“I repotted your plant without permission”
Topics Discussed
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Episode Resources
N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates on Police Reform (The New York Times)
Transcript
Sarah: [00:00:00] There's not some easy two sentence, even two paragraph, outline of how you decide which should triumph, religion, or government and I think we're in a very difficult, complex transition in our society as we become more and more secular, as we have more and more individual rights to be protected and we're just going to have to work that out and it's not going to be nine people in the Supreme court that break it wide open for us.
Sarah: This is Sarah
Beth: And Beth.
Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.
Beth: [00:01:00] Hello, and thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to talk about the New York city mayoral race, then we're going to discuss some of what the Supreme court has been up to and the conversation generally in America about religious freedom and the exercise of our faith. Outside of politics, we thought it might be fun to share with you a little bit about how we experienced last week when we were together in person for five days, with all five of our children.
Before we dive into those conversations, we have a brand new book club page on our website that we're really excited about so make sure to check that out in the show notes. We've put together all the information you need about the book club in this one central place and so if you need to update your address or ask questions or see the books we've had in previous boxes, you can get all of it done there.
[00:02:00] Sarah: [00:02:00] When I told my husband that we were going to talk about the New York city mayoral race, he said, but why, why is there so much media coverage about this? And I said, well, you know, it is our largest city. If New York city was a state, it'd be our 11th, most populous state and there's a lot of exciting possibilities in this race. One, New York City's never had a female mayor and there are several female candidates, including one that's leading. Two, that they're having rank choice voting, one of the biggest elections in the United States to experiment with ranked choice voting. So that part's exciting.
I also think what you're seeing reflected in this coverage is that it was taking place largely online for months and months and months and now New York City is opening up and the candidates can get out and hit the street and you're seeing a lot of momentum, a lot of excitement, a lot of conflict. And so that's reflected in the coverage.
Beth: [00:02:56] If you had asked me why there's been so much media coverage of this race, I would have [00:03:00] said because Joe Biden is the president and this is one of the more dramatic things unfolding right now. I mean, covering a race is what media does best, and this does have conflict. It does have drama. It has interesting characters
Sarah: [00:03:12] and a lot of them.
Beth: [00:03:13] For those of us, not in New York City, the prospect of Andrew Yang running for mayor after he had his very weird and successful on its terms bid for the presidential nomination. I mean, there's just a lot going on here to talk about and so everyone who makes a living talking about politics is going to get in on this action.
Sarah: [00:03:32] Well, and we should clarify that this election is technically for the democratic nomination. For the mayoral race, but Democrats in New York City outnumber Republicans seven to one. So this is the ballgame who gets the democratic nominee is most likely going to win the election and so I think there is so much going on here. One because we're coming off a pandemic and the city is going to need leadership [00:04:00] coming out of that pandemic. Two, it's a huge sprawling democracy. So there's, I think there's a lot of debate among the candidates. Do you want an insider who understands that bureaucracy? Do you want an outsider to shake it up? Three, you just have a lot of candidates for you have rising crime. And so there's a really big debate around public safety in New York city surrounding campaign and then I think you have just the wild card of ranked choice voting.
I think anybody who tells you that they know what's going to happen is not being honest about the fact that this type of voting is not just new in the United States, but it's, it's new to voters to try to figure out and strategize, okay, well, this is my number one. I don't think they have a chance. So who's my number two going to be, I mean, this is a really new way to think about voting. I think it's a really healthy way to think about big open primaries like this and so I'm really excited to see the outcome, but it is [00:05:00] new and so the media is trying to figure out how to cover it. Voters are trying to figure out how they're, what they're gonna do and the candidates are trying to figure out their strategies surrounding rank choice voting. So there's a lot going on there.
Beth: [00:05:11] We don't understand what polling means in rank choice races yet on enough scale for, for us to take meaningful information from the polling. I would add to your list, Sarah, that you have no incumbent in this race because DeBlasio is term limited. You have real dissatisfaction with the way DeBlasio has handled the pandemic, which I think creates the likelihood for strong turnout in this race. You also can really see, even though this is largely a race among Democrats, the diversity of the democratic party reflected in this long list of candidates and reflected in the different, you know, neighborhoods in New York City, which makes it an interesting, almost laboratory for the rest of America to think about what's going on within the democratic party.
