The Chosen Judge

On October 31, George W. Bush nominated Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. On November 1, Esther Kaplan's book, With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right was released* in paperback. The timing could not have been more appropriate.

In her book, the former Nation editor profiles how the Bush White House has pandered to the Christian Right in ways large and small, from painting the war in Iraq as a holy crusade, to forcing the Grand Canyon National Park bookstore to sell a "creationist," but scientifically inaccurate book about the canyon.

Kaplan also uncovers the multitude of ways Christian groups have gained significant influence over the judiciary. She warns that, "[George W. Bush's] judicial appointees, combined with like-minded judges put in place by Bush's father and Ronald Reagan, have the potential to remake the federal courts as a reactionary force for generations to come. Protections for abortion and gays, and protections against state-sponsored religion, all of these could be eroded in the years ahead."

The future she writes about may have already begun.

Immediately after his nomination, Alito was touted by the Christian Right as the man who could deliver America from evil (or at least the man who can possibly overturn Roe v. Wade). He has received high praise and petitions of support from religious groups like Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition of America and Family Research Council.

Kaplan talked to AlterNet this week about what Alito's nomination means for the Christian Right.

In your book, you describe how Bush has inserted religion into almost every branch of his administration, from conducting Bible studies in the White House to directly funding religious organizations through his faith-based initiatives legislation. How has the president interjected his religious beliefs into the judicial branch?

Mainly by appointing judges who have pretty creative ideas about church-state separation. Alito is a pretty good example of that. He is someone who thinks that prayer belongs in the public schools and that religious displays are acceptable at public buildings. There are a whole host of judges that Bush has appointed to federal courts that take that attitude, judges like William Pryor, who used to show up at rallies defending "Roy's Rock," the five-ton Ten Commandments monument that Judge Roy Moore placed inside an Alabama courthouse, and who claims the U.S. Constitution, which never mentions God, is "rooted in a Christian perspective."

The Christian Right feels that the Supreme Court has gone too far in segregating faith from the public square, and that this balance needs to be righted. Of course, Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s that strengthened the church-state divide, such as banning mandatory prayer in public schools, helped to launch the Christian right as a social movement. Now they feel like their generations-old dream of overturning those decisions can be realized.

There has been a lot of attention to Alito's 1991 opinion in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, in which Alito supported legislation requiring women to notify their husbands that they are seeking an abortion. Last week a new frenzy followed the release of a 1985 opinion in which Alito said that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." With each new discovery about Alito, the debate over his nomination has increasingly become another battleground between pro-life and pro-choice activists. Do you think that the intense focus on abortion overshadows other, perhaps equally important, issues?

I think abortion rights are an incredibly important issue, so I think it is correct to make them central. However, I do think that Alito's decisions regarding the rights of workers are equally horrendous. When he was employed by the U.S. Department of Justice, he wrote an opinion that said employers could legally fire people living with AIDS because of a "fear of contagion, whether reasonable or not."