The Catholic Church is baring its teeth.

The first snarl came from Pope Benedict himself. Feeling his oats after a victory against gay marriage in the European Court of Human Rights, the pope slammed the door on glasnost in the sex abuse scandal, ordering his subordinates not to speak ill of their colleagues. Ironically, the target of the pope’s wrath had actually been defending the pope himself. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna had been sticking up for Benedict, telling reporters that long before Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, he had sought a full investigation of the allegations against Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who was widely suspected of sexual abuse of young seminarians. Ratzinger’s initiative had been squashed, though, by Cardinal Angelo Soldano, who then served as the Vatican Secretary of State, and who is now dean of the College of Cardinals. So was Benedict pleased that Schoenborn was defending him? He was not; he sternly reinforced the chain of command, growling that “only the pope has the authority to accuse a cardinal” and that Church officials need to “show due respect” for one another. An institution genuinely committed to reform might encourage its members to go public when internal procedures fail to produce results; the Catholic Church censures them.

The Church slammed another door as well, filing a brief in a Kentucky case to prevent plaintiff’s attorneys from taking depositions of the pope and three other senior Vatican officials. The Church’s two arguments are downright silly. First, they say there has never been an official Vatican policy of hushing up sex abuse cases. But how can the court know what the Vatican policy is unless the plaintiffs are allowed to complete their discovery? The second argument may not be silly under the law — the brief says that Vatican City is a “nation,” recognized as such by American diplomacy, and allowing a court to subpoena its officials would be “akin to a foreign plaintiff seeking a foreign court order compelling the depositions of the United States President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense and ambassador.” Legally, the sovereign immunity argument is probably a winner — which is just the latest evidence of the absurdity of recognizing Vatican City as a state, on the level of France or Japan.

With one European Court victory in its pocket, the Church pressed on for another, arguing that the government of Italy has the right to brainwash Jewish, Muslim, humanist, and other children by installing a Christian crucifix in every public school classroom. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re called the crucifix “an emblem of a universally shared humanity” — an odd description of an instrument of torture. Rather than just dealing piecemeal with one symptom after another, though, the Church launched an initiative to attack the root of the disease — secularism itself. “The process of secularization has produced a serious crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and role of the Church,” the pope complained, and thus announced a new bureaucracy to combat “a progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God.’” If the Church proclaimed a special campaign to target Jews, or Muslims, or Mormons, or Methodists, wouldn’t there be a storm of indignation? But targeting humanists gets a ho-hum from the press. What would they say about a humanist effort to target Catholics, on the grounds that they suffer from a sort of “eclipse of the sense of reality”? Read the rest of this entry &raquo

Yesterday was the last day of the US Supreme Court’s 2009-2010 term, and it was a busy one. Among the four decisions reached was one of the most important church-state separation cases in recent history, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.

The case concerns a public university, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, a campus of the University of California system. Like all colleges, Hastings allows students to form organizations and officially register them with the school, which in return gives them access to certain resources, including preferential meeting room space, campus communication tools, and access to student activity funds. In return for this official status, however, Hastings requires registered student organizations to adhere to the university’s nondiscrimination policy, which forbids discriminating on a basis of, among other things, religious beliefs and sexual orientation, and requires student organizations to accept any Hastings student as a member.

And therein was the problem for the Christian Legal Society, a national organization that asked in 2004 that its Hastings chapter be exempted from the nondiscrimination policy because all its members are required to sign a statement of faith that, among other things, would forbid him or her to be gay or lesbian. Hastings declined to issue such an exemption and denied official status to the Christian Legal Society chapter, and a lawsuit shortly followed.

The Christian Legal Society’s argument that it had been discriminated against by Hastings College didn’t seem to hold any water with the lower courts: both the US District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Hastings, finding that there had been no discrimination against the Christian Legal Society. And so it came to pass that the US Supreme Court heard the case on April 19th, 2010 and issued its 5-4 ruling in favor of Hastings yesterday, on the last day of the court’s term.

