Prayer
Crusade Seeks Justices’ Retirement
Gay.com
/ PlanetOut.com Network, July 16, 2003
By
Tom Musbach
SUMMARY:
Pat Robertson responded to the landmark overturning of U.S. sodomy laws by
asking his national audience to pray that God would replace three Supreme
Court justices.
Religious
broadcaster Pat Robertson responded on Monday to last month’s landmark
overturning of U.S. sodomy laws by asking his national audience to pray that
God would replace three Supreme Court justices.
On
his Web site, Robertson launched a “prayer offensive” called Operation
Supreme Court Freedom, urging his network of supporters to “cry out for
redress” so God might change the court.
“One
justice is 83 years old, another has cancer, and another has a heart
condition,” Robertson wrote in an open letter. “Would it not be possible
for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to
retire?”
The
Associated Press noted that Robertson is likely referring to Justice John Paul
Stevens, who was born in 1920, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has been
treated for colon cancer. The identity of the person in the third reference is
unclear.
The
campaign was prompted by the high court’s 6-3 ruling last month that
declared that private, consensual same-gender sexual activity is protected
under the constitutional right to privacy.
Robertson
warned that the ruling “opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy,
legalized prostitution and even incest.”
“But
no culture has ever endured which has turned openly to homosexuality,” he
added.
“Obviously,
Pat Robertson and other religious right conservatives feel they need the U.S.
Supreme Court to be able to implement their interpretation of biblical law in
the United States, despite the fact that the laws of the United States are
based on the Constitution—not the Bible,” said Laura Montgomery Rutt,
spokeswoman for Soulforce, a national group dedicated to ending “spiritual
violence” against GLBT people.
“In the Lawrence v. Texas ruling, the Supreme
Court justices awarded to all people what was rightfully theirs to begin with,
as the government never belonged in anyone’s bedroom in the first place,”
Rutt told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network.
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