Maybe you never wondered if there was a brand of religious zealotry out there that includes all the secretive ultra-conservative Catholicism of Opus Dei, then slathers on the anti-rationality, ready condemnation, and baked-in misogyny of extreme fundamentalist evangelicism. It doesn’t matter if you’ve thought about this worst-of-both-worlds stew, because exactly that combination seems set to remold American law for a generation or more.
With multiple news organizations reporting that on Saturday, Donald Trump will officially name 48-year-old Amy Coney Barrett as his replacement for the seat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it’s worth noting that Barrett is a lifelong member of “People of Praise.” This group, springing from a Catholic charismatic movement of the 1970s which seemed intent on capturing the energy Catholics saw in the surging fundamentalist movement, has, among other things, a very strict view of gender roles. Not only does this include refusing to allow women to hold positions of leadership in the church, it strictly confines the role of women in the workplace and the home. And it called women who do things correctly “handmaids.”
No, despite what’s been cited elsewhere, Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was not a source of inspiration for the People of Praise. That would be difficult, since Atwood didn’t write her book until 1985. People of Praise coined their use of handmaid in 1971. There also appears to be little evidence that inspiration ran the other way. After all, People of Praise does not engage in abusive sexual slavery, and does not preach that men own women. That doesn’t mean that what it does believe still can’t be toxic when taken to extremes.
To be fair, it appears that Atwood got her use of the term handmaid from another Catholic charismatic spin off group, called People of Hope, which sprang up at around the same time as People of Praise. People of Praise is aware that handmaid has become a loaded term. Several years ago, the terminology was changed to the phrase “woman leader.” Note that this is explicitly not simply “leader,” because decisions of consequence remain strictly the role of men. However, strong women leaders can advise and instruct other women on “womanly affairs.” Within the not-a-church, the organization retains a strict patriarchal hierarchy that combines the worst aspects of excluding women built into the traditional Catholic Church, and layers on ideas of groups like Promise Keepers about the “Biblically defined roles” of men and women. Husbands are regarded as both the “head of the household” and the “spiritual head” of their wives.
All of this may seem incompatible with the whole idea of a woman as a judge, much less as a Supreme Court justice. Which makes it somewhat understandable that people are confused … and that “Republic of Gilead” has been trending.
Barrett brings this same sort of strict fundamentalist approach to her interpretation of law. She considers herself an “originalist,” going even further than Antonin Scalia in insisting that the only interpretation that is possible, is one based on the intentions of the Constitutional authors. The idea that the world might have changed over the last two and a half centuries, and specifically that our understanding of the role of women, and of human rights in general, might be somewhat better than that of a group of 18th century slave-holders who denied women a voice or a vote does not concern Barrett. She has written about this extensively and unapologetically.
How far does she take this? Far enough that one of her concerns is the “legitimacy of the Fourteenth Amendment.” That’s right. Amy Coney Barrett is such an originalist, that she ready to throw out Constitutional amendments. Including the one that defines all people as equal when it comes to allocating representatives and prevents states from reimposing slavery. The amendment that is the foundation of essentially all Civil Rights legislation, Barrett refers to as “the possibly illegitimate Fourteenth Amendment.” This is who she is.
On the other hand, Barrett’s originalism is also open to being shaped by precedents … so long as she likes them. In her extensive writing, Barrett has called some past decisions “super precedents,” suggesting that the Court can treat them with reverence similar to that of the Constitution. But the definition of super precedent seems to be confined to those decisions which Barrett believes are worth preserving. As the L.A. Times noted the first time Barrett’s name made the short list of possible Court nominees, she has made it clear that she believes Roe to be “an erroneous decision.”
But, devastating to the lives and safety of American women as overturning Roe might be, it’s far from the limits of what Barrett might do in a long career on the courts. She has opposed marriage equality, explicitly said that transgender women (who she refers to as “physiological males”) are excluded from Title IX protections, and given at least tacit support to segregation.
When Amy Coney Barrett comes before the Senate for questioning, Roe is certain to be one of the questions that … she refuses to answer. But it shouldn’t be the only one asked. She should be asked about Civil Rights, about transgender rights, about marriage equality, and about the $@#%ing 14th Amendment. Barrett isn’t just an self-defined origalist, she’s an extremist whose social and legal believes are far outside the American mainstream. Democrats must do everything they can to define her, before she defines us.
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