More Work For Our Man Arlen

The latest, from People for the American Way...

Senator Arlen Specter claims to be pro-choice, although it would be hard to know it based on his record of supporting President Bush's anti-choice judicial nominees. But now, Sen. Specter has another chance to show where he really stands.

The nomination of Richard Honaker to the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming is awaiting a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Sen. Specter is the Ranking Member. Honaker is a staunch anti-choice activist.

Please call Sen. Specter's office now and urge him to prove he is pro-choice by OPPOSING the confirmation of Richard Honaker.

202-224-4254

Richard Honaker has worked vigorously to undermine women's reproductive freedom. Mr. Honaker has written that abortion is "wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong." As a Wyoming state legislator, Mr. Honaker in 1991 introduced a bill entitled the "Human Life Protection Act" that would have prohibited abortion, except to protect a woman's life or in cases of incest or rape, but then only if the victim had reported the crime within five days of its occurrence -- a highly unrealistic requirement in many instances.

He has a disturbing record on government neutrality toward religion and a legal philosophy that threatens church-state separation. Mr. Honaker believes that the Bible is "true in law," and has publicly disparaged non-"Judeo-Christians" as unable to sustain "political liberty."

Mr. Honaker is a longtime board member of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) -- an extreme right-wing, anti-gay organization that, despite its name, has taken liberty-restricting positions on a range of matters that have nothing to do with home-schooling. A report in Salon quoted one observer of the Christian right as noting that "HSLDA and similarly motivated organizations . . . are major players behind recent efforts to mandate creationist curriculum and attack environmental education, sex-education, and multicultural classroom material." And HSLDA has created an "army of eager teen activists . . . called Generation Joshua," to "help defeat the giants of abortion, same-sex marriage and judicial activism."

Please call now and urge Senator Specter to OPPOSE the confirmation of Richard Honaker in Committee.

202-224-4254

You can let us know how the call goes with our online call report form from here.

Why should you care about a federal judge in another state? As a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, Honaker's bad decisions could be looked to by judges in other states as persuasive precedent, and thus could affect all Americans. Women's rights advocates in Wyoming as well as leading national women's rights organizations, including NOW, the National Women's Law Center and NARAL Pro-Choice America, also oppose Mr. Honaker's confirmation, as do many other groups, including Americans United For Separation of Church and State and the Alliance for Justice.

-- Your Allies at People For the American Way

P.S. for more on Richard Honaker and source material for the statements contained within this e-mail, please see PFAW's letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Mr. Honaker's confirmation here.

And I'm still waiting to hear about that book deal, by the way.