In the ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority (PDF) that (emphasis added):

In requiring CLS—in common with all other student organizations—to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations. CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings’ policy. The First Amendment shields CLS against state prohibition of the organization’s expressive activity, however exclusionary that activity may be. But CLS enjoys no constitutional right to state subvention of its selectivity.

In other words, as the nondiscrimination policy applies to all student organizations, what the Christian Legal Society was actually asking for was preferential treatment that Hastings was not obliged to give.

In a succinct concurring opinion, retiring Justice John Paul Stevens wrote:

Although the First Amendment may protect CLS’s discriminatory practices off campus, it does not require a public university to validate or support them.
…
As written, the Nondiscrimination Policy is content and viewpoint neutral. It does not reflect a judgment by school officials about the substance of any student group’s speech. Nor does it exclude any would-be groups on the basis of their convictions. Indeed, it does not regulate expression or belief at all.

In other words, the real issue here isn’t whether or not Hastings allows the CLS to discriminate, but rather, whether or not Hastings must endorse that discrimination by making the CLS an officially registered student organization, with access to all of the university and student funded benefits therein. And the answer to that question from the five justice majority was a resounding “no.”

Divided as the current court almost always is, the three other conservative justices on the court joined Justice Samuel Alito on his dissent, in which he stated:

The proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”…Today’s decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.

But it is not at all clear from the case just how the freedom of expression of the CLS was hindered. At no time was freedom of speech denied for the CLS or its members. The organization was even allowed to meet on campus and hasn’t been inhibited from sponsoring events. But it will have to do so with less access to the resources provided by Hastings to official student organizations. The key is that Hastings College applies its anti-discrimination requirement equally and across the board to all student organizations, not just to the CLS, so if they refuse to comply with it, how can they then claim that they have been unfairly singled out?

Secular and civil liberties organizations all over the nation, including the American Humanist Association, Americans United, and the ACLU, applauded the ruling and celebrated this victory in such a vital separation of church and state case. To understand the significance, consider for a moment if it had gone the other way, and if the Supreme Court had ruled that Hastings was discriminating against the CLS by requiring them to adhere to the university’s anti-discrimination code. This would actually set aside religious student organizations as a special class that did not have to adhere to regulations that apply to other student organizations. It would have been a disaster for the separation of church and state, because students at Hastings would have been forced to support, through their own required student activity fees, an organization that would not even necessarily admit them as members!

Given the nature of the Hastings anti-discrimination policy, which is described as an “all-comers” policy, meaning that student organizations must accept as members all Hastings students who wish to join, rather than the more common university policy of disallowing any student group to discriminate based on certain criteria, it is not clear if this ruling will have far-reaching implications for universities across the United States. Ultimately the court stuck to the “all-comers” policy in its ruling, which it found to be viewpoint neutral when applied to all student organizations at Hastings, and the court did not rule on the broader question of other types of anti-discrimination policies.

Yesterday’s ruling was a great victory for the separation of church and state, and it was also a high note for the end of the final term of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is now retiring after a nearly 35-year long distinguished career of defending the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. He will surely take his place in history alongside other heavyweight rights-defenders of the Supreme Court, including Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall. He is truly a great American, and his presence will be sorely missed on the nation’s highest court.

Happy National Day of Reason! Today we commemorate that most vital of human faculties, the ability to reason, while maintaining vigilance against encroachment on the separation of church and state here in the USA. And it is not a coincidence that today also falls on the National Day of Prayer, the congressionally mandated prayer day that was instituted in 1952 and is implemented every year by presidential proclamation. While this year was no exception, hopefully the National Day of Prayer is not long for this world.

For this National Day of Reason, which is being celebrated around the nation with commemorative events, city proclamations, and even a visit to Robert Ingersoll’s grave, I wanted to consider for a minute an idea put forth in a Los Angeles Times op-ed by the writer Marc Cooper, a contributing editor to The Nation magazine. He humbly suggests, in light of the impending retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, that rather than agonizing over the lack of protestants on the court, President Obama should do something completely different (and what some may even regard as radical):

Though the court without Stevens will be left with six Catholics and two Jews, the open seat should not go to either domination. Nor should it go to a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Muslim or even a Zoroastrian. If it did, that would make nine people who all have one religious principle in common: a belief in religion.