Sarah: [00:05:57] I actually think [00:06:00] that there could be low turnout. I know people are unhappy with DeBlasio, but the weekend voting was not high. I think there's a real chance people can be intimidated by the rank choice voting system and overwhelmed by the amount of candidates. So I think it will be in turnout will be the first interesting feedback we have on this particular election, not just the candidates, but the, the rank choice voting itself. You know, turnout could really affect how this ranked choice voting system picks a winner because if it's low voter turnout, then to me, you're going to have the candidate's supporters, the strong supporters turning out. They're obviously putting their candidate first, but then are they put, who are they putting second? Right? Are they, they stacking the deck. Are they thinking through, I don't want to give the guy that maybe is, people aren't as passionate about, but it is more broadly appealing a leg up. So I'm going to [00:07:00] put him farther down. Like we just don't know and like you said, polling doesn't reflect that
Beth: [00:07:03] it will help us understand whether voters are as ideological as we act like they are. In a field like this, of all these people are voters categorizing them as moderates and more progressive, or are voters looking at individual people because we could be surprised about how some people vote. I think it would be such a shame, I think you're right and it would also be such a shame if fewer people because of the rank choice factor, because your vote to me, feel so much more powerful in a ranked choice system. That's why I think it's so important for us to adopt that more broadly and so, you know, there's real opportunity to influence the outcome of this race even more so than usual because of that ranked choice system.
So I'm hopeful that people will embrace it. I'm also hopeful that we see a sustained interest in politics beyond the last presidential election. It would be discouraging to me if we start to see turnout falling off, especially as we think about 2022 and congressional races and gubernatorial [00:08:00] races, I hope people will remain as interested in politics as we were during the pandemic and during the Trump.
Sarah: [00:08:07] Well, let's talk about some of the candidates and the issues that are coming up in this race because New York city in some ways is completely unique, right? There is no other place in the United States, quite like New York City and in some ways the issues that face new Yorkers, the issues that face all Americans and I think you see that in some of the issues and policy and politics that are bubbling up in this race. So right now, according to polling, which we just said is of limited applicability during this race, Eric Adams, who is the Brooklyn borough president and a former police officer is leading.
Now, Brooklyn is the most populous of the five boroughs and Eric Adams has really been revolving his campaign around public safety. Crime is up in New York City, just like it is up and many, many places across the country and I think that leaning heavily on his experience as a cop. He's also a former Republican [00:09:00] who defends the use of stop and frisk and has some other conservative policies. He was endorsed by Rupert Murdoch's New York post. He has really formed a coalition of Black voters, white moderates, conservatives, is not favored by the progressive left at all and so it's been interesting to see how he's been using public safety to buoy his chances.
There's also been a lot of controversy surrounding him, particularly if he actually takes up residency where he says he does. There's, you know, he, he owns property in New Jersey. There's like, I think some of the other campaigns were like surveilling him and showing that like, he doesn't actually stay where he's staying and so then he welcomed reporters into his apartment and there was video of his refrigerator. Like it's just, it's been kind of a scene, but I think it has definitely enhanced the narrative that he has transparency issues at best, and that he is dishonest at worst.
Beth: [00:09:56] And that is the kind of thing that connects New York City to the rest of America. Right? [00:10:00] We have so many races in Kentucky where the local race becomes about do people live here? Do you really live here? How long have you lived here? We also have Sean Donovan, who is a former HUD secretary from the Obama administration. He's been endorsed by Mitch Landry, the former mayor of new Orleans. It's interesting to me that someone with a relatively high profile cabinet secretary has gotten less traction in this race than a lot of other candidates and I think it says a lot about kind of where our heads are in terms of what counts politically right now.
Sarah: [00:10:33] Yeah. You have a couple other candidates that didn't get the traction people thought they would. You have Ray McGuire, who's a former city group executive that people really expected to surge that never really quite took off. You have Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller and former Manhattan borough president. He experienced accusations of sexual harassment leveled against him and that really took the steam out of his candidacy. You also have Diana Miralis, a former non-profit [00:11:00] executive, and then you have, I think, what are broadly considered sort of the main contenders outside Eric Adams, which is Kathryn Garcia, who's a former sanitation department commissioner. She's the insider, right? She's the one that's worked in the New York city bureaucracy for a long time. She's endorsed by the New York times editorial board and several of the teams during the sanitation unions.
Then you have Andrew Yang, of course. High name recognition because of his presidential run and a nonprofit executivel. He's been endorsed by several of the police captains union and the firefighters unions and then you have Maya Wiley, who's a civil rights lawyer and a counselor to mayor, Bill DeBlasio, and was endorsed by Alexandra Ocasio, Cortez, and is largely seen as sort of the progressive left's candidate.
