Newt Gingrich secured a major endorsement from the social conservative community Tuesday with a nod from Mississippi-based Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, founder and chairman of American Family Association.
"Newt Gingrich recognizes the threat to our country posed by judges and lawyers imposing values upon the country inconsistent with our religious heritage, and has proposed constitutional steps to bring the courts back in balance under the constitution," Wildmon said in a statement. "We need someone in the White House who can balance the budget and get the economy moving again. Newt has done it before and I believe he can do it again."
Gingrich accepted Wildom's endorsement, calling him "one of the most important leaders in the country in the battle to uphold our founding principles."
For those who aren’t familiar with this organization, listed as a right wing organization by RightWatch, the AFA fights against less than wholesome television programming, the separation of church and state, pornography, "the homosexual agenda," premarital sex, legal abortion, the National Endowment for the Arts, gambling, unfiltered internet access in libraries, and the removal of school-sponsored religious worship from public schools, while opposing workplace equality.
Until 2005, a major target of AFA's had been Disney and its subsidiaries; "Disney's attack on America
The American Family Association (AFA) alerts its members to companies who are supportive of GLBT employees and asks "Christian consumers…to think twice before they patronize companies that support the homosexual agenda." AFA list includes major corporations that have non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation or that offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples, including Eastman Kodak, Citigroup, PepsiCo., American Airlines, Allstate Insurance, and the Coca-Cola Company. In fact, it isn’t hard to find these policies at most Fortune 500 companies keeping the AFA busy alerting its members.
Workplace equality is a focus for most, if not all, successful large companies to avoid legal battles, recruit the best employees, and create an environment of success for its shareholders. Creatively this target of attacking large companies provides Wildmon a continuous income stream from donors, tax-deductible in most cases, for his efforts while he rarely has to answer for his lack of success. If an assessment were done, the AFA, while having momentary successes along the way, has consistently lost ground to his opposition in nearly every political cause. He would be replaced in corporate America
Wildmon has created a draconian empire by reinterpreting Biblical teachings to adhere to traditional beliefs of censorship and discrimination. His lifetime dedication to opposing the homosexual agenda suggests that only he knows what that agenda is. He and his employees articulate discredited information as fact when it comes to gays and lesbians thus creating poisonous political environments where his organization flourishes.
The sole reason Wildmon is endorsing Gingrich is in the belief that Gingrich will actively pursue impeachment of judges who are deemed “activist”. Examples of judicial activism include:
· Brown v. Board of Education - 1954 Supreme Court ruling ordering the desegregation of public schools.[15]
· Bush v. Gore - The landmark United States Supreme Court case between the major-party candidates in the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush and Al Gore. The judges voted along ideological lines, 5-4, to halt the recount of ballots in Florida and, in effect, elect Bush President.[17]
· Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission - 2010 Supreme Court decision overturning Congressionally enacted limitations on corporate political spending and transparency.[18]
· Perry v. Schwarzenegger - 2010 decision by federal judge Vaughn R. Walker overturning California
Judicial activism is used as a pejorative normally reserved by conservatives when they lose an argument in court. The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that corporations were individuals thus giving corporations the rights to donate to political action committees, thus greatly changing the financing of political elections. This court wasn’t called activist. Yet, judges who identify people as having more rights than voters felt they deserved are called activist. Robert Green articulates the importance of Judicial Activism “is vital to any legal system that (like ours) contains broad judicial discretion.” Judicial activism has no inherent link to boosting liberty over the majority or curbs governmental power specifically.
To quell the idea of judicial activism, as Gingrich is demanding, is to refuse to consider how inclusive the concept of “We, the People” has become over time, since its initial writing of the Preamble. At its origin, it included land owning individuals. Later it include Blacks, then women, then those others who identified that certain rights were being denied them. This process of the progression of law would end under Gingrich.
Allison Kilkenny in 2009, during Sotomayor’s Senate hearing to become a Supreme Court Justice, Senator Jeff Sessions complained Sotomayor would bring empathy to the court and be an activist jurist. Kilkenny identifies Scalia and Thomas as wildly ideologically partisan yet they escape being labeled “activist”. Certainly, conservative judges are as activist as liberal judges — just for different causes.
Wildmon’s political support of Gingrich is a last ditch effort of a crazy man to stop the progress in the fight for the legalization of Gay Marriage. Several legal fights are headed to the Supreme Court where Gay Marriage could become legal. In his panic, he endorses someone who clearly does not value Marriage as an institution, in the hopes of denying that institution to others. Certainly, politics makes strange bed fellows.
Wildom recognizes that demographically, he will continue to lose to the acceptance in America
Presidential Review of the Judiciary to hinder judges from using their own experience, perspective, and thought, while balancing it with the law, hinders what I define as mercy. When a judge refrains from considering the personal and simply regurgitates politically compromised law with an accompanied punishment, without being mindful of the merits of mercy, then all that is left is judgment, not justice. And, without justice, the people perish.
This is one more bad idea from Gingrich. And, it only took Wildmon to support it for me to carefully consider it and understand it as a true threat to America
