Cagle World

Whenever the Supreme Court comes down with a particularly momentous decision, it’s customary to look at the majority opinion. After all, the majority makes the law.

Sometimes, though, it’s the dissenting opinions that are more interesting, more shocking, more passionate and in a very small number of cases,
more influential.

John Marshall Harlan was nicknamed “The Great Dissenter” because he disagreed with so many of his court’s decisions during a storied lifetime on the bench. In some very important instances, his dissenting views became the basis of future majority opinions. The most famous example is the 7-1 majority in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding the “separate but equal” standard used to support legal segregation. Harlan was the only holdout, writing in dissent that the Constitution was “color blind” and that “in this country, there is no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens.”

Fifty-eight years later, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Warren Court overruled Plessy. Justice Harlan was posthumously vindicated.

Then you have the dissenters who regularly file opinions that run counter to common sense, words that reflect a backward view of the constitution and a very personal animus toward certain groups, certain principles and certain perspectives. That’s why I wanted to focus on the dissents in a case handed down last week, because they carry very little of the wisdom and prescience found in Harlan’s work.

In Carson v. Makin, a majority composed of Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett ruled that it was a violation of the Free Exercise Clause to deny public funds to parents who want to send their children to a religiously-affiliated secondary school. The controversy arose out of Maine, which had a program that provided money to parents who lived in school districts that didn’t have high schools. The taxpayer money was designed to allow these children to obtain the equivalent of a public education by attending private institutions of their choice. However, private sectarian schools were the only schools specifically excluded from the program.

Enter the dissenters. Justice Stephen Breyer penned a disingenuous opinion – joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – where he tries to gaslight us into thinking that he wants to “honor” religion by making sure he starves religious schools. In a particularly ironic passage, Breyer writes that “In my view, Maine’s [law] is also constitutional because it supports rather than undermines the Religion Clause’s goal of avoiding religious strife.” He then goes on to point out that people from minority faiths will feel annoyed if they think majority religions are being given an unfair advantage.

What Breyer ignores, and what Roberts makes clear, is that the citizens who are barred from using taxpayer money to go to the schools of their choice are the ones being discriminated against. They are equally justified in being upset that the state would penalize them because they choose to go to a religious school as opposed to another sort of private institution. And let’s be clear: this is not about public vs. private. This is about secular vs. religious, two very different things.

Justice Sotomayor wasn’t satisfied with joining his opinion. She had to weigh in with her own words, and they were choice.

In one particularly revelatory passage, where she sounds like Cassandra warning the Trojans about the Greeks hiding in that annoying horse, Sotomayor warns society at large of the evil lurking within the majority opinion: “[I]n just a few years, the Court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits States to decline to fund religious organizations to one that requires States in many circumstances to subsidize religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.”

You can feel the sneer in “religious indoctrination.” She continues: “Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.”

Sotomayor’s is doing what the majority in Plessy did years ago, turn people of faith into second class citizens who don’t have a right to the same benefits that secular folk can claim. It’s really quite repugnant, but not surprising. Of late, Sonia’s been increasingly strident in her attacks on a society that doesn’t agree with her philosophically or politically.

The good news is that her dissent was joined by one person: her. It will not have the impact that Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy had, and although I can’t be sure, I suspect that future generations will look at her words as a desperate attempt to keep religion marginalized, behind a wall that exists only in the minds of the prejudiced and intolerant.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I watched one of my favorite movies the other night, “Quo Vadis.”

Despite the cheesy costumes and over the top acting, it has important historical value, in that it describes a critical but faded episode of inhumanity: The persecution of Christians. We know about it, we have some vague memories of the people who had to dance around the lions in the Colosseum, but the events are generally filed under “news too old to care about.”

Except, the “news too old to care about” is today’s headline. No lions, no Colosseum, just the massacre of Nigerian Catholics in a church on Pentecost Sunday, 2022.

Nigeria is a country whose Christians have been under assault for over a decade. According to the website Genocide Watch, over 45,000 Christians have been assassinated in the last 13 years, making that country the most dangerous in Africa for members of the faith. Catholics are in particular danger, because we represent a large percentage of Christians in the country and attract most of the attention.

This time, they waited until the worshippers entered St. Francis Church in Owo, Ondo State, and then started shooting at them from both inside and outside of the building. Reports state that some of the attackers were disguised as parishioners. Some have attributed the assault to random violence.