Clearly, the next person to take the bench should be an atheist.

An atheist on the high court? Is this guy crazy? Who would ever have supported such a thing?

While few sitting politicians have the political courage to name a declared nonbeliever, it is something that Thomas Jefferson (and several others among the founders) might well have done.

In an 1823 letter to John Adams, Jefferson was forthright about his views of religion, and Christianity specifically. “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter,” Jefferson wrote. “But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.”

In other words, Jefferson liked what Jesus, the man, stood for, but could definitely do without the rest of the bunk.

For those who do not support the separation of church and state, it is one of the most supremely uncomfortable facts in U.S. history that so many of our nation’s founders were skeptics on matters of religion. Besides coining the phrase “wall of separation between Church & State” in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson also edited his own version of the Bible, with all supernatural elements excised (perhaps this is why the religious-right dominated Texas State Board of Education recently demoted him within the state social studies standards). So I think Mr. Cooper is on pretty solid ground here when he asserts that President Jefferson would have considered such an appointment to the court.

So why appoint an atheist to the Supreme Court? Cooper says:

Having an atheist justice, however, would not primarily be a matter of identity politics and some sort of equal representation. Rather, a nonbeliever justice would be a mighty blow in favor of the secular principles of “reason and freedom” of which Jefferson spoke.

Heaven knows we could use some more of that stuff. Religion plays far too influential a role in our political and civic life as is. I personally don’t care what sort of superstition makes you sleep better at night, but I think we would all benefit if you left it behind closed doors and kept it as far away as possible from public policy. How about a policy of don’t ask, don’t tell?

Consider how many of the cases that go in front of the court directly impact atheists and other freethinkers and nonreligious people. For example, a stark reminder was provided last October as to just how obtuse a Supreme Court justice could be on the question of whether or not a large Christian cross on a government land preserve (ostensibly there as a memorial to the dead of World War I) actually constituted a religious symbol. At the oral arguments for the Salazar v. Buono case, the following remarkable exchange took place between Justice Antonin Scalia (a conservative Catholic) and the attorney representing the American Civil Liberties Union, Peter Eliasberg:

JUSTICE SCALIA: The cross doesn’t honor non-Christians who fought in the war? Is that — is that –

MR. ELIASBERG: I believe that’s actually correct.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Where does it say that?

MR. ELIASBERG: It doesn’t say that, but a cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins, and I believe that’s why the Jewish war veterans –

JUSTICE SCALIA: It’s erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. It’s the — the cross is the — is the most common symbol of — of — of the resting place of the dead, and it doesn’t seem to me — what would you have them erect? A cross — some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Moslem half moon and star?

MR. ELIASBERG: Well, Justice Scalia, if I may go to your first point. The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew. (Laughter.)

MR. ELIASBERG: So it is the most common symbol to honor Christians.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.

MR. ELIASBERG: Well, my — the point of my — point here is to say that there is a reason the Jewish war veterans came in and said we don’t feel honored by this cross. This cross can’t honor us because it is a religious symbol of another religion.

Consider the implications of a Supreme Court Justice actually arguing that the Christian cross represents all Americans! As if it were identical to our national flag or otherwise served as some sort of universal symbol!

This isn’t to say, of course, that a justice on the Supreme Court must be a nonbeliever in order to respect and promote the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. As Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has documented, Justice Stevens, a protestant, has been one of the nation’s greatest friends to religious freedom and the separation of religion from government.

But with this new vacancy coming up on the court, isn’t it time, as Marc Cooper argues, to ensure that the large number of American nonbelievers are represented? Isn’t it time to install a voice for reason and secular judgment on one of the most powerful institutions in the United States? Isn’t it time for President Obama to nominate a nonbeliever?

I know, I know…I’m not going to hold my breath. But times are changing and the power of atheists, humanists, and other nonbelievers is growing. We’ll get there. In the meantime, happy National Day of Reason!

Today the Los Angeles Times contained an opinion piece by Neal Gabler, a biographer of Ted Kennedy, titled “Politics as religion in America.” In the piece Gabler argues that segments of the right have become dogmatic and zealous in their political beliefs.

