Freedom's Just Another Word For Rushdoony

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]