Freedom's Just Another Word For Rushdoony

Posted by Bruce Wilson at 8:33 AM on February 24, 2007.

Last night, at the Institute For Progressive Christianity's two day Countering Fundamentalism: Christian Gospel as a Basis for Progressive Social Action symposium, I had the pleasure of hearing the Rev. Deb. Haffner, head of the Religious Institute On Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing ( great name, in myhop, and here's Haffner's blog ) present her take on the current state - through a religious lens - of what she sees as the sexuality phobic condition of current American culture. Reproductive rights - access to birth control, abortion, but even more importantly knowledge about human sexuality, are foundational to Haffner's positions ; they are the bottom line, the sine qua non.

So, I woke up this morning to read Scott Lemieux's critique of a guest NYT op-ed by Constitutional scholar Ann Althouse, who has a jarringly different take on reproductive rights... Opining on Rudy Guliani's pledge to, if he is elected president, elect "Strict Constructionist" judges, Althous writes: "If Roe were overruled... legislatures would decide how to regulate abortion. And decentralized legislation really is fairly called "part of our freedom" because the Constitution's framers saw the balance of power between the national government and the states as a safeguard against tyranny.". Lemieux, for the Lawyers, Guns,and Money blog, correctly skewers Althouse's dubious claim that "Strict Constructionist" Constitutional interpretation has no political agenda. To the contrary, explains Frederick Clarkson in the Winter 2005 edition of the Public Eye : it is about Remaking America as a Christian Nation and Althouse, wittingly or not, is helping pave the way. It is quite bizarre to see the sort of arguments typically made by Christian Reconstructionists show up in a NYT op-ed. [image: Freedom: The T-shirt]

Sociologists might describe this as an example of ideological diffusion. Reconstructionists and Strict Constructionists favor sharply circumscribing federal judicial power, seen as a form of "tyranny' imposed on the states, and refer to the "original intent" of the Constitutional framers - but the Constitution originally had no prohibition against human slavery, granted no voting rights to women - nor any voting rights whatsoever for US citizens, and did not establish any right to privacy. Those innovations came later.

In claiming that the US Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade amounts to judicial tyranny against the US states, Ann Althouse has in effect aligned herself with those Christian Reconstructionists (and even Neo-Confederates) who seek to sharply curtail federal judicial authority in order to impose at the state level their interpretation of "Biblical Law" that includes, as a counterpart to Althous apparent "freedom" of forced pregnancy, the "freedom" of debt-slavery.

"Freedom" is an infinitely malleable word, it would seem :

Althouse appears to feel that if Roe is overturned, and states begin re-criminalizing abortion, that would represent an expansion of American, and women's, rights. According to a Jan. 2004 SIECUS survey, about thirty percent of US public and middle high school schools teach "abstinence only" sex ed. and less than half of those teach their kids anything at all about contraception. By Althouse's seeming logic, the 15-16 percent of American teens who get taught nothing whatsoever about contraception and safe sex enjoy the "right" to the highest teen pregnancy rates and one of the highest STD rates in the industrialized world. Ah, freedom.

When not crafting legal arguments, Constitutional scholar Althouse can be found exercising her First Amendment rights on her personal blog post - such as in her most recent post that picks up the earthshaking blogospheric discussion of "who appointed Diane Keaton to the position of National Commissioner for Aging Female Sexuality ?" [ is that a new Bush Administration cabinet position or something ? ] and wonders, in apparent seriousness, "But does it have to be Diane Keaton? Who could never act? Who was never really hot at any time, Woody Allen's thing for her notwithstanding? Who now looks weirdly like a 38-year-old who's had wrinkles superimposed on her by the studio makeup artists so she could play a grandma?"

Tagged as: freedom, constitution, roe v. wade, nyt, althous, strict constructionism

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.