Church and State
stcynic | June 8, 2006A fascinating thing has been going on in the Louisiana legislature: they've been busy trying to edit the ten commandments. They are working on a bill that would allow the posting of the ten commandments on public property and in public buildings, but they're having a bit of trouble deciding which version to use. You see, there are at least three different versions - Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. The site is a bit surreal to witness:
The committee didn't settle on the version to include but did amend the more Protestant-oriented version in the bill after a civil-rights lobbyist noted some…
stcynic | June 6, 2006From the first day of the state Republican convention in Texas:
At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, party leader Tina Benkiser assured them that God was watching over the two-day confab.
"He is the chairman of this party," she said against a backdrop of flags and a GOP seal with its red, white and blue logo.
The party platform, adopted Saturday, declares "America is a Christian nation" and affirms that "God is undeniable in our history and is vital to our freedom."
Change "Christian" to "Muslim" and it sounds a lot like what a religious party in Pakistan might say, doesn't it?
stcynic | June 2, 2006The religious right's latest meme, which is catching on fact, is summed up in their favorite new catchphrase: "war on Christians". The meme operates as a means to confuse people and positions - if you disagree with them on a policy question, it's because you hate Christians. Here's a perfect example, from an Agape Press article yesterday:
And unfortunately, the attorney points out, the Ninth Circuit that recently ruled on the case has a history of censoring conservative expression. "They've been incredibly hostile to Christians in a number of different rulings ranging from the Pledge of…
stcynic | May 28, 2006Memorial Day weekend is a perfect time to report again on this story. Wiccans have been trying for years to get the Veterans Administration to allow soldiers buried in military cemetaries to have Wiccan symbols on their headstone. The latest such case involves Sgt. Patrick Stewart, a soldier who was killed in battle in Afghanistan (and posthumously awarded a Bronze Star for his actions). The VA currently recognizes over 30 religious symbols that may be placed on gravestones. There's even one for atheists, and for religions as obscure as the United Moravian Church. But no Wiccans need apply.…
stcynic | May 23, 2006Several people emailed me about what happened over the weekend at Russell County High School in Kentucky. There was apparently a tradition there for the students to elect a "graduation chaplain" to hold a Christian prayer at the graduation ceremony, with the full cooperation of the school. But this year, a Muslim student filed suit to stop that tradition and a judge issued an injunction against it. So instead, in the middle of the principal's opening remarks, 200 students stood up, interrupted the proceedings, and recited the Lord's prayer, prompting a standing ovation from most of those in…
stcynic | May 14, 2006Some of my readers may be aware of the ongoing legal controversy over a 29 foot cross in San Diego that was erected as a memorial to Korean War veterans in 1954. The legal battle has raged for 17 years, when Phillip Paulson first filed an establishment clause suit to have the cross removed. A Federal judge originally ordered the cross removed in 1991, but the case has dragged on through multiple phases. The city has tried to sell the property on which the cross sits to a private buyer to get around the ruling, but the courts blocked that attempt. Now the original judge has finally had enough…
stcynic | May 8, 2006I'm moving up a comment to the front page before the whole thread slips off the edge. The comment is from Dan Hillman and is in response to my bashing of Judge Moore and his followers. When an ally of Moore said that the polls were under-estimating his support, I joked that, ""I think he might be right. After all, how many of the braindead hicks that would vote for Moore can afford phones?" Hillman responded:
That's right. It is totally impossible for people to be intelligent and have faith. And it is totally impossible for smart people to believe that justice is really a moral - and…
stcynic | May 3, 2006You probably remember Coach Dave Daubenmire (yes, he still calls himself coach although he was only a high school football coach and hasn't been for quite some time, since he stepped down to became a full time windbag for the religious right). Well he's back with one of the silliest arguments against separation of church and state one can possibly imagine. It's the sort of thing my high school football coach, who could draw up a decent coverage scheme but would probably fail miserably any aptitude test that is given to high school students, might have written. Take a look at arguments like…
stcynic | May 1, 2006I forgot to discuss this last week, but the Supreme Court denied cert in the case of Baldwinsville School District v. Peck, a church/state case involving a kindegarten student's right to express a religious viewpoint. The class was given an assignment to draw a poster with their perspective on the environment. Antonio Peck drew a poster that showed the earth with people holding hands around it on one side and a picture of Jesus on the other side. When the pictures were put up in the school cafeteria for parents to see during a conference day, the teacher put up Antonio's picture but folded…
stcynic | April 19, 2006Ken Brown has a post pointing to Joe Carter's essay on the subject of theocracy and the fear of it that is often expressed by those on the left. Carter argues that accusations that the religious right is pushing for theocracy are empty political rhetoric. While he admits that "some conservative Christians in our country do want to establish a theocracy" he also argues that their numbers "are rather negligible and their political influence almost non-existence (sic)". I'm going to agree in part and disagree in part. Yes, I think the left often exaggerates the risk of theocracy and applies the…
stcynic | April 19, 2006As I've mentioned recently, there is a case going on right now in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Winkler v. Rumsfeld, involving the question of whether the Federal government can fund events and activities of the Boy Scouts of America in light of their discrimination against atheists and agnostics. I've been doing a little research on it, including reading several of the briefs filed on both sides. One of the interesting things about the case that I did not know is that there is an actual act of Congress from 1972, called the Jamboree Statute, that authorizes the Secretary of Defense to…
stcynic | April 10, 2006Whenever you see a religious right apologist claiming that America was founded as a "Christian nation", you inevitably find them defining the nation not from the point it was founded - the time of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - but from the time of the colonies that were still ruled by England. In particular, they like to point to documents like the Mayflower Compact and the charters of the various colonies, all of whom had official established churches, as proof that we were indeed founded as a Christian nation.
