Guess who’s not getting an invite to the religious right’s Values Voter Summit or to CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). U.S. District Court Judge John Jones III, that’s who. Earlier today Jones ruled the Pennsylvania same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional and, unlike in some other states, the ruling was not stayed. That means gay and lesbian couples are walking down the aisle in the Quaker state even as we type. The ruling also means that the entire northeast part of the country now has marriage equality.
That’s probably bad enough in the eyes of the religious right. But wait, it gets better (or worse if you are one of those religious righters).
Jones signed one other famous federal court ruling. In 2005 he ruled that “intelligent design” was just another way of saying creationism and teaching it in public school science classes was therefore unconstitutional. That was the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
But wait, it gets better still. There’s this:
Judge in Pennsylvania #SSM case is a GWB appointee recommended by then-Sen. Rick Santorum. http://t.co/uOJBs2vxNo h/t @MSignorile
— Jacob Lupfer (@jlupf) May 20, 2014
Rick’s probably not happy today.
We don’t know what Judge Jones will be doing on Values Voters Summit weekend, but he certainly won’t be at the conference. Though he’ll probably be there in spirit. Surely at least one speaker will denounce Jones as yet another activists judge who is ignoring the Constitution and destroying America. But over here in the real word, Jones will just be known as the judge who helped us stand up for science and brought equality to yet another state.
Like I said in yesterday’s post:
EPIC FAIL
Judge Jones is a traditional conservative Republican who believes in freedom and respect for the rights and liberties embedded in the U.S. Constitution. He did not change; the Republican Party did, becoming radical and leaving Constitutional (and social and cultural and economic and political) conservatism far behind.
I agree with Dr. Schafersman. History clearly shows that the Republican Party did indeed change from the traditional party of Lincoln, Grant, Coolidge Eisenhower, Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 1 to a right wing extremist organization that these great men would barely even recognize—much less support. The great tragedy is that the American people as a whole do not even recognize that this radical change has occurred because they have been too busy with their private lives to follow the changes or too ignorant of American history to understand the evil that has befallen the once great GOP.
Do you know who the 8th President of the United States was without looking it up on Google? If not, then you probably missed the radical change that has occurred in the GOP over the past 10 years.