Beth: [00:11:42] And she makes the rounds on cable news a lot. If you watch much MSNBC, you probably know who Maya Wiley is. Uh, but the fact that I think she has struggled until very recently to get some traction and very recently, she has started to see some of that really progressive portion of the party coalesce around her, again, [00:12:00] tells you that this is a tough race. There are a lot of people here who appeal to different groups of New Yorkers, and I'm, I'm excited to see how this turns out.
Sarah: [00:12:09] It makes perfect sense to me that she's been making the rounds on cable news, because she has a way with like a quippy line. I read a lot of, you know, coverage of this race from, you know, Eric Adams and his apartment and some of the public safety issues and she would just roll in with a quote and be like, but why are we talking about this? Or of course we should be talking about this. Like, it was just very no nonsense her like form of, of answering questions and I'm speaking sort of on the stump and off the stump that I, I really, really liked. I appreciate greatly.
Beth: [00:12:40] So I think as you consider where this race goes, it will also tell us something about how New Yorkers view the office of mayor. When I first heard Andrew Yang was running, I was really scratching my head about it for a whole bunch of reasons but if I think about who I would elect as a mayor or a governor, even in Kentucky, I'm not really looking for someone who [00:13:00] has like a transformational economic vision. I'm looking for someone who has a lot of government experience, who knows how to make things work in the context of government, particularly at the mayoral level, who can just get stuff done if a crisis happened, who could quickly mobilize all of the different departments of the government that need to respond.
Especially in New York city, I would be thinking about who can work really well on issues of public safety, who can be prepared for a crisis that has international proportions to it. So I was confused about the Yang run, I will admit, even as someone who thinks his ideas are interesting, you know, and, and enjoys hearing his thoughts about technology and the economy.
Sarah: [00:13:40] Well, and what's very interesting. It has been a source of major conflict over the last few days is that Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia have appeared together. Now they have not said we are supporting each other. I'm definitely going to put them down as number two. I think Andrew Yang said that she would be his number two vote, but she has not returned the favor and you know, [00:14:00] then there was all these accusations that it was voter suppression and they were trying to, to block out the Black candidates.
Eric Adams was really playing that up and again, Maya Wiley came in and was like, yeah, I don't see that. Again, I very much appreciate it but you know, I think that that to me is just growing pains with ranked choice voting. That's just candidates trying to figure out like, how is this going to work? I think it's really smart thing to do, and especially if you're Kathryn Garcia, but you have nothing to lose by, you know, getting next to Andrew Yang's name recognition. Not to mention if you're a candidate, that's trying to break through just doing that partnering because it's so new and it's so fresh and so unheard of because we weren't dealing with ranked choice voting before is it's such a smart strategy and she, I think she probably gained a lot of traction for that.
You know, I talked to some of my friends who live in New York city and you know, not surprisingly, my friends are pretty progressive. There's a lot of trepidation regarding Eric Adams and particularly the fact that he's used to be a Republican and the way he talks about public safety and there's a lot of [00:15:00] sort of institutional trust with Kathryn Garcia and that there is this idea of like, no, we want somebody who knows how this works. Like this is not like we're, we're looking to bring in some, like, Intense outsider. We really want somebody who understands because it is such a massive bureaucracy and that's why you see, listen, that is why you see a lot of inefficiencies and corruption, even New York city from the party bosses back in the day.
I read a quote that said Eric Adams would probably function a lot like a party boss of the olden times and so there's people that really want to get away from that but in a way that's like sustainable where people you're not going in and just blowing it up because there's too much interconnectedness and complexity in New York city. There's too much, the smallest change can affect millions of lives and I think people recognize that.
Beth: [00:15:46] I just think if you've run a sanitation department and you still want to be the mayor word, I'm not going to stand in your way on that. I mean, I, I feel like that's, especially for a city, the size of New York is such a difficult job and someone who would probably go in with a lot of experience and understanding. That [00:16:00] being said, I try to approach this analysis with humility because I cannot pretend to understand the issues that face the city of New York on a day-to-day basis and I can't pretend to know who among these folks would be the best leader for the city going in to the post pandemic period. I hope going into the post pandemic period on a sustainable basis. So I am most excited to understand what ranked choice voting does to a race like this, and to see kind of an analysis of how it worked and how people clustered around their votes. I just think this is going to be a real step forward for the country in, in thinking about the sorts of structural issues that we return to all the time as key to a more representative government.
Sarah: [00:16:41] Well, and the voting takes place today, Tuesday as this episode comes out, but we will most likely not know the results for several more weeks because they have to go through eliminate people's number one, see what their number two is. There's a lot of process when it comes to rank choice voting that we're going to just have to be patient with. I read a quote from [00:17:00] somebody that was like, we're just gonna have to be patient, which is not something New Yorkers are known for, but as is often the case with New York City, what happens in New York, doesn't just affect New York and we will all be watching.