According to Gabler,

For centuries, American democracy as a process of conflict resolution has been based on give-and-take; negotiation; compromise; the acceptance of the fact that the majority rules, with respect for minority rights; and, above all, on an agreement to abide by the results of a majority vote. It takes compromise, even defeat, in stride because it is a fluid system. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once put it, the beauty of a democracy is that the minority always has the possibility of becoming the majority.

Religious fundamentalism, on the other hand, rests on immutable truths that cannot be negotiated, compromised or changed. In this, it is diametrically opposed to liberal democracy as we have practiced it in America. Democrats of every political stripe may defend democracy to the death, but very few would defend individual policies to the death. You don’t wage bloody crusades for banking regulation or the minimum wage or even healthcare reform. When politics becomes religion, however, policy too becomes a matter of life and death.

Gabler concludes by opining that “for the political fundamentalists, this isn’t political jousting, this is Armageddon. With stakes like that, they will not lose, and there is nothing democrats — small ‘d’ and capital “D” — can do about it.”

Drivel. Gabler’s argument rests on two assumptions that are simply without merit. First, he assumes that the right is unique in this “political fundamentalism”; he is wrong. Second, he believes that “political fundamentalism” is something new; it’s not.

“Political Fundamentalism” is a vague term. For Gabler it seems to refer to political beliefs that are held with religious fervor. Insofar as one truly holds a religious belief—so let’s exclude many people of faith who are, for lack of a better description, hypocritical—it inherently taints one’s political beliefs. Take Christianity as an example. The Gospels (in the broad sense of the term, the Good News) are political in nature. Jesus walked with lepers, prostitutes, and other outcasts. But most importantly, to me at least, he taught that “the poor would be poor no more” (this is a line I heard Sister Helen Prejean say at a book talk and have never forgotten). These are political messages, challenging the castes of the age and promising a better world for the downtrodden. While this isn’t directly related to health care (although he did heal), taxation (although tithes are still compulsory in countries with state-supported churches), or the place of the state (although the Romans did adopt Christianity and states made war in the name of it), Jesus was reshaping the polity; and it is undeniable that he was successful in that endeavor, even if the results were arguably malign.

While I interpret Christianity, as do many, as requiring certain benevolent political viewpoints, I realize Gabler’s issue is not with the religious, but with those for whom politics becomes like faith. But Gabler never defines how large this group is, names a single member, or anything else; we just know that they are the fringe right. But is there not a fringe left as well? Good luck convincing a Wobblie that capitalism is anything but an evil that must be opposed even at the cost of life. Has the Animal Liberation Front not violently destroyed property and life in the name of animal rights? No matter how reasonable one argues, you will never convince half of Hollywood that the Republican Party is anything but a blight to be fought with all one’s resources.

Furthermore, such virulent political stances are as old as the United States itself. America is born out of the Sons of Liberty, and the Declaration of Independence was signed despite the fact that Britain had shown a willingness to compromise and backed down on many of the taxes. Lincoln was shot over politics, as was Alexander Hamilton. You couldn’t compromise with McCarthy, Malcolm X, or Ross Perot. Martin Luther King held his political beliefs so zealously he even had the gumption to attribute them to God.

No, Mr. Gabler, you have provided no insight into the current political discourse. What we have seen in the last decade was the over-reach stage of conservatism. Liberalism had its stage too, think of the 1968 protests in Chicago. Many of the hardcore and uncompromising members of Congress have lost their seats, Gingrich is gone, and 2006 was a “thumpin’” for republicans.  Relax Neal, it’s just politics.

Monday’s LATimes contained an interesting piece on the Bald Eagle. In essence, many Indian tribes have religious practices, such as the Sun Dance, that require Bald Eagle… ahem…parts. The Bald Eagle is a protected species—even more so than other listed species due to a special act of Congress—and so an obvious tension emerges; how can the federal government protect the animal while simultaneously protecting the religious rights of native Americans?

