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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWilliam Barr, Trump's Attorney General Pick, Wanted Government to 'Restrain Sexual Immorality'
https://www.thedailybeast.com/william-barr-trumps-attorney-general-pick-wanted-government-to-restrain-sexual-immoralityhttps://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1440,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1544405988/181207-michaelson-barr-tease_j929rx
Barr went on to blame everything from crime to sexually transmitted diseases on a government-led attack on traditional values. He explicitly called for the government to subsidize Catholic religious education and to promote laws which restrain sexual immorality, a reference to homosexuality and non-marital sex.
These views are no longer those of a private citizen. As attorney general, Barr would have more influence than anyone else in the country in how laws dealing with religion, LGBT rights, civil rights, and womens rights are enforced or not.
Barr served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993. After he left government, he laid out his views in an essay, Legal Issues in a New Political Order published in the St. Johns University Law School journal The Catholic Lawyer.
The American government, he wrote, was predicated precisely on [the] Judeo-Christian system that flows from God's eternal law. But since the 1960s, Barr wrote, the state no longer sees itself as a moral institution, but a secular one.
Specifically, Barr continued, through legislative action, litigation, or judicial interpretation, secularists continually seek to eliminate laws that reflect' traditional moral norms. Decades ago, we saw the barriers to divorce eliminated. Twenty years ago, we saw the laws against abortion swept away. Today, we are seeing the constant chipping away at laws designed to restrain sexual immorality, obscenity, or euthanasia.
In fact, those barriers to divorce often forced women to remain in abusive or miserable marriages, and treated men as the head and master of the household with near absolute power, especially over shared property. And the laws designed to restrain sexual immorality criminalized gay sex, condemning millions of lesbian and gay people to lives of misery, isolation, and vulnerability to criminal prosecution and violence.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,400 posts)All of these sanctimonious crusaders have their own personal, secret, hypocritical scandals. It's only a matter of time before his is revealed.
dewsgirl
(14,961 posts)DFW
(54,436 posts)These days, the Supreme Court is already practically a Papal Enclave, and more and more people are getting into positions of national responsibility that sound more comfortable with the Spanish Inquisition than with with the U.S. Constitution.
jmowreader
(50,562 posts)How, exactly, can a man like William Barr (neither you nor I agree with Barr's moral stance, but he's serious about it) work for Donald Trump? Trump is everything Barr hates in one evil package.
Jarqui
(10,130 posts)and people knew that when the Russians effectively stole their vote.
Freelancer
(2,107 posts)JI7
(89,262 posts)hetero white male and they are never the problem.
OnDoutside
(19,969 posts)Oneironaut
(5,522 posts)"Also, his policies will supersede any sins committed in the past."
Response to Demovictory9 (Original post)
Freelancer This message was self-deleted by its author.
DeminPennswoods
(15,290 posts)nt
Response to DeminPennswoods (Reply #8)
Freelancer This message was self-deleted by its author.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)CRK7376
(2,203 posts)infidelity maybe? He is such a morally superior orange blob...
treestar
(82,383 posts)He doesn't get to make up new ones.
LiberalFighter
(51,038 posts)Not right. But he will.
no_hypocrisy
(46,160 posts)First, it's laughable to think that Trump will issue Executive Orders for these restrictions.
Next, which party controls the House in January, 2019?
mnmoderatedem
(3,728 posts)hatrack
(59,592 posts)Hit him with a quick gloss-coat of nostalgic "civility" by way of GHWB's recent funerary hagiography and he pops out of the nominee slot like a Butterfinger from a vending machine.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)Decent people can get behind that...
tanyev
(42,600 posts)harumph
(1,910 posts)The Catholicism of Dorothy Day and contemporary social justice Catholics, who often
call themselves "lapsed" - but remain committed to the Sermon on the Mount Jesus
...and the Crazy bunch who fetishize ritual and rules over substance.
Barr belongs to the latter.