But don’t be misled. The history of anti-Christian violence in Nigeria is a part of the fabric of the nation, something that mirrors a similar wave of persecution that has engulfed much of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Central America. A lot of it is fueled by a particularly extreme and virulent form of Islam, such as that practiced by the Boko Haram in Nigeria and ISIS in the Middle East. Some of it is rooted in hostility toward the social justice mission of many Christian churches, such as those who evangelize against gang violence in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

In my 25 years practicing immigration law, I’ve handled a lot of asylum cases. But the ones that cause me the largest number of sleepless nights are the ones that involve religious persecution. Just this past week we were successful in obtaining asylum for a Catholic youth leader from El Salvador who had a gun held to his head as he was counseling young boys in church. He was told that if he didn’t stop trying to keep the boys from joining Mara Salvatrucha, the most violent gang in that country, he would “end up like Romero.” That was a clear reference to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated at the altar while celebrating Mass in San Salvador over 40 years ago.

I’ve also represented Protestant preachers who’ve been kidnapped, threatened and in one case orphaned (mother and father murdered) because of their ministries in Honduras and China.

The most heart-wrenching case was that of a young Salvadoran woman who was raped by her boyfriend, a police officer, and became pregnant. When he demanded that she abort the child, she refused because of her Catholic beliefs, at which point he beat her so severely that she miscarried. And when she tried to report him to his fellow police officers, she was told that she should have gotten an abortion (this, in a country that sacrificed martyrs for the church).

Somehow, these stories rarely make it up through the media magma, the dense layers of preferences that the people who run the newspapers and cable networks impose on the rest of us. The fact that someone thinks she was assaulted by Bill Cosby in 1975 is more interesting, they think, than the stories of missionaries being kidnapped in Haiti. People Magazine will give its cover over to the juicy details of Meghan Markle’s latest grievance, while the massacred bodies of churchgoers will make it to page 5 of the Washington Post.

The truth is uncomfortable, but it’s still the truth. The vast majority of Christians persecuted for religious reasons are killed by non-Christians, including Muslims, Hindus and Chinese atheists. The statistics are quite clear on this, even though Amnesty International (which thinks that abortion is a human right) will try and avoid naming names.

And I’ll go even further. The last acceptable prejudice in America is anti-Catholicism. It’s not persecution, but the level to which it infects our current society is insidious.

Instead of cracking jokes about how misogynistic, bigoted and backwards Christians are, it might be a better idea to notice the bleeding bodies.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

They’re fire-bombing pro-life pregnancy clinics. They’re defacing churches. They’re disrupting pro-life marches with threats of violence. And this is their reasoning: “If abortion isn’t safe, neither are you.”

Those are the exact words written on the outside of a counseling center for pregnant women in Asheville, N.C., last week. Earlier, a Christian ministry in Buffalo, N.Y., was vandalized and before that, the headquarters of a pro-life organization in Madison, Wis., was bombed.

This is just the beginning, according to the group “Jane’s Revenge,” a pro-abortion organization that has a history of violence. So far, they’ve limited that violence to buildings, but it’s very easy to imagine that this group – which allegedly cares about the safety of women – will endanger the safety of pro-life women. They’ve already threatened the lives of Supreme Court justices, including death threats issued against Brett Kavanaugh A man armed with a gun was found outside of the justice’s Maryland home. It’s only by a miracle that Kavanaugh, his wife and children were not hurt.

In some ways, I’m glad these violent folk exist, and are showing their true faces. There is this false perception of the pro-life movement as religious and ideological zealots who are engaged in guerilla warfare against women. While it can’t be denied that anti-abortion activists have used violence to advance their goals in some very high-profile cases, these are by far the exception and not the rule. It’s for that reason, and that reason alone, that I won’t tar the entire abortion-rights movement with the crimes of Jane’s Revenge and similar groups around the country.

But I will call out the so-called mainstream supporters of abortion for their silence in the face of the carnage. This version of “protest” is more immediate, and has the capacity to cause harm to those who are simply exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly and expression. Because nothing that these pro life clinics are doing is illegal, and the attacks on their mission is an attempt to violate their First Amendment birthright (pun intended).

You might recognize the language I’m using here, and the way that I’m framing it. The pro-choice, abortion-rights or pro-abortion movement is all about the lexicon of “rights.” They push for the “right” to privacy, the “right” to use birth control and the “right” to become “unpregnant.” They demand the ”right” to have free access to abortion clinics, the “right” to fund Planned Parenthood with tax dollars, the “right” to call a baby a clump of cells. Freedom of speech, of assembly, of bodily autonomy, all of these are the fundamental sacraments of the abortion-rights movement.

