Religious Freedom For Me Not For Thee

Religious freedom is near and dear to me and I’ve written here before on the topic. To me and others it means being able to practice your faith or non-faith without interference or coercion by government at any level. Republicans seem to mean something else entirely when they speak of the topic. As exemplified by the cases below, to Republicans religious freedom means the freedom to push their faith on everyone else.

Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, is a case which will be argued before the Supreme Court in April on behalf of the public school district in Bremerton, Washington, which is trying to protect the religious freedom of its students and their parents. Kennedy is a one-time football coach who was placed on paid administrative leave after he refused to stop leading prayers on the 50-yard line after games.

Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram of Knoxville, Tennessee are a Jewish couple who wanted to foster and adopt a Florida child, and they needed to obtain foster-parent training and a home study authorized by Tennessee to do so. The only accessible place to get those services was Holston United Methodist Home for Children, which is funded by the state to provide the services. But Holston canceled the couple’s training because it only accepts “families that share our [Christian] belief system.”

Aimee Maddonna of South Carolina, was denied a similar opportunity because of her Catholic faith as was another South Carolina couple. Both have sued after they were rejected by Miracle Hill Ministries, the largest state-contracted and government-funded foster care agency in South Carolina, because Miracle Hill restricts "eligibility to prospective foster parents who are evangelical Protestant Christians." U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina denied a motion to dismiss those suits, ruling that "to the extent defendants' assert that their actions are immune from challenge under the Establishment Clause as 'religious accommodation,' such argument is directly contrary to the well-pled allegations in the complaint and long-established federal jurisprudence and must be rejected at this stage of the proceedings."

According to the civil complaint "For prospective foster parents who live in South Carolina's upstate region and do not meet Miracle Hill's religious requirements, the primary foster care agency serving the region is not available to them. Such denial creates a practical barrier to fostering, as not all foster care agencies are equivalent or offer the same services, and also stigmatizes these families, branding them as inferior and less worthy of serving as foster parents. Moreover, this discriminatory treatment of prospective foster parents denies children access to families they need."

Lawyers for the families allege that the state violated the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution by essentially establishing a religious test for foster parents in northern South Carolina.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had granted a waiver to Miracle Hill Ministries from federal non-discrimination rules. The Biden administration stopped this blatantly unconstitutional practice.

All of these folks are paying taxes to support discrimination that victimizes them. I don’t know about you but if I paid my taxes and got such a slap in the face I’d be pretty upset.

This is exactly the kind of government funded discrimination that our founders were concerned about and which the first amendment clearly opposes yet Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, refers to as “so-called separation of church and state”. We all have reason to worry about out religious liberty when Republicans are in control.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 23, 2022

National Day of Prayer Needs To Go

At first blush the annual National Day of Prayer presidential proclamation every first Thursday in May seems innocuous. US Code Title 36, Section 119 states: The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals. The original bill, which didn’t include a fixed date, was passed in 1952 at the direct suggestion of Rev. Billy Graham. As Graham explained, its purpose was to help bring “the Lord Jesus Christ” to the nation. At the urging of evangelical Christian groups the law was amended to set a fixed date in 1988 so they could organize around it.

Doesn’t it seem at least a little insulting that government should ask the faithful to pray? I mean, if folks are going to pray aren’t they going to pray without the federal government asking them to?

The National Day of Prayer Task Force, chaired for 25 years by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, organizes 30,000-40,000 events annually. Their events are so exclusively Christian that in 2005 when the Hindu American Foundation sought to join in they were refused. They're Americans so if an organization with the tacit support of the federal government is going to hold events shouldn’t Hindus be welcome just as should Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and those of other faiths?

All this gets us to what’s really disturbing about the whole National Day of Pray business in the first place. Government in this country has no business endorsing any religion as it is expressly prohibited in the United States constitution in which the First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Equally significant in understanding the founders’ views on the importance of maintaining distance between religion and government is Article IV which specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

It’s important for us to understand the circumstances of the time in which the constitution was written. In England, from the 1660s until the 1820s, the Test Acts were used to “establish” the Church of England as an official national church. The Test Acts required all government officials to take an oath disclaiming the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and affirming the Church of England’s teachings about receiving the sacrament. The point was to exclude Catholics, Lutherans, and members of other dissenting Protestant sects from exercising political power. In other words, you couldn’t just be a Christian, you had to be the right kind of Christian to even hold the lowliest government office.

Even after the Revolutionary War while the constitution was being adopted, many states included religious qualifications in order to hold public office. Delaware’s constitution required government officials to “profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost.” North Carolina prohibited men “who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion” from government posts. Those states were a little more open minded in that at least their religious tests Protestants of all varieties to serve in government. Their religious tests were still designed to exclude certain people, often Catholics or Jews, from holding office because they were of the “wrong” faith.

It’s time for this country to fulfill the promise of the constitution and get out of the religion business entirely.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 12, 2021

Letter responding to "freedom of religion" doesn't imply freedom from religion

In Beverly Nuckols’ recent letter “A Little Perspective for Texas Atheists” she makes the absurd assertion that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion does not also imply the option to choose freedom from religion.

If you walk into a pizza parlor and the sign says – “Large Pizza $9.99 choose any single topping”, does anyone really think you can’t order that pizza without a topping? Must you only select from sausage, pepperoni, ham, green peppers or black olives, isn’t no topping an option?

Regarding Gov. Perry’s shindig, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, led by Reverend Barry Lynn, has this to say on the issue: “AU believes Perry’s sponsorship of a “Christians-only” event fails to honor our country’s religious diversity. His actions are divisive, unwelcoming and constitutionally inappropriate.”

Rev. Lynn isn’t the only faith leader to take an opposing position. Over two dozen members of the Houston Clergy Council as well as Rev. Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Associate Professor of Practical Theology at Texas Christian University and others believe that Rick Perry is wrong too and no one would call them atheists.

Religious right starts new war on contraception

Years ago I’d heard from several “liberals” who I thought were crackpots that the religious right didn’t just want to do away with abortion they really wanted to eliminate contraception all together because if a woman is married she should have as many children as God gave her. If a woman isn’t married she shouldn’t be having sex anyway and if she did and got pregnant that too was God’s plan.

Then I saw State Representative Wayne Christian in an interview with a reporter from the Texas Tribune say “Well of course it’s a war on birth control, on abortions, on everything. That’s what family planning is supposed to be about.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA75-PY5muk I almost fell out of my chair.

Some call this a war on women, I can’t disagree but I think it is also another example of why the separation of church and state is so important. There may be religious reasons to advocate for no contraception and that is the privilege of those who believe that way because our Constitution insures Freedom of Religion. At the same time our Constitution also provides protection from religious interference in state matters and no one has the right to push their religious convictions on anyone else in this country.

There simply is no social case for the Republican Party’s war on contraception.