Beth: [00:17:10] Next up, we're going to talk about what's been going on at the Supreme court.
Sarah. I love when the Supreme court gets busy, because that means on the Nightly Nuance, we get to have Supreme court week, I just feel is the most exciting week of, you know, every few months. If you want to hear more detailed breakdowns of Supreme court cases, you can join us on Patreon or on apple podcasts, subscriptions. Super easy, you can do a free trial right now and listen in on what Supreme court week sounds like, so that you won't miss it again in the future but we wanted to talk today, specifically about one of the major decisions that caused the court to [00:18:00] reach a unanimous result. As I said in describing this on the nightly news, It was unanimity by a hair because what we really got were groups of three justices reaching that result for different reasons with varying levels of passion and intensity about it.
Sarah: [00:18:16] So in this case, Fulton V City of Philadelphia, we had the Catholic social services and a pair of foster parents suing the city of Philadelphia for their refusal to contract with Catholic social services for foster parents certification and they alleged that this violated their, the free exercise clause of the first amendment and the Supreme court unanimously agreed, but like I said, it was a very narrow verdict, which put a pin in that, because I think this is going to be come a pattern if it already isn't at the Supreme court. So what was the, the very narrow judgment?
Beth: [00:18:57] Well, like a lot of cases that involve the constitution, [00:19:00] the ball game tends to be in what standard of review the court uses to analyze the state's action. Are we asking the state just to have some rational reason for what it did or are we saying we're doing strict scrutiny where the state has to show that it is serving a very, very important interest and it cannot serve that interest in a way that doesn't burden a constitutional right? And so in this case, Catholic social services was asking the Supreme court to reverse precedent from 1990. In a 1990 case, the court held, and this is an opinion authored by Justice Scalia, the court held that if a law is neutral, so the law was not written to target religion and if the law applies to everyone, then we are not going to do trick scrutiny review.
That case involved the [00:20:00] criminalization of peyote and two people in that case lost their jobs for using peyote. They said we use it as part of our religious practice. We're part of the native American church then they'd were denied unemployment compensation because unemployment said you committed a crime. That's why you lost your job. We don't have to pay you and that case made its way to the Supreme court twice. It went to the Supreme court of Oregon several times. It was enormously complicated. The upshot of it was Oregon is allowed to criminalize a drug and if it does so in a way that doesn't target a religion and it doesn't have exceptions involved for certain reasons, then the Supreme court is going to kind of let that fly.
So Catholic social services says that case was wrong. You should use our case to overturn it and you should say that Philadelphia can not survy strict scrutiny for canceling our contract here and the majority of the court said, well, everybody on the court agreed that strict scrutiny does apply [00:21:00] to this case, but they agreed for different reasons. You had the majority opinion authored by chief justice Roberts that decided, you know, strict scrutiny applies here. We are going to ask the state to find any way it can to do this without burdening religion, because the contract between the city of Philadelphia and the agency allows a commissioner to make some exemptions under the contract.
Sarah: [00:21:30] Which they'd never done.
Beth: [00:21:31] I know this is a very complicated and, and those exemptions, like you said, Sarah never done and not embedded in the non-discrimination provision of the contract. They really had to reach to find those exemptions but what that allowed the majority to do is avoid that precedent, that Catholic social services wanted overturned. So that was the majority. Then you had justice Barrett joined by justice Kavanaugh and Briar, who is one of the liberal [00:22:00] justices saying maybe Smith should be overturned, but what would we do if we did? What would the new standard be? We have a lot of questions to answer about what that new standard should be and honestly, it probably shouldn't be that strict scrutiny applies in every case involving religion and she said, we are more nuanced in our jurisprudence about speech and assembly and we probably need to be more nuanced in our jurisprudence about religion.
Zero people expected justice Barrett to write this opinion so it was very surprising and then you had a trio of the real hard line conservatives Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas in two opinions. One of which from justice Alito was more than 70 pages talking about how the court knows the right answer and the right answer is to overturn employment division versus Smith, that 1990 case involving peyote and say that when religion is burdened, it is a bedrock right and the state should have to work really, [00:23:00] really hard to justify burdening religion.
Sarah: [00:23:02] So I think it's sort of helpful to start with what was actually happening in Philadelphia and then zoom out to what's actually happening on the court because I think an important part of what's happening in Philadelphia is that this was not a gay foster couple turned away from being able to foster. That's not what happened. The city of Philadelphia passed a non-discrimination ordinance, and then they kicked Catholic services out of their private contracting.