Currently, the federal government runs a depository of dead birds and has a licensing program. The licensing program has been plagued with problems—many people are apparently unaware of it—and the depository has a long waiting list for many Eagle parts. To avoid long waits, some Indians occasionally shoot birds without a license and find themselves fugitives as result of their religious beliefs.

Larger than the Indian issue, this does raise some moral and political questions for those of us who avow a separation and church and state. I think many people would agree the Indians have a right to these birds; Indians have been hunting and shooting the birds since before the Europeans arrived. Simultaneously, government has an interest in protecting all endangered species. How do we rectify these conflicting priorities?

We could make like the soviets and just outlaw religion. Problem solved. But, of course, that’s absurd. On the opposite end of the spectrum we could say any religious belief is a right, but that’s a slippery slope. The government would then be in the business of defining what is and isn’t a religion (granted they already do this for tax purposes but look at the fight it causes over things like Scientology). Also, someone could have some insane beliefs that direct them, for example, to extinguish a species that is the devil incarnate or to practice human sacrifice. Do we really want to play an even worse version of the snake-handler game?

Obviously, then, the answer lies somewhere between these two extremes. At some degree between zero and 180 is where we have been situated throughout history. The attempt to move the needle slightly one way is why groups like that AHA exist. Even though we claim to be proponents of religious liberty we cannot sit here and seriously say all peoples with a religious need have a right to shoot Bald Eagles at will. Defining that need is the purpose of the licensing program. To eliminate that is to open a can of worms so messy as to all but sign an extinction warrant for the Bald Eagle.

The current Bald Eagle services provided to the Indians by the federal government are pretty reasonable; they are by no means perfect, but the only other option I can see is to farm raise the birds. We do it with fish, why not birds? Is it even feasible, or will it devolve into the shame that is poultry production? Does a farm-raised bird even have the same essence as a wild one? Is that better, is that worse?

File this story from Florida under “you can’t make this stuff up.” Except, apparently in this case, they could (h/t to Friendly Atheist):

A Hillsborough public policy group whose Christian platform included a push for a state ban on gay marriage has embraced a new attack on an old target: the separation of church and state.

Ten billboard advertisements against what activist Terry Kemple called the separation “lie” are being put up across Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Seven or eight of the billboard messages already are in place, and the rest will be by the end of this week, Kemple said.

What do the billboards say? They have quotes from our founding fathers, of course, each explaining why we shouldn’t separate religion from government. For example, the photo included with the article shows a billboard, black with white text, that says, ‘”Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle” – George Washington.’

Apparently, though, there is a dearth of anti-separation quotes by the founding fathers — the billboard sponsors admit that some of the quotes that they use are completely fabricated!

Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”

“I don’t believe there’s a document in Washington’s handwriting that has those words in that specific form,” Kemple said. “However, if you look at Washington’s quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there’s no question he could have said those exact words.”

Pardon me? Fictional attribution is a rather diplomatic way of saying that the quote is a lie. Making up a quote out of whole cloth, no matter if it’s plausible or not, and then attributing it to George Washington is a complete lie.

Certainly doesn’t put Christianity’s best foot forward, does it?

They may feel justified by some sense that their anti-separation cause is best served by lying. But I think it’s safe to say that most of us, whether we follow the Ten Commandments or secular morals, believe that lying is wrong, even for marketing purposes.

Their willingness to put lies on their billboards is ultimately a matter for their own consciences (some might say that it is between them and their respective god, which is another way of saying the same thing). Remember this, though, the next time a humanist billboard campaign is denounced for being somehow immoral — I promise you that it won’t feature fabricated quotes!

The State of Oregon’s longtime prohibition against the wearing of religious clothing or adornment by public school teachers while on duty has returned to the spotlight. Why? Because recently passed legislation, the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act (PDF), now guarantees the right of every Oregon state employee to wear religious garb or accessories while on the job, with the notable exception of public school teachers, who will continue to be prohibited from doing so.

There has already been an outcry from a variety of religious organizations against the continuation of the ban for teachers. Organizations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund have objected strongly and are asking that the ban be rescinded.