But I scoured the internet for some examples of those same organizations like NARAL, Planned Parenthood, NOW and Emily’s List condemning the violence against pro-life organizations and buildings, and I came up with this:

Nothing.

When I googled “condemnation of firebombings from abortion activists,” one of the first titles that popped up was an article from the New York Times with this headline: “A Brief History of the Deadly Attacks on Abortion Providers.” I looked on Twitter and elsewhere to see if President Biden had said anything and there were some statements about how great it was that baby formula was getting to the children, but nothing about the violence. The governor of New York, a strong supporter of choice, issued a generic comment condemning “all violence.” I reached out to our local Planned Parenthood for a comment and got nothing.

I have no patience for these hypocrites. They wail in anguish at the thought of having to actually take responsibility for their sexual activity, and abandon abortion as a form of birth control. They seethe with anger at the prospect of not being able to decide that a Master’s degree in Women’s Studies should take precedence over the birth of an unexpected son or daughter. They reject science, much like the creationists who oppose evolution. They actually don’t believe in evolution, because they don’t think that human beings stem from “human” matter.

And they point fingers at other people who use violent tactics, tactics that have been disavowed by the vast majority of pro-life advocates. They try and conflate James Kopp and Scott Roeder (the men who killed, respectively, Barnett Slepian and George Tiller) with grandmothers who pray the rosary outside of abortion clinics. Or Catholic Supreme Court justices.

It’s time for these women and the men who support them to come out and condemn the nihilism and terrorism of these abortion rights activists. It’s time for Merrick Garland to open an investigation into their felonious behavior, instead of stalking parents at school board meetings. It’s time for Planned Parenthood and the sister groups to issue full-throated condemnation of the violence that is being done in their name.

I know they’ve spent a half-century condoning violence against the unborn, so that might be hard. But even a small effort would be appreciated, at a time when silence can kill.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

For years, social interactions between men and women have become fractured, where the wrong word or glance could end your life as you know it.

Men have been on the short end of that measuring stick, but women have also suffered as we redefined love, attraction, abuse, affection, and misunderstandings. The vitriol and malice became more potent in the #MeToo era, culminating with the human sacrifice of Brett Kavanaugh. Little did the high priestesses of the “Believe All Women” cult realize that this was the beginning of the end, as they cannibalized themselves with false accusations and targeted acts of revenge.

Whether we admit it or not, Johnny Depp benefitted from the backlash against this toxic movement of gender grievance. Depp was one of the first men who didn’t slither away in shame and panic at the first pointed finger, the first misplaced accusation. The fact that he had an incredibly high profile was an added bonus. There is comfort in familiarity, and in fame.

But it wasn’t just men who rallied to Depp’s defense. Women who were horrified at what Christine Blasey Ford was allowed (actually, encouraged) to do to Kavanaugh saw an opportunity to support a man who – while hardly as blameless as the Supreme Court justice – fell short of the stereotypical abuser that the movement feeds on. We were happy to starve the #MeToo monster, depriving it of another life, another reputation, another opportunity to seek vengeance on an entire gender.

While Amber Heard did manage a small victory with the jury award of $2 million, no sane person could deny that the victory was an almost total one for her ex-husband. Johnny Depp will likely never receive any of the $8.5 million verdict announced last week, unless Heard finds a way to “donate” or “pledge” it to him on an installment plan. But it’s fairly clear that he did not sue his ex for the money. He sued her for a chance to tell his story, in all of its gore and glory. And that was priceless.

Some of my friends observed that there were no winners in this case. I beg to differ. If your reputation is, as Shakespeare wrote, that immortal part of yourself, the fact that a jury of your peers rescued it from a premature and unwarranted execution is worth something.

Some of my friends also said that Depp and Heard were equally vile and deserved each other, which is interesting because he never wrote a column attacking her. He, in fact, asked for a clause in their divorce settlement seeking reciprocal silence. He didn’t want her to speak about him, and he was prepared not to speak about her as their paths diverged. She broke that mutual covenant, and so she is the reason we are now saddled with a public image of two broken people.

In the end, this trial was a social cleansing, a moral enema if you will. It set a precedent that I hope the rest of us will follow the next time we find ourselves at the other end of a pointed finger. Whether we deserve the accusations is, of course, subjective. Each case rises and falls on its own facts.