Beth: [00:23:31] And that only came to their attention because of a newspaper article. The newspaper received a complaint about a different private agency and in writing that article quoted the archdiocese as saying we would not be able to approve families with either unmarried parents or same-sex parents.
Sarah: [00:23:49] But they had never denied somebody because people didn't go there. They had other choices. If you're a gay couple applying to be a foster parent, you're not going to go through Catholic services and so I think that's just like a really [00:24:00] important thing to keep in mind is that this wasn't someone who's sort of integrity had been undermined because they couldn't become a foster parent.
This was Catholic services had been doing the service for a long time. They got kicked out because of a news article and then it was a Catholic couple saying, no, we want to go through the Catholic services and now we can't and that restricts our free exercise of religion and I just think like keeping the actual facts on the ground in mind is helpful because you start talking about concurring opinions and dissenting opinions and precedent, and it gets clouded to talk about, like, this sounds like a cultural battle.
This is a sound like a problem where there was a lot of just conflict and harm. This sounds like a religious cultural battle that some lawyer decided would fit well for a precedent they wanted to be overturned and sometimes it's just important to keep that on mind. I'm not saying that should never happen, but I do think it's an important part of the story to like keep front and center.
Beth: [00:24:55] Well, what happens in a city, much smaller than Philadelphia, where there [00:25:00] aren't 20 other private agencies available to do this? I think that this case reads quite differently for a couple of reasons. One of them being that Catholic social services in Philadelphia will certify single parents who are gay. Just not a same-sex married couple and they will take referrals for gay children. It is just that they don't want to be seen, as in their view, endorsing the marriage of gay parents or endorsing two parents living together who are unmarried. There's a lot of subtlety to be gained in just how you think about this social services agency and its reasoning and the other piece is there are other places they could go.
If a gay couple had reached out to them, they said we would have referred them and they would have had lots of other options and I think the reason that the majority of the court worked really hard to have a narrow ruling here is because you can imagine this case feeling [00:26:00] very different if it had happened in small town, Kentucky, where the only agency is a Catholic agency. I mean, we see that in hospital cases, sometimes if your only healthcare can come from a Catholic system, what we expect of that system might be different than if it is one of many systems.
Sarah: [00:26:17] Well, and I think that subtlety is what gets lost so often there. Listen, I don't think I'm breaking new ground here when I say there's a lot of subtlety when we get into the complexities of religion and government and I think that's the new ground that the Supreme court is actually breaking right now. Because position of the court has changed, because this wall upon which they are placing religion as a sort of first among nations group, when it comes to the first amendment has been being built for a long time and I think what you see particularly [00:27:00] recently in the shadow docket from COVID, the final bricks being put in that wall, right which is we're going to treat religion differently and I appreciate justice Barrett saying, well, there will still need to be nuanced treatment and standards and processes for how we do that but to me, the undercurrent of all this is that religion is to be favored and re and I think that that's reflective of a lot of things.
I think it's reflective of realities in the Supreme court, and I think it's reflective of realities in our society and I think it's reflective of the fact that religion has, you know, a less favorable position in our society than it has over the last 50 years and so religious advocates want a more favored status in the law and you know, I can't tell the future so I don't really know [00:28:00] how this all ends, but it really feels like a shift to me. It feels like what's dripping from so many things that is particularly like justice Alito writes is that how could the law not want to protect us when everybody else is beating us up all the time? We are the minority that needs to be protected now and in a lot of ways, that's true and a lot of ways religious people are the minority in the United States right now and that we are an increasingly secularized society and I just feel like that is like bubbling up and sort of coming up over and over again, and the Supreme court decisions and that's why you have these very narrow cases, because I just think, you know, chief justice John Roberts is trying to put some more bricks in that wall while also protecting the Supreme court and there's just a very narrow path to do that, but I mean, he found it in this case. So kudos.
Beth: [00:28:57] I think I see this a little bit differently on the subject [00:29:00] of that, of that brick wall that you were describing. I might've agreed with that more pre COVID than I do now. Those cases that were issued during COVID, Roberts was going back and forth between the more conservative and the more liberal justices Roberts was really carving a path of does this restriction makes sense or not? And if you don't, if you're not familiar with those cases, you know, several cases made it to the Supreme court about restrictions on worship services during COVID and whether a state was impermissibly burdening speech by restricting worship services and in some of the cases, Robert swung to the more conservative side and said, you know, the restrictions are they go too far and in other cases, he was with the more liberal justices who, who won the day on a couple of those cases and saying, no, these, these restrictions can stand and there were times when they said this one, not that one with the restrictions and I wonder if this current case, [00:30:00] Fulton, would not have been decided differently had COVID not happened.