The National Reform Association, which has been around…
stcynic | April 6, 2006Eugene Volokh has a post about this suit, likely prompted by me bringing it up on his religion law listserv this morning, and he argues that it probably isn't unconstitutional but still troublesome. First amendment law is his specialty, so he's probably got a pretty firm grasp on it. I'm gonna take a fairly large quote from his post, so I'll begin below the fold:
The San Francisco city government, it seems to me, is quite entitled to express its views on gay rights questions, and to condemn groups that, in its view, express "hateful" ideas. It's entitled to do this even when those groups are…
stcynic | April 6, 2006The Thomas More Law Center is suing the city of San Francisco claiming an establishment clause violation over a resolution passed by the Board of Supervisors that condemned the Catholic Church's teaching on gay adoption and urged Catholic Charities locally to ignore the Church's directives on the matter. Frankly, I think they may have a case and I'm curious to hear from some of our attorneys here. Certainly we would all agree that if the Board of Supervisors had voted to endorse a Catholic Church teaching as true, that would be an establishment clause problem. Is it a problem for them to take…
stcynic | April 3, 2006John Lofton, the reconstructionist wingnut from the Constitution Party, has an interview with Newt Gingrich, author of a new book called The Creator's Gifts: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, that is rather interesting for a couple reasons. First, because Gingrich doesn't seem to know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:
Well, I think it's pretty clear in the original document, the Declaration of Independence of the Founding Fathers, that we are endowed by our Creator certain inalienable rights which are the rights of liberty, life and the…
stcynic | March 20, 2006No, not the food but the legal scholar. Philip Hamburger teaches law at the University of Chicago and is a respected scholar, but his position on the first amendment religion clauses are quite troublesome. Jon Rowe reviews his latest book, Separation of Church and State, over at Positive Liberty. I think he's right that Hamburger focuses excessively on the actual phrase "separation of church and state" rather than on the idea behind it. He even claims that Madison did not argue for such a separation, though he clearly did.
He has also focused, in my view obsessively, on Hugo Black and his…
stcynic | March 12, 2006Catholic Charities of Boston has decided to close up its adoption agency rather than comply with a Massachusetts policy that gays be allowed to adopt children. This charity had been facilitating adoptions for over 100 years, but placing foster children with gay parents is a violation of Church doctrine. On the one hand, I think they are completely wrong in their position on gay adoption. On the other hand, I respect the fact that they chose to withdraw from acting as an official state agency rather than compromise their beliefs.
Interestingly, the group decided not to ask for a religious…
stcynic | March 9, 2006I'm one of those folks who thinks that courses in comparative religion, or about the bible as literature, can be a valuable thing. Unfortunately, they just don't work in the real world. There's really only two ways to teach such a course. You either teach that the Bible is absolutely true (in which case you violate the first amendment's establishment clause) or you teach about the Bible as you would any other book, by examining the historical context, the archaeological evidence concerning the events discussed, the accuracy of its descriptions, and so forth (and there you run into objections…
stcynic | March 6, 2006As I noted the other day, and as many other blogs have discussed, there is a bill in front of the Missouri state legislature with enormous church/state implications. It is House Concurrent Resolution 13 and it reads pretty much like something out of a David Barton pamphlet. I'm going to examine it line by line and point out some of the absurdities and misrepresentations found within it:
Whereas, our forefathers of this great nation of the United States recognized a Christian God and used the principles afforded to us by Him as the founding principles of our nation...
Both claims found here…
stcynic | February 24, 2006The Federal government has settled an ACLU lawsuit by prohibiting further support for the Silver Ring Thing abstinence-only sex education program until the program is changed to eliminate the overtly religious content of the course.
Under the deal, the Silver Ring Thing program won't be eligible for more funding unless it ensures the money won't be used for religious purposes.
"Public funds were being used to fund a road show, really, to convert teens to Christianity," said Julie Sternberg, an ACLU attorney.
She said the ACLU supports the program's right to offer religious content, but not…