But the facts in this case were that Depp decided he wasn’t going to be shamed into silence, even if that meant that the stories which would inevitably follow would embarrass him at least as much as they embarrassed his antagonist.

The facts in this case were that a person who felt cheated at a game refused to take his marbles and go home, and instead stayed on for another round, and another.

The facts in this case were that someone who had already lost a lot but stood to lose much more made a calculation that half a glass was better than none, and that a stained and spotted virtue was preferable to its total loss.

This trial gave other people permission to say “enough is enough.” It might be too late for the bodies that were crushed under the weight of the #MeToo movement, bodies and personalities that were erased and consigned to oblivion.

It might be too late for Al Franken, who never should have resigned. It might be too late for Aziz Ansari, who never should have apologized for having consensual sex with a confused fan. It might be too late for Garrison Keillar (for Lord’s sake, the Prairie Home Companion guy?) who was somehow portrayed as a sexual predator by one co-worker.

But maybe the next time someone, man or woman, thinks about sending a lie around the world, they’ll check and see if they have a spare $8.5 million in their bank accounts.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I’ve been in favor of the death penalty since I first knew what it was. I suppose it has something to do with my sense of justice: if you take a life, which is really the only time the death penalty is imposed, you owe a life. That also conflicts somewhat with my Catholic upbringing that teaches all life is precious, but humans have our convenient blind spots, and mine was capital punishment.

For most of my life, I’ve been fairly steadfast in my belief that killers deserve to be killed. In fact, I still believe that. But for the first time in over 50 years, I can say that I am truly anti-death penalty. And I can thank the Supreme Court for, inadvertently, changing my mind and fine-tuning my moral compass.

There is some inconsistency in embracing the life of an unborn child but rejecting the life of a man. The way I used to reconcile those two mutually exclusive postures is by arguing that the man on death row is guilty of taking a life, while the child in utero is guilty of only one thing: Being unwanted by her mother.

That helped me through a lot of conversations. But there was always the underlying supposition that the person being put to death was guilty of a heinous crime, and that taking him out of the world balanced the celestial scales. I can’t argue that anymore.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled this country could legally execute an innocent man. There really is no other way to interpret the opinion written by Clarence Thomas, which places the proper administration of judicial procedures, finality and order in the court over humanity.

The court had before it the case of a man who had been convicted of sexually abusing a 4-year-old child so viciously that her intestine ruptured and she died of peritonitis. The facts are so horrific that it’s difficult to find any window of mercy, any possibility of compassion for the alleged abuser.

But there was strong, discoverable evidence that the defendant, Barry Jones, was not actually responsible for the child’s death. That included indications that the child had not been raped, and that the pathologist’s report was flawed concerning the actual timing of the child’s death. Jones’ attorneys failed to investigate these inconsistencies, and pretty much served him up on a platter to the state of Arizona. They committed clear, egregious ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment.

But Justice Thomas rejected the argument that Jones should get a new trial to prove his possible innocence, noting that “a federal court may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or otherwise consider evidence beyond the state court record based on the ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel.” That essentially means that a criminal defendant who had a completely incompetent attorney at both the trial and appellate levels is stuck with that incompetence, even if it means he might die because of it. The only way to prove that an attorney was constitutionally ineffective is to present evidence that he didn’t, evidence which might have resulted in an acquittal if a judge or jury had seen it.

Six Supreme Court justices essentially said, “too bad.” And this is particularly egregious when you consider that the attorneys in this case were court appointed, not chosen by Jones himself. In other words, the government that picked the pathetic attorneys is the same government that pushes the plunger.

Sonia Sotomayor, not someone with whom I normally agree, called the decision perverse and illogical, and she’s absolutely correct. She should have added that it’s also completely inhumane. As someone who awaits with bated breath a decision that will overturn the inhumanity of Roe v. Wade, I cannot escape the irony in this incredibly cruel example of nihilism.

And that’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that the death penalty in the United States does not protect the rights of the truly innocent, and that if we insist upon killing people without guaranteeing that they are actually guilty, we have no right to call ourselves a bastion of civil rights.

Just as those who lobby for legalized abortion ignore the nascent humanity of innocence, so do those who support the Supreme Court’s decision to favor expedience over true justice show themselves to be frauds when it comes to the sanctity of life.

And if I can resolve the inconsistencies in my soul, perhaps those pro-abortion, anti-capital punishment folk can one day do the same.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

The shooter in Buffalo had a racist motive. He wanted to kill Black people. We don’t know exactly how he developed his hatred, but we know that it was the motivating factor in his rampage because it’s confirmed by his own words.

