The Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v Wade shook America. Half the country quickly moved to relegate people with uteri to second-class citizens who had unequal privacy rights. Some justified this invasion of privacy by calling women “vessels for the unborn.”
Few espouse the Christian Nationalist view of privacy louder than Clarence Thomas. His concurring opinion in Dobbs outlined further erosions of our right to privacy.
Men like Thomas are convinced it is their godly duty to police what we do in private and force us all to live by their narrow interpretation of the Bible. Because as we saw yesterday, people like Clarence Thomas believe sexual immorality as defined by their Old Testament God unleashes his judgment on the whole country.
In his Dobbs opinion, Thomas called for this Christian Nationalist Supreme Court to revisit three previous rulings regarding our privacy:
Griswold v Connecticut - which gave married couples the right to use contraception
Lawrence v Texas - which gave same-sex couples the right to sexual intimacy
Obergefell v Hodges - which gave same-sex couples the right to marry
If Thomas doesn’t believe married couples have a privacy right to contraception, it isn’t a stretch to say Christian Nationalists like Thomas think no one does.
How will Christian Nationalists police what we do in private?
They’re already testing their tactics.
In this newsletter, I covered how Project 2025 plans to convert the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into a nationwide abortion and transgender care tracking unit. Doctors would be required to report every pregnancy outcome, even in blue states, or risk the loss of federal funding.
Project 2025 also includes an epic expansion of immigrant tracking. In the section discussing Department of Justice grant awards, it calls for a return to a 45-era rule that required states and localities to collect and report immigration status on all residents to the federal government. This type of invasive reporting infrastructure could be modified or expanded to include gathering what residents do in private.
In 2021, the Christo-fascist Texas legislature passed SB8, also known as the “abortion bounty hunter law.” The US Supreme Court refused to strike down this invasive law, which has the sordid distinction of being drawn from the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
As much as I don’t want to contemplate how they might restrict our privacy rights, here are a few scenarios.
Your Christian Nationalist parents don’t approve of who you’re dating because he is of Cuban descent. Even though he was born in the US, they suspect he is here illegally. They use the new illegal immigration reporting portal on their city website. He is subsequently investigated by the federal government, costing him thousands of dollars and untold stress. He survives this invasion of his privacy; your relationship does not.
Or ladies, a man took you on a date and his car was in your driveway all night. Your uptight Christian Nationalist neighbor submits photos to the “fornication finder” app your city set up to police immorality and voila! It’s up to you to prove you didn’t have sex all night. (Don’t tell me I’m being hysterical when the Bless app exists.)
Your Christian Nationalist aunt doesn’t approve of your suspected homosexuality. She uses the aforementioned “fornication finder” app to report you for sexual deviancy.
A couple of Christian Nationalists knock on your front door and try to save your soul. They know you are single and insist that you can meet a Good Christian Someone at their church. Because it’s a hot day, you offer them some water before sending them on their way. They follow you into the kitchen and see your now-illegal transgender hormone therapies on the counter. Without your knowledge, they snap several covert photos and send them to the CDC. You are subsequently arrested for using illegal substances and sexual deviancy.
You and your wife are newly married twenty-somethings. You’re both focused on your careers and don’t want children right away. On a trip to Cancun, she has a now-illegal IUD inserted to prevent pregnancy. Two years later, she suffers a bout of appendicitis. During various scans, doctors discover the IUD. A Christian Nationalist nurse reports your wife to the CDC. She is arrested and charged with endangering the unborn.
Substack needs a different icon to show our appreciation for your work...to click on a 'heart' for the topic and your astute projections of its ramifications feels conflicted....we need an 'Damn right, I am mad as hell and not going to take it anymore' emoji .
The takeover and weaponization of the CDC is terrifying. The wishlist of citizens that they plan to terrorize into submission could include anyone. This is fascism plain and simple. Creating fear and chaos in the name of G-d takes us back to the times of witch hunts and inquisitions. This is happening in our lifetime powered by our churches.