Separation of Church and State: A brief analysis

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..or abridging the freedom of speech….." Thomas Jefferson coined this…and, it is the sound bite of the Establishment Clause to the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“Separation of Church and State” though itself, not a phrase that exists in our Constitution, is a hallmark of the American system of government…it is never far away from today’s political theatre….it is sometimes front row center…sometimes a bit further away in the discussion….but never too far from the stage, always lurking; such is the colossal role that religion plays in our relatively young Republic.

Of our 45 U.S. Presidents, only Jefferson and Lincoln had no formal religious affiliation---every other President has been a Christian of one range or another…

I don't mention this to show any favoritism towards Christianity whatsoever...just to give some historical context. It goes without saying that an atheist or agnostic could not be elected President.

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Perhaps ironically, it was Thomas Jefferson, someone with no religious affiliation, who is most responsible for framing the language in the Establishment clause of the First Amendment….

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise of it”.

The first question, I feel, should be to define what is, in fact, a religion.

The Supreme Court has interpreted religion to mean:

“a sincere and meaningful belief that occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to the place held by God in the lives of other persons. The religion or religious concept need not include belief in the existence of God or a supreme being to be within the scope of the First Amendment.”

Among the definitions listed by Webster regarding the term “religion” is:

“a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.”

Well then….if strongly held beliefs are also considered “religious” beliefs, then why wouldn’t “Veganism”, “Republicanism”, or Nazism, or the KKK, or Nihilism or White Nationalism or Capitalism, etc., also fall under “religion”. To grant a "God" based “religion” a special right that we don’t grant other ideologies would appear to be violating the First Amendment. Furthermore, how can the government say what are important ideas and what are less important ideas (to the individual)....

The Government should be “color blind” as Justice Harlan said in a famous dissent in Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896…well, it should also be “ideologically” blind if it wants to honor the First Amendment.

The Government is not in the business of rating what ideas are more important or “sacred” than other ideas. It should, however, be observant of ideas that are antithetical to American values. Ideas like misogyny, homophobia, opposition to free speech, and institutionalized intolerance should all be among those ideas that our Government finds repugnant and a threat to contemporary American values.

It would seem to me that Government should not even attempt to interpret the term, religion….because by interpreting it…you are “respecting” it in a sense…you are granting it dispensation…The Constitution doesn’t mention my right to play a musical instrument …or to stare into space…so why should it have a position on my ideology (unless it is threatening to American values).

To me, it seems pretty clear that the framers meant to give no dispensation whatsoever to religion…this means that the Government doesn’t promote it nor do they prohibit it…it should be similar to the way the Government feels about Asparagus; it will protect your right to eat it if you want but it otherwise could care less.

The concept being echoed by a large chunk of our society of late is that we need to respect another person’s "religion"…we need to give it special space…we should not even judge it. Ironically it is the liberals in society who are the strongest advocates of respecting everyone’s “religion”. I can understand that principle when applied to a race….but a religion is not that...it is a set of ideas…..and like all ideas they are subject to public scrutiny. We should be able to have opinions and criticize bad ideas. We certainly have no problem judging ideologies like Nazism, or racism, or homophobia, or misogyny, etc., yet, like a burrito, if you wrap it in the term “religion”, somehow being able to criticize those ideas is forbidden. Liberals in America are telling us that we should accept all "religions”. We certainly wouldn’t expect liberals to refrain from judging a group of people whose ideology is to oppose abortion rights, or to keep women in a subordinate role in society, or to punish those who would paint a cartoon of someone else’s “God”.….those ideologies would be highly judged by “liberals”. Why the double standard?

Why does the term “religion” mean that you are immunized from being looked at critically? It’s imperative in a free society to denounce ideas that are threatening to freedom….liberals are very intolerant of homophobia and misogyny and threats to free speech, and rightly so, but strangely they are quite tolerant of a "religion" that espouses all of these abhorrent things. We wouldn’t want our society to be more homophobic, less tolerant, more misogynistic…but that is what happens when people who have an institutionally enforced ideology go unchallenged, and make up larger swaths of our general population---our society then becomes less tolerant. How would liberals feel about a group of people who believed in sacrificing domestic pets?

Ask yourself, how would you feel about the Mormons if they started imposing restrictions on what the women in their “religion” could wear? What if they were forced to wear a Mormon version of a Burqa? And, what if significant numbers of Mormons