Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on
Fox News cites owners’ religious freedom
and Supreme Court rulings
to segregate Black employees
Washington, DC, August 6, 2014 (Dissociated Press): Fox News today announced that it was exercising the religious freedom of its owners to require all African-Americans in its employ to meet in a separate cafeteria and use a separate bathroom from other employees.
When reporters challenged Fox president Roger Ailes: “Isn’t this a violation of the Civil Rights Act?” he replied:
“I am simply acting on my sincere religious belief, based on the Christian teaching of the 'Curse of Ham' as stated in Genesis 9: 20-27.
"As the Supreme Court ruled in the recent Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College cases, a sincere religious belief, under the First Amendment to the Constitution, trumps mere Congressional laws.
“I know Hobby Lobby and Wheaton were about religious freedom trumping so-called laws about ‘equality’ for women, but the same logic applies to religious freedom trumping so-called laws about the ‘equality’ of Black folks.
“The tradition of applying ‘the curse of Ham’ to all his dark-skinned descendants goes way back into history and was a major religious holding of many truly Christian churches in the days when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted.
“I know that many so-called Christian churches today have repudiated this understanding of the Curse of Ham, but these same churches have rejected the clear teachings of the Bible about the abomination of homosexual relations. How dare those churches speak for Christianity?
“I myself experienced the deep truth of this Biblical teaching last month as I read the Supreme Court ruling, and was transfixed by a bolt of Holiness -- like Paul’s transformation on the road to Damascus.
"I am confident the courts will uphold my acting on my sincerely held religious belief, now that the Supreme Court has spoken so vigorously and wisely on behalf of the religious freedom of corporations.”
President Obama was not available for immediate comment. But two Justices of the Supreme Court were, in extremely unusual public statements:
Justice Clarence Thomas, who voted for the Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College decisions and who is himself an African-American, told the Dissociated Press:
Justice Sonia Sotomayer, who dissented in both decisions along with the two other women on the Court, said,
”Yes, I think Mr. Ailes understands the majority decisions correctly. That’s why I dissented so strongly. They are oppressive to women and to religious, racial, and sexual minorities of all kinds. They and the decisions giving corporations and rich people freedom to spend as much as they like in elections add up to a new Dred Scott decision, imposing slavery upon the American people.”
[The Dissociated Press is an investigative/ prophetic journalism project of The Shalom Center. The Dissociated Press seeks to report not the “actual facts” but the deeper “counter-factual” truth. Sometimes that "truth" is datelined from a hidden place beneath the surface of the facts, sometimes from the future — see graphic above. Often this kind of "truth" will read like satire. In this case, it is satire.]