Beyond that, we know that this race hatred manifested itself in the most tragic form of loss for ten grieving families. These are the things that we know.

Unfortunately, a lot of people with shady motives have explained from their lofty media pulpits exactly how the Buffalo assassin became an avenging angel for the white race. Mind readers all, they have the same theory which undergirds their narrative, as if they’d all received the same explanatory email from some leftist university docent.

Here is how it goes: Tucker Carlson, newly dubbed “American Nationalist” by the New York Times, has fomented this race hatred with his highly rated cable news program on Fox. Critics argue the Fox News star has promoted something called “replacement theory,” which essentially holds that white Americans are being “replaced” by people of color.

That theory, which actually is bandied about on white supremacist websites and in the dark corners of the interwebs, is real. It is dangerous, it is toxic, and it has taken a deep foothold in certain segments of American society. It is also nothing new.

But the problem comes when you try and argue that this sort of hatred has become a mainstay of the conservative movement, which is exactly what the commentators alleged in the wake of the Buffalo massacre. NPR published an article entitled “How the Replacement Theory Went Mainstream on the Political Right.” In case the reader didn’t get the complete message, a picture of President Trump accompanied the article, which noted that “replacement theory began in white supremacist circles, but has since moved more mainstream on the political right in this country among many Republicans, explicitly or implicitly.”

I think we’re all a little tired of the guilt by association that has become common practice on the left when it comes to issues of racism. Any time there is the suggestion that a shooter has targeted his victims because of their race, religion or ethnicity, the angle for the media becomes “he was radicalized by Fox News.” They don’t even try and hide it anymore, with anchors on CNN and MSNBC literally calling out their “favorite” personalities by name. Tucker demonized brown people. Sean Hannity is a mouthpiece for Trump, who demonized brown people. Laura Ingraham hates brown people, as well as little trans kids and Heather’s two mommies.

President Biden has played into the whole conservatives are racist schtick with his coining of the phrase “Ultra Maga,” which conjures up visions of storm troopers in tactical gear waving Nazi flags while attending a CPAC conference. The pity is that he doesn’t need to do that, doesn’t need to exaggerate. There really are evil people who march in the streets and say things like “Jews will not replace us.” There are murderous thugs who did just that in Charlottesville, when Heather Heyer was massacred and the full measure of racism was on display.

Just as the terrorists who took down the Twin Towers are not representative of an entire religion, the philosophical extremists do not reflect an entire demographic of political thinkers. They don’t even represent one side of the political divide. The Buffalo assassin defined himself as a center-left, Fox News hating atheist who thought that the Republican Party was in league with corporations. He would not have been pulling the lever for Trump.

I grieve for the families who lost loved ones. I think that we can have legitimate discussions about gun laws and mental health laws and, yes, hate crime statutes. But I am personally sick and tired of being told that a young white man who murdered ten Black people is representative of me, and of those who think like me.

I refuse to believe that every Muslim wants to destroy America, and that every Black American wants to drive a car into a crowd where white grandmothers are dancing in joy and celebration. It’s time for a large part of those who stand on the other side of the political divide to extend that same human courtesy, and decency, to me.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Cats are said to have nine lives. Rasputin was said to have almost as many. If only the MeToo movement had the same brief lifespan.

Alas, the pink hats and the accusations of abuse excavated many years after the fact are still part and parcel of the culture wars, as we have seen these past few weeks.

First came word that Bill Murray had been fired from a Hollywood production because of alleged “inappropriate behavior.” There wasn’t much clarification beyond that opaque comment, but if there had been a sexual element you know they would have publicized it to the hilt. It’s more likely that Murray was rude, arrogant and pretty much the same sort of character he played on “Saturday Night Live” a generation ago. In fact, Lucy Liu accused him of exactly that sort of conduct when she was filming “Charlie’s Angels” 20 years ago, so it’s likely he was more “Obnoxious Uncle Bill” than Harvey Weinstein wannabe. I suppose it’s some relief to be reminded that not every boorish act is libidinous.

Then came the assault on Frank Langella, an octogenarian who is well known for his dark, brooding characters on screen and on the stage. Langella was fired from an upcoming series after an unnamed actress accused him of putting his hand where it wasn’t supposed to go. Apparently, a love scene that had been blocked by the director required that Langella keep his extremities in certain positions, and when he moved one of the less offensive extremities in a direction that his colleague didn’t appreciate, she accused him of sexual harassment. She gets the protective veil of anonymity, and grandpa gets the shaft.