I wonder if those COVID cases made people like Roberts, Barrett, Kavanaugh, think, oh, wait a second. Like, this is not as clear cut as we once thought it was. I've thought a lot about the fact that the court did not have to take this case. It especially, didn't have to take this case on a preliminary injunction and TRO posture. That means this case went up to the Supreme court before it was fully briefed, before all the discovery had been done, before there had been a trial. They took this in an emergency position, even though I think like probably most of us could agree that there is not an, a burning emergency here because they want it. Right. They wanted a chance to weigh in on this question of whether that 1990 case should be overruled and I wonder if that seemed clearer at the time they accepted the case, then it seems to them today because of all those COVID decisions.
Sarah: [00:30:55] I wish I was as hopeful as you. I mean, I feel like [00:31:00] the ball game is not how they feel about the restrictions. The ball game, like you articulated earlier is how they feel about the standards and what law, if you search hard enough, doesn't have discretion in it. To me, this standard that they're putting forward in Fulton, that well, if there's discretion, even if it's never been used, then we're applying strict scrutiny. To me that is building up strict scrutiny and even if they create this more nuanced standard as justice Barrett was talking about in her concurring opinion, you know, I am fearful that it will be, you know, nuanced in name only, and that the process will play out the same way, which is it's going to be strict scrutiny after strict scrutiny and look, justice Kagan, justice, Sotomayor, justoce Briar, they are much smarter than me and so I don't think that they join this decision [00:32:00] because they see it as, you know, some final step in the undercutting of LGBTQ freedoms or, you know, building back up religious institutions and organizations, right to discriminate.
Like I know they're playing a long game that I don't understand. I'm just fearful that what we're really doing here is building up strict scrutiny, setting the stage to maybe overturn Smith next year. I think these unanimous decisions and, you know, sort of the, the overall vibe I get from justice Barrett and justice Kavanaugh, which is like, no, for real we're real justices. We're really objective. We're really neutral. We're really, we're being fair. We promise and even sort of the institutional protections coming from justice Roberts are going to seem really really naive next term, that they're going to do some big, big stuff, particularly when it [00:33:00] comes to reproductive rights and that we're all going to be looking back at this term and thinking like, not that it was necessarily a distraction or a trap, but something along those lines,
Beth: [00:33:11] I think that's possible. I will tell you that. I think it's possible. I think it's perhaps likely. I will tell you that I probably would be in favor of overturning the Smith case. I think that case was wrongly decided. I don't think it's okay to not pay people unemployment compensation when they've gotten fired for their jobs, for using a drug connected to a religious ritual. I think that's nonsense. I think what you saw in that case is that justice Scalia, as much as he liked to talk about the free exercise of religion, also favors a very strong state, a very strong state, especially as it relates to criminalization and that's not where I am at all and yeah. I think there was, uh, an element of the Smith case that was decided [00:34:00] primarily because we were talking about the native American church, not a Judeo-Christian church and that that's wrong and so I think that precedent was wrongly decided.
What the new standard should be, I don't know. I also think that this case was rightly decided. As much as I am an advocate and I am for LGBTQ rights, I don't think this case was really about that because we didn't have a same-sex couple turned away, because there are lots of places where same-sex couples can be approved as foster parents, because overall, we have a city of Philadelphia going to bat for LGBTQ inclusion instead of oppressing LGBTQ people. Um, I think all of those facts make this a case where you say, okay, Yeah, pass. I mean, it's, to me, this case kind of presses on the idea of, of how the law should work and where judges should have a huge element of discretion and I think it is a fiction to say that any law is neutral and generally applicable to your point, Sarah and I mean the Oregon law at [00:35:00] issue in Smith, wasn't even like that.
You could have said that because a person could raise an affirmative defense of religious use to that drug use that that was an exception, right? That, that took it out of the sphere that they were just creating anyway, prosecutorial discretion always exists. Is somebody going to Sue over this? I mean, you're right. We never have something that lacks an element of discretion and so I do think the standard is hard to decide and I also think the standard is usually a fiction that helps the court reach the result that feels right to it and there's a part of me that looking at a case like this thinks maybe that's the best we can do, because I do think this case should have turned out differently if there were only one agency that the city contracted with and that agency refused to certify same-sex families.
Sarah: [00:35:49] Yeah. I mean, I think the standard is a fiction and I think they know it and that's what they're struggling with and that's why we don't have a standard with the cake shop case and that's why we don't have a standard with this case is because they don't [00:36:00] know nobody does. There's not some easy two sentence, even two paragraph outline of how you decide, which should triumph, religion or government. It's just not, it doesn't exist and I think we're in a very difficult complex transition in our society, as we become more and more secular, as we, you know, have more and more individual rights to be protected and we're just going to have to work that out and it's not going to be nine people in the Supreme court that break it wide open for us.
