Yorker (which can be read here), Herbert reports that on December 21, 1991, Cameron Todd Willingham was at his home in Corsicana, Texas, asleep. His two-year-old daughter and twin one-year-old daughters were in another room. He awoke when he heard the cries of his oldest child, and he quickly found that their room was being engulfed by fire. Herbert tells us what happened next:

Willingham said he tried to rescue the kids but was driven back by smoke and flames. At one point his hair caught fire. As the heat intensified, the windows of the children’s room exploded and flames leapt out. Willingham, who was 23 at the time, had to be restrained and eventually handcuffed as he tried again to get into the room.

There was no reason to believe at first that the fire was anything other than a horrible accident. But fire investigators, moving slowly through the ruined house, began seeing things (not unlike someone viewing a Rorschach pattern) that they interpreted as evidence of arson.

Even though investigators couldn’t determine any motive for Willingham to kill his own children, nevertheless he was arrested and charged with capital murder. Willingham declined a plea deal that would have spared his life and maintained his innocence for the twelve years that he sat on death row. He was executed on February 17th, 2004.

Herbert points out that in the weeks leading up to Willingham’s execution, a leading chemist and fire expert named Gerald Hurst reviewed the arson investigator’s case against Willingham and knocked down key pieces of evidence. This didn’t persuade the state to spare Willingham’s life. Nevertheless, as part of an official review of the state of Texas’s mishandling of forensic evidence, another fire expert named Craig Beylor reviewed the Willingham case and recently released a report on the evidence that sent Willingham to his death. Herbert writes:

The report is devastating, the kind of disclosure that should send a tremor through one’s conscience. There was absolutely no scientific basis for determining that the fire was arson, said Beyler. No basis at all. He added that the state fire marshal who investigated the case and testified against Willingham “seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires.” He said the marshal’s approach seemed to lack “rational reasoning” and he likened it to the practices “of mystics or psychics.”

It looks like Willingham was completely innocent of murder and the house fire that claimed the lives of his daughters was a tragic accident. His execution by the state of Texas is irreversible. And it was the scientifically unsound testimony of an incompetent fire investigator (along with a jailhouse informant who was later shown to be unreliable) that put Willingham in the death chamber.

Now, there are some obvious lessons to be learned here. First, the justice system absolutely must be adapted to keep up with the latest advances in forensic science, even after a prisoner is convicted. Like any science, forensic criminal investigations are subject to rapid advances, and older techniques may no longer be reliable or represent the best interpretation of the evidence available. With a prisoner sitting on death row for twelve years, it is likely that advances made in forensic science during that period of time may affect his case. And while opponents to this idea will point out that the courts may be tied up reviewing evidence in settled cases, nevertheless, in a case like this, where a man’s life is at stake, the state can do no less. The protection of innocent life is always paramount. If previously heard scientific evidence is called into doubt by new discoveries or advances, then it must be heard again.

Furthermore, proceedings involving forensic evidence must be infused with a healthy sense of skepticism. As Beylor’s report makes clear, there is no guarantee that investigators will use the latest or most credible scientific methods in their investigations. Beylor stated in his report that the lead fire investigator in the Willingham case based many of his conclusions on personal beliefs and that he had no real understanding of fire science. Investigators must testify based on sound science and not just sway the jury by dint of their position of authority.

Finally, Willingham is gone, and although being exonerated post mortem may give some measure of comfort to his family, it will not, of course, bring him back. This is another argument in favor of abolishing the death penalty once and for all. Does anyone believe that the legal system in the U.S. is infallible? If it isn’t, then it was inevitable that at least one innocent person would be put to death. And Willingham was by no means the only person wrongfully convicted of serious crimes in this country. While others may eventually be released from prison, Willingham’s case is emblematic of the inherent danger of implementing death as a punishment. Nothing can be done for him now.

To learn more about taking a stand against the death penalty, I recommend visiting the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to collecting and disseminating accurate information about how the death penalty is applied in the United States. Once you’ve learned more about the death penalty, including how 135 people have been set free from death rows around the USA since 1973 after being proven innocent, I’ll bet that you’ll turn against this horrific punishment too.