But it’s not just the geriatric set that’s in the cross hairs these days. Fred Savage, who grew up in front of our eyes as Kevin in “The Wonder Years” and is still a fairly young man, was fired as a producer on the reboot of the series after allegations of being “quick to anger” on the set. This wasn’t the first time that he’d been accused of harassment. In 1993, a worker on the set of his series filed a lawsuit against Savage, which was ultimately settled, and another lawsuit that was filed that same year was dismissed by a judge. There was never any evidence that little Kevin had been a hound dog, but those accusations make an impact years after they’re lodged.

And then we have Mario Batali, who was essentially forced into professional Siberia when he was accused in 2017 by a woman of groping her. He pleaded not guilty to indecent assault, and was just acquitted. However, Batali has admitted to acting inappropriately with female staff members over the years, so this acquittal is more of a pyrrhic victory than an actual vindication. Unlike the others, who have never admitted to any wrongdoing and who are only suspected of misconduct, Molto Mario was clearly much too Molto.

But I nonetheless find it interesting that almost four years after Christine Blasey Ford launched her “I can’t remember where or when but I know it happened” campaign against Brett Kavanaugh, and years after Harvey Weinstein became this century’s Bluebeard, we still have to deal with this cultural phenomenon. It’s not as fierce as it once was, and the Salem Witch hunt aspect seems to have calmed, but there is no question that we are still ready to “believe all women,” even when the facts don’t add up to abuse.

If being rude to someone, or a social miscreant, or a bad boss, or a precocious/obnoxious kid, or an old man with bad aim makes you a social pariah, there are an awful lot of people who should get ready to eat their meals alone. We got rid of the public stocks generations ago, but there is still this need to shame people for breaking some unwritten code that keeps changing with each passing day. I’m not sure we even know anymore what’s acceptable, and what’s not.

Don’t get me wrong. Gropers, leering losers, and patronizing pigs who think they are God’s gift to the female world are an albatross that will never fall from our necks. We will always be saddled with repellent folk who fall somewhere on the spectrum between criminal and pathetic. It used to be that you just walked away, head held high, nose held tightly.

And the true criminals, the ones who rape and molest and cause severe emotional and physical harm should be jailed forever, no parole, no probation. There is no excuse for abuse.

But it seems as if we are fixated on these smaller social violations, these breaches of etiquette, these collective failures in collaborative behavior. So what if Frank Langella kept his arthritic hand a little too long on his costar’s knee? She should have just slapped it.

Actions do have consequences, and the actions of these men deserved old school criticism, not the sort of triggered melodrama from these latter-day Miss Havishams.

Let’s hope this MeToo resurgence is as short lived as CNN+.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I was always a big fan of mythology. My particular favorite is Athena, also known as Minerva, goddess of wisdom. She is said to have sprung fully formed from her father Zeus’ head, which was probably a great relief for his wife Hera.

Athena is a myth, but one that ironically calls us to examine the truth. Given what happened last week at the Supreme Court and its aftermath, I think it’s time to dispel some of the myths surrounding the pro-life movement.

Myth: Pro-lifers only care about babies until they’re born

This is such an easy fabrication to dispel, given the long list of agencies that support pregnant women and children. Organizations like Birthright, A Baby’s Breath, Mother’s Home, Heartbeat International, Live Action, Project Rachel Ministry, Catholic Charities, and Carenet are easily accessed on the internet. Of course, those who support abortion rights don’t like to admit that these places exist, because myths are powerful.

Myth: Most pro-lifers are religious zealots

This is another popular idea, particularly since many of the most outspoken advocates against abortion come from the Catholic Church. The first man of science who turned against abortion is Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who performed many abortions in his career before he realized that the procedure ended a human life. Abby Johnson is another person who was so convinced that abortion was a legitimate medical procedure that she became the head of a Planned Parenthood clinic, presiding over thousands of abortions. It wasn’t religion that changed her mind, it was the observation of an actual abortion that did. Dr. Ben Carson, who performed neuro-surgery in utero, is another witness to life. Science can be more powerful than faith in persuading the skeptical.