Beth: [00:36:37] I think that's right and I think the cultural conversation around all of this is really important, which you can see this week as we have a lot of outlets reporting on a letter from bishops in the Catholic church, suggesting that they have the opportunity to not serve communion to politicians who support reproductive freedom. [00:37:00] That is another conversation, kind of like the New York mayoral race where I think, well, I'm not Catholic, so I need to approach this with a lot of humility and recognition that the Catholic church thinks differently about the sacrament of communion than I have for my whole life, right. There's there's already like a, uh, a difference in kind of how I perceive that from where the church is and so I don't feel comfortable commenting on the faith elements of that in this setting.
I would feel comfortable though saying that this is a piece of the conversation about the intersection of religion and politics that I think will have ramifications far into the future and will have ramifications for how a court looks at matters like this and how politicians position themselves vis-a-vis churches and oh, it's just, this is a big weighty topic and I think the more contraction we see in faith communities [00:38:00] around sort of what counts, what we are, who's part of us, what we're about, the more difficult this matters get when they reach the Supreme court.
Sarah: [00:38:10] They're not happy with how Catholics feel about communion. That's part of the issue, right? Is like strand substantiation is not seen as like this huge part for most Catholics and that's, what's got the bishops up and sort of arms is like, no, wait, why is this not getting across that this is very, very serious and that we are actually eating the body and blood of Christ and why is this not being seen that way by most Catholics? Like they said, Cited the polling on this when they were talking about it and it's really interesting to me that so much of religion and religious institutions are sort of adopting that individual protection that you see as a value in our culture that I think is sort of opposed to religious values.
Right. I, you know, I just finished that book by Rabbi Sacks and he says, look, I'm not a liberal. I don't think personal autonomy is the highest and most [00:39:00] important value, but I do think liberal democracy does the best job of protecting everyone's right to decide what is their personal and most important value and so it's interesting that you see religious institutions like the Catholic church sort of pushing this individual rights framework, which is, look, we're not trying to kick him out of the church, but we want to protect individual priests right to deny him communion and if they feel like it violates their personal values. It's not like they're trying to get the Vatican to kick them out because it's really about Biden, right.
It's not just about any politician. They're not talking about denying communion to Republicans who support the death penalty. Um, this is a very specific application of this and so I think that you see this too, in some of the battle in the Southern Baptist church, right? Like, do we have the individual right for sort of differentiation and the leadership, both lay and ordained inside these denominations, are we giving them space? Are we creating creating room? Can we hold all [00:40:00] these different things with inside religious communities, especially, you know, locally, because so much of this is like the nationalization of religious politics in the same way we see the nationalization of politics across the country.
These big cultural conflicts conversations, disconnections that we're suffering from are manifesting at all these different levels and I think that's what you see the Supreme court battling with. That's what you see the Southern Baptist convention battling with. That's what you see the Catholic bishops battling with. That's what we're all battling with. Society is changing the way information flows, the way that we can talk or connect with one another is different than any other moment in American history and that's going to affect things that we've leaned on to connect us for centuries, like religion.
Beth: [00:40:51] Justices Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas in their Fulton concurrence is by expressing their certainty [00:41:00] that because the majority of the court would not face head on whether to overturn employment division versus Smith, we would see lots of these cases again. And I think they're right about that. And I think we would see lots of these cases again, anyway, because of everything that you just shared, Sarah. It is a complex time to be a person of faith. It is a complex time to live in America as a person who is not part of a faith community and is watching these conversations about the special protection faith communities ought to have, and sometimes watching with alarm and dismay that we talk about faith community with such reverence in a, in a society that is becoming more secular.
I don't know how to neatly wrap this up except to say, I think that places where we consider our hearts and our spirits are exceptionally important and I think in a democratic society, we ought to have lots of room to do that. I also think that [00:42:00] places where we work on our hearts and spirits and minds in community with other people are always going to be extremely complicated and are going to carry the potential to break our hearts as individuals and to work on ourselves and each other and so I am holding a lot of gentleness for everybody impacted by this discussion about communion and holding a lot of gentleness for everybody impacted in the LGBT community and beyond, um, by decisions like Fulton, where you reach a result that is always going to burden someone's rights um, like every case at the Supreme court does. Someone always gets burdened as we think about how to make room for, for others decisions.