Why would such a ban be necessary? The Oregonian newspaper quotes a spokesperson for the state Department of Education explaining it like this:

“The underlying policy reflects the unique position that teachers occupy,” said Jake Weigler, spokesman for the state Department of Education. “In this case, the concern that a public school teacher would be imparting religious values to their students outweighs that teacher’s right to free expression.”

Is this true? Would students be influenced by a teacher who is wearing a turban, hijab, yarmulke, or a Christian cross while teaching? Is it reasonable for the state to protect students from such influence by prohibiting personal religious expression by teachers?

I don’t believe that it is. While any given student will most likely take note of a teacher’s religious adornment or clothing, this presents an opportunity to learn about religious diversity and pluralism in the United States and around the world. There are right ways and wrong ways to deal with religion in the classroom, and while teachers should always be prohibited from proselytizing to their captive audience of students, nevertheless they do not have an obligation to check their personal identity at the door of the classroom. Indeed, the religious and cultural identity of a teacher can present a learning opportunity for students if it is handled the right way.

I believe that an important part of professional behavior for teachers is ensuring that his or her own personal life does not become too big a part of the discussion in the classroom. But nevertheless, classes are not taught by robots who must present a neutral identity. Religious identity, including personal adornment, is an important part of a person’s identity, and it’s not helpful to make teachers pretend as though their personal religious beliefs don’t exist while they are on duty. This is a far cry from the more reasonable requirement that teachers must always respect the rights of their students by refraining from inappropriate religious content in lessons and activities.

In addition, this prohibition overall doesn’t pass First Amendment muster. State institutions are prohibited from adopting a religious identity or favoring one certain religion over another. However, this prohibition should not extend to the passive religious expression of state employees. This is reflected in the fact that the new legislation reinforces the protection of religious expression for Oregon state employees in every sector other than the public school classroom. But I fail to see how public schools should be a special case.

The Oregon state legislature should rescind this ban and create much less stringent regulations that respect the First Amendment rights of teachers. Having teachers from different religious backgrounds could provide valuable lessons in diversity and pluralism for Oregon students. Otherwise the state is attempting to smooth over religious differences by pretending that they don’t exist.

I recently attended a panel discussion at the Capitol on the Sotomayor confirmation. The event was chaired by Sammie Moshenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women.

The first speaker was J. Brent Walker, director of the Baptist Joint Committee, who noted that the First Amendment contains two clauses: establishment and free exercise. Historically, he argues, both clauses have been read quite broadly. This has begun to change; whereas historically government has been forbidden from touching religion in anyway, today government must simply treat religion as it would any other group. So, government can use money to provide services through religious groups and can issue education vouchers. Walker argues that Sonia Sotomayor has, in the past, espoused a rather broad view of these clauses. That said, it would be tough for her or basically any candidate to fill David Souter’s shoes in terms of taking a broad view.

The second speaker, Melissa Rogers of Wake Forest University, picked up where Walker left off and argued what is important in a judge is that he or she understands it is the individual who counts, not the established church. To draw the point out, a person who takes some tiny facet of their religion such as a feast or some beads very seriously is as entitled to those markings of their faith as a Christian is to the cross. Their belief need not be reasonable or mainstream, simply deeply held. In the past Sotomayor has adequately upheld this doctrine.

The third and final speaker was Richard Katskee, assistant legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Katskee argues that church/state separation issues come down to essentially three facets: where a display is allowed, who has standing to sue, and whether the government can fund. Sotomayor has ruled in two cases affecting standing and display. In both the Flamer and Mehdi case she has upheld precedent set by the higher courts and many argue ruled correctly even if the outcome was less than desirable. As for funding, no case that has come before her has given the opportunity for her views to come out.

The Baptist Joint Committee recently released an analysis of Sotomayor’s decisions. They come to the same conclusion the speakers did: “Sotomayor’s written record raises no red flags.” She has ruled on very few free exercise cases and no establishment clause cases. Her “writings include few, if any, statements articulating how the First Amendment protects religious liberty, promotes the voluntary nature of religion, prevents governmental interference in religion, and tends to reduce conflict among religions.”

Confirmation hearings begin July 13^th.