Myth: Most women support abortion

Whenever abortion is in the news, the loudest female voices are the ones raised in support of “reproductive justice.” It’s only grudgingly that networks or newspapers seek out and promote the views of women who believe that abortion does great damage to both women and society. If we are asked for our opinions at all, it’s usually to act as the uneducated foil for the sophisticated and autonomous women of Planned Parenthood, et. al. Even if Roe is overturned, that dynamic won’t end any time soon. But the truth is very different from that myth of overwhelming female support for abortion rights. A recent NBC poll from 2021 showed that among women, 59% believe that abortion should remain legal, and 38% believe it should be illegal. There are differences between education levels, class and race demographics. But it’s pretty clear that over a third of American women do not support abortion rights, and that most American women favor limits on abortion.

Myth: If Roe is overturned, abortion will disappear

This isn’t so much a myth about pro-lifers as it is about the nature of Roe v. Wade. A disturbing number of Americans believe that abortion was always a national right, and that eliminating the most notorious Supreme Court decision of the last 50 years will destroy that “right.” The Supreme Court isn’t “removing” anything. If Roe falls, the issue will go back to the states and their legislatures to decide whether women have access to abortion. If any “right” is being removed, it’s by your local legislators. But more to the point, there is no “right” to abortion. It’s just not there. You can’t take away what you never had in the first place.

Myth: Men have no right to speak about abortion

This is one of my favorite myths. There is this idea that people who don’t have uteruses don’t get to have an opinion on what ends up in those uteruses. Putting aside the fact that some people with uteruses no longer identify as “women,” and some biological men now present themselves as women, the whole uterus thing goes out the window. A draft of recent legislation to codify abortion rights if Roe is overturned includes this delightful observation: “This Act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy.” You might say, “Yeah, women.” But guess who else can become pregnant, according to our legislators? “Cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others.”

But even if we came back to our senses and called people who are about to have babies “pregnant mothers,” abortion rights activists still think that men should shut up, unless they’re Joe Biden acolytes and agree with them that abortion is a human right. That sort of man gets to speak.

There are so many more of these myths, and so little space in which to debunk them. I’ll just leave you with this, in honor of Pallas Athena:

Myths are amusing. True wisdom is eternal, and dead serious. Be like Athena.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Unlike so many people with Twitter and Facebook accounts these, I am not a constitutional scholar.

I did go to law school, passed the Bar on my first try and have been practicing law since 1987 (give or take a few years when I detoured to teaching languages) but I don’t have the gravitas of many of these keyboard warriors who know one thing for certain: Elon Musk is a fascist.

Up until quite recently, very few would describe the founder of Tesla as a totalitarian overlord. He was considered a progressive darling who had electrified (pun intended) the world of technology by introducing a rechargeable car. Climate activists were delighted at the prospect of limiting pollutants caused by fossil fuels. Tech geeks, most of whom live in a liberal bubble, were thrilled that one of their own had become, arguably, the richest man in the world. People who hate real names were intrigued when he named his son after an algebraic equation. Everyone to the left of Megyn Kelly (which is a lot of people) loved Elon.

But then he decided to buy Twitter, motivated by the tech giant’s biased view of “free speech,” and the progressives turned on him. They apparently had no problem with censorship, as long as they hated the people being censored. Many of these pretend constitutional scholars of social media also went into action, saying that since Twitter was a private company, it had every right to kick off people it didn’t like.

If I had a penny for every time someone parroted the googled line “The First Amendment only applies to the government!” I myself would have been able to purchase Twitter. These con law experts don’t realize that when a private company becomes so big and omnipresent that it essentially becomes the marketplace of ideas, it acts very much like a governmental entity. If it monopolizes a certain form of speech, it can be argued that it acts like a quasi-government when it squashes certain forms of dissent.

Beyond the gotcha mantra of “if it’s a private company it can censor all it wants” (no, it can’t) there is the irony in liberals being so reflexively devoted to censorship when they were the ones who gave us the Free Speech movements of the 1960s. Progressives have always aligned themselves with free speech absolutism. The greatest example of that is the American Civil Liberties Union defending the rights of Nazis to march through Skokie, Ill., a town with many Holocaust survivors. The whole “I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to say it” was embodied by that act.

Now, the same folks who used to think that the way you combat speech you don’t like is with speech that you do, want to strangle dissent. Eliminate it. Call it hate speech. Flag it for punishment. Shadow ban it. Vilify it. Criminalize it. All fine, all okay.

And that’s why they think Elon Musk, one of the world’s greatest capitalists, is a fascist. He’s messing up their crusade to muzzle the world that disagrees with them.

Punishing Disney is fascist (See a theme here?).

