Terry Bracy: The return of the Morality Police

Fifty-nine years ago, a torch singer turned Planned Parenthood advocate named Estelle Griswold filed a lawsuit that led to a Supreme Court decision bearing her name. Griswold v. Connecticut ended government’s control over American bedrooms.

At stake were the 19th-century prohibitions legislated in the Comstock Act, which outlawed all forms of birth control, leaving abstinence or what my Catholic dad humorously referred to as “Vatican Roulette” which loosely timed a woman’s menstrual cycle. In later life, my mother confessed that my birth was an example of this inexact method.

Over the following six decades, as America grew in numbers and diversity, the Court recognized a wide range of personal rights, including abortion and same-sex marriage. Now, in the era of the MAGA Supreme Court, the expansion of those rights has hit the skid marks. If Donald Trump wins the election, expect a sharp turn in the opposite direction, with the national ban on abortion only the beginning.

In the stew of extremists that make up the Trump party, the most determined may be religious fanatics who intend to reimpose 19th-century Comstockery. In its campaign to accumulate an electoral majority, the once Grand Old Party picked up society’s scraps who were trying to hitch a ride on something powerful. We aren’t talking about the infamous Moral Majority, which ultimately collapsed as leaders were found guilty of financial and sexual funny business. The MAGA Party’s religious guidance is now being written by the unforgiving advocates of the personhood camp who give no license to unmarried sex, equate all forms of contraception with abortion and consider in-vitro fertilization to be murder. If Trump were to return to the White House, this is the baggage he would bring with him.

An Off-Broadway trial of theocracy is being played out these days in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has imposed religion in all aspects of life. Abbott led passage of a law that effectively banned abortions in the state and would prosecute as a felon any physician who would provide that service. The sale of medications Mifepristone and Misoprostol are prohibited because of their possible use for abortion.

Abbott’s Texas seems to care less about life after birth. Following the massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb School in Uvalde, Abbott praised the response of police who cowered in hallways instead of saving lives. In the Governor’s press conference that followed, Abbott never mentioned the word gun while blaming the tragedy on the “mental health of the community.” The Governor’s antidote to mass shootings was to sign a law allowing anyone in Texas to own and carry a gun without a license. Arizona may have narrowly escaped this kind of governance with the defeat of Kari Lake, whose main attributes were a mean mouth and great tan.

Meanwhile in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is turning history and civics books taught in public schools into Christian Nationalist bibles. Don’t-say-gay Ron has insisted that civics courses teach that “the nation’s founders did not desire a strict separation of church and state.” This belief suggests one of two things: first that the Governor is intentionally distorting our democracy’s fundamental document, or second, that his fancy Ivy League education was wasted on an idiot. Other practitioners of Christian Nationalism include MAGA fan favorite Victor Orban of Hungary and Vladimir Putin.

Evidence that this brand of autocracy could be on the way is contained in a 920-page MAGA agenda published by the Heritage Foundation. It is nothing less than an action plan to turn Trump into a king who ignores Congress as he reshapes America to the liking of wealthy white America. Say goodbye to Obamacare and Medicaid and to the world’s best civil service system to be massively replaced by tens of thousands unqualified acolytes from the far regions of accepted political thought.

Moral and legal justification for this madness would rest on the novel view that the founders intended America to be a Christian nation. Nothing could be further from the truth, so they change the truth. Who do you believe: DeSantis or James Madison? Abbott or Thomas Jefferson? It won’t matter if Donald Trump, perhaps the most irreligious President in history, wins a second term and brings along the theocrats. My advice is that all those who respect women and the privacy of sex lives awaken. Your bedroom is under siege.