Faith Complex, a production of Georgetown University, recently released an interview covering the history and role of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

When Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, there was a small provision known as charitable choice embedded in the law. In essence, charitable choice makes federal grant money available to religious groups so long as the money is used purely for secular purposes. Despite safeguards eliminating the most flagrant violations of the separation of church and state, charitable choice proves to be one big can of worms.

Let’s make up a hypothetical group, Buddhists for a Greater Jacksonville (BGJ), to help illuminate the problems with charitable choice. BGJ raises one million dollars a year, and spends $750,000 sheltering homeless and $250,000 spreading Buddhism. They then apply for a grant through Health and Human Services and receive a $500,000 annual grant to expand and continue the shelter. They do so and spend a million on their shelter. But, because BGJ now has an income of 1.5 million, they can spend $500,000 spreading Buddhism. So what does this mean? That the government has indirectly supported proselytizing.

Charitable choice does have benefits. In rural places, such as small-town Texas, the only organization in town may very well be the local church. In such a case, it makes a lot of sense for the church to send a person to check on that elderly man at the end of the dirt road. Charitable choice makes that possible.

To aid groups such as the local church in small-town Texas, then-Governor Bush set up an office to direct these groups to the correct grant making authorities. When he came to the White House he did the same; and soon after, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was born.

During Barack Obama’s campaign for President, Obama pledged to expand and strengthen the office. After his inauguration he did just that and renamed it The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. While Bush’s faith-based office was rather weak, Obama’s is to serve as a policy advisory council.

The role of the faith-based office is somewhat ambiguous, insipid, and inane. The office is charged with supporting responsible parenting and fostering interfaith dialogue, whatever. Oh, and decreasing demand for abortions… what?!? The office, with its attached advisory council, is one of several offices within the White House charged with creating a consensus policy decreasing the need for abortion across America.

Having a faith-based advisor in the abortion debate is a little troubling, but I understand the practical efficacy of it; to reach a consensus you must have those who object at the table. More troubling, however, is something our hypothetical group BGJ can, and has been able to, do since the dawn of charitable choice. When hiring employees to manage their federally subsidized shelter, BGJ can discriminate on the basis of religion, an unheard of precedent. Obama will neither endorse nor change the policy of discrimination, instead he claims issues will be considered on a case-by-case basis. In real terms, case-by-case basis means unless someone objects discrimination is kosher. I object. Thoughts?

A Religious Right legal organization has a message for county employees in Iowa: if you don’t like same-sex marriage, then don’t do your job! From the Iowa Independent.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a legal advocacy group founded in 1994 by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the late Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, sent an e-mail to each of Iowa’s county recorders asking them to tell their staff that they “shall not be required to issue or process a marriage license, or to perform, assist or participate in such procedures, against that individual’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

They’re asking county recorders to defy the recent Iowa State Supreme Court ruling that enforces marriage equality, with ADF Senior Legal Counsel Doug Napier saying, “Government employees who believe in marriage as the union of one man and one woman should not be penalized for abiding by their beliefs.”

See a problem with this reasoning? The First Amendment guarantees your freedom to believe and worship as you wish without government interference. But I’ve said it here before, and it’s worth repeating: religious freedom does not mean the freedom to not do your job. Some beliefs can be accommodated in the workplace, others cannot; if your job is to issue marriage licenses, your desire to issue them only to certain types of people is discriminatory and cannot be accommodated.

The State Attorney General sees it that way:

Attorney General Tom Miller has repeatedly warned county recorders that they do not have the authority to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, and “recorders do not have discretion or power to ignore the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling,” Miller said.

Can you imagine what life in the United States would be like if government employees could ignore court rulings at will? What if a school principal tried to ignore Brown v. the Board of Education because desegregation would supposedly be against his or her conscience? What if county recorders simply refused to issue marriage licenses to nonreligious or interracial couples? What if a Catholic county recorder refused to issue marriage licenses to divorcees?

We can’t go down that road. The government can’t step in and force you to believe or not believe something. But when you’re on the clock, you do your job. Any county recorder or staff member in Iowa that refuses to abide by the Supreme Court ruling should be fired.