A lot of folks who think they understand the First Amendment are attacking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing a law which strips Disney of some exceptional privileges granted to it over a half century ago. Yes, those privileges also helped the people of Florida by keeping their tax burden down. Yes, those privileges had a legitimate reason to exist. But the emphasis is on “privileges,” not “rights.” And those privileges were not just limited to Disney. Other communities benefited from the self-governance provision.

Disney isn’t being told it can’t operate in Florida. It’s being placed back on the same level as everyone else, or as esteemed (and real) constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh notes, “this is an extraordinary status that Disney got because it was Disney, and withdrawing that status would simply put Disney in the same position as other companies in that geographical area, and the bulk of other companies in Florida.” And if you’re really hung up on the speech aspect, realize that this law impacts every other district that was created, and given those special privileges, so it’s technically content neutral.

But liberals don’t see it that way. Even some conservatives are up in arms about it, but they’ve generally been consistent with their constitutional critiques. Progressives, on the other hand, read their Bill of Rights through Bernie Colored Glasses, and seem to only be upset when the rights being infringed upon belong to people who vote the way they do.

Whether it’s Elon the Fascist or Mickey the Freedom Fighter, the advice from the social media lawyers is worth about as much as their virtual degrees. But I’m sure Becky in Des Moines can get you some great medicinal brownies.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I was feeling a bit under the weather this past week, so I ended up spending time at home in front of the television.

The thing that really mesmerized me was the Johnny Depp trial on Court TV. I never watch Court TV. I’m pretty sure most lawyers avoid that channel because why would we want to spend our leisure hours staring at melodramatic, preening attorneys from Michigan or La Jolla when we can just head down to the Criminal Justice Center in Philly and see that up close?

And yet, the Depp trial was different. For some background, Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation. Several years ago, Heard had written an oped for the Washington Post describing abuse that she’d suffered at the hands of an anonymous partner. The only problem is, everyone knew who that partner was. And he wasn’t happy about being depicted as a violent, abusive man. So Depp sued. The case has now come to trial.

There are some fascinating aspects to Depp v. Heard, and they go beyond the celebrity of the litigants. What I find fascinating is the fact that someone who has been accused of abuse decided to, pun completely unintended, fight back. And the fact that he did it through the legal system is particularly compelling, since that system has so often failed true victims of domestic violence.

We’ve been taught to “believe all women,” even when they are not especially trustworthy. And even when they are attacked in some quarters, the criticism pales in comparison to the institutional support. You only have to remember the halo placed over the head of Christine Blasey Ford, who had a dicey memory and no witnesses, as contrasted with the vilification of her target Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

That’s why this lawsuit is so interesting, and important. Johnny Depp felt that his reputation (which to be honest was already in tatters) had been irrevocably damaged, such that his career was now kaput. Putting aside the fact that Depp has done more than enough to destroy his own standing in the industry with his history of drug abuse and, he had every right to be upset that his ex-wife would have so dishonestly and unfairly hitched her wagon to the #MeToo juggernaut to elevate her profile, and rode that wagon over his body. They were divorced. Their story was over. They had allegedly signed an agreement that neither would speak badly of the other.

But Amber decided she could get some advantage of playing the victim card, especially if she played it dishonestly. Thinking, perhaps, that keeping Depp’s name out of the oped would have insulated her from any legal liability, she continued to squeeze her private life for cultural gain.

And this was no “blog” post on an obscure Facebook or Instagram page that carried Heard’s jeremiad. The venerable Washington Post, Jeff Bezos’ little baby, helped her air her dirty lingerie. Needless to say, people noticed. One of them was Depp.

What matters is that someone stood up and said, “you’re not going to do this to me and expect me to just take it.” What matters is that the victim of accusations that may or may not be true has not been intimidated into silence, but has chosen to use the legal system to try and salvage whatever intrinsic dignity he has.

Honestly, you don’t have to be a saint in order to have a right not to be lied about. Even imperfect reputations have value, and even those who haven’t lived lives of spotless virtue don’t deserve to be defined by those who find profit in sly cultural stereotypes.

Heard will defend herself by saying that the defamation suit was an attempt to punish her for speaking out about her pain, or even intimidate her into silence. But I doubt that defense will fly. No one is telling her to be silent. They are, however, making sure that she’s telling the truth.

Which, as you know, is an absolute defense to defamation. I guess we will just have to see if she’s telling it. In the meantime, anyone who has ever been the victim of lies and innuendo should be praising a flawed, washed-up actor for showing us that there is honor, even in the depths of degradation, in fighting back.

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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].