On April 30, the Supreme Court docket heard arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Constitution Faculty Board v. Drummond, a case that addresses whether or not Oklahoma is required to supply public funding to the Catholic Church for working a non secular constitution college.
Whereas the case is predicted to be determined subsequent month, John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” targeted much less on the case itself and extra on the dodgy group behind it: the Alliance Defending Freedom. Generally known as the ADF, it has been licensed by the Southern Poverty Legislation Heart as a hate group—and for good motive.
Now led by far-right lawyer Kristen Waggoner, the ADF has flooded the court docket system with so-called “religious freedom” circumstances. Oliver started his exposé with a concentrate on the group’s founder, James Dobson, who many would keep in mind for creating the anti-LGBTQ hate group Deal with the Household. Dobson infamously warned that same-sex marriage would result in “marriage between a man and his donkey.”
Oliver described Dobson as “A man who looks less like a real person and more like AI’s answer to the question, ‘What did they look like without their hoods?’”
As detestable as it’s, the ADF has performed a major function in shaping our nation’s present authorized panorama. This is similar group behind final summer season’s authorized assault on the abortion tablet mifepristone, and the identical group of reactionaries that efficiently defended a Christian baker’s discriminatory practices in opposition to a same-sex couple he refused to make a cake for in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Fee.
The group’s most devastating victory was the Supreme Court docket’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Group, which overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped federal protections for abortion rights for hundreds of thousands.
Oliver summed it up with devastating readability.
“This is a group that will talk winsomely about personal liberty, all while fearmongering about softball players that don’t exist, shitty studies that don’t apply, and pedophile cakes that no one will ever order,” he stated. “And it might be important for everyone to know that at the end of the day, ADF at its core is really a lot like the pews at an imaginary donkey wedding—which is to say, absolutely full of shit.”
So whereas most individuals would assume the upcoming constitution college case to be a foregone matter of separation between church and state, the ADF’s egregious affect on our judiciary means the end result is way from sure.
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