Next up, we will discuss what's going on outside of politics, which preview, involves Sarah and I being together for five days with five children,
[00:43:00] Sarah what's on your mind outside of politics?.
Sarah: [00:43:05] Yes. We just spent an entire week together. I came to your house Sunday night with my three boys and we spent Monday through Wednesday together and then went down to Holiday World for a fun Thursday finale. If you want to deep dive on a Nightly Nuance about all our children's personalities and how they both aligned and conflicted, uh, you can get, go get that last Thursday, but you know, it was really, really fun to have that time together. I think we're going to make it an annual tradition, right?
Beth: [00:43:33] Yeah. For those of you who don't know, we live about 300 miles apart. Sarah is in the far Western part of Kentucky. I am in the very Northern tip of Kentucky and so it's about a five-hour drive for us to see each other in person. We don't usually get to see each other in person in Kentucky. Usually we're meeting up at some speaking engagement or a live event that we're doing. So it's really unusual for us to be in each other's homes. We were talking about, I think I've only spent the night with Sarah [00:44:00] once and so it was, it was great to get our kids together. They range in age from six to 12 and having all five of them and doing podcasts and working on our book was a challenge and a joy all wrapped together.
Sarah: [00:44:19] It was pretty intense. I mean, there's lots of interruptions, but also, you know, this is always my experience, when there are other kids around my kids, they sort of play longer and better often. Unfortunately, a lot of that was in the pool, which involved adult supervision, but they loved it. My kids loved it. Amos is like, when is everybody coming to our house? I really want them to all have relationships together because this partnership is so important to our family and I think that's a really fun way for them to stay connected.
We made a, we made a reEl with them coming out tomorrow, so y'all need to get excited about that cause they were freaking adorable and it was really fun to do and I think you were right, like at one point you said, I just feel more creative and it's just when we're in our physical, physical presence together and we can sort of be like, You [00:45:00] know, pick up little snippets of conversation or ideas when they hit us. It does, it flows a lot easier instead of having to funnel it all through Voxer or a text message.
Beth: [00:45:08] Really does. I, when you all left, I felt really sad because I agree that our kids having relationships with each other is very important to me and I love working in the same space with you and at the same time, I thought a lot about how it's probably important for what we do that you live in Paducah and I live here in Northern Kentucky because those are quite different parts of Kentucky and as much as we have in common in terms of life experience, I hope that living in, in really different communities, add something to our thought process, as we analyze issues.
But it was wonderful to see our kids interacting and just to hear how they think about things. I can imagine that living with either one of us is a somewhat unusual experience because of what we do and how we do it.And you could hear in our kids' conversations with each other, that they live that way, that they live with conversations [00:46:00] about big picture topics going around them all the time and it's really fun to hear kids of a variety of ages, discussing things in such sophisticated terms.
Sarah: [00:46:10] And you learn to re-pot a plant because I repotted your plant without your permission, while you were gone on an errand, and now I've inspired you to report more plants, is that, that's the, I think that's the actual best and most important takeaway from the weekend. I told Nicholas, I was like, I repotted a plant and he was like, you've, repotted her plant? And I was like, yeah, I was supposed to bring her a plant. I forgot it. So I did that and he was like, you were such a weirdo. That is such a weird thing to do for someone else and I was like, whatever, it's not. I'm just showing up as my full self.
Beth: [00:46:36] It was very kind. I would expect no less than you showing up as your full self. The poor plant needed it. I am terrible with plants. I know nothing about it. I heard someone over the weekend on a podcast saying that when you enter a partnership, you are signing up to be changed by the other person and so I try to remember that all the time and after you left, I took another one of my plants that you said you would have repotted if you had enough [00:47:00] soil and I, and I took care of it.
Sarah: [00:47:01] I love it so much. Is it so happy now?
Beth: [00:47:04] I think it's happy. I also moved it, which I thought you'd be pleased with just to have a little variety in my life because Sarah talked a lot while she was here, about how much she loves to move her furniture around. So I moved my plant love and it's new soil with its fertilizer and lots of water.
God, that makes me so happy.
That's how you changed me this week.
Sarah: [00:47:22] That's all right. It just brings joy to my life. Like I just love, I love change, especially in my own home. I know other people that gives them great anxiety, not necessarily, but other people, when you talk about changing things in their homes, it gives them anxiety. Some of those people are my own children, but they've learned to grow.
Beth: [00:47:37] Also think it's a fun exercise to just now and then think, how am I being changed by my partnership with this person? I'm going to try to look for that in my thinking.
Sarah: [00:47:44] I love that. That's beautiful.
Beth: [00:47:46] We hope that you all are having the best week available to you. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. Thank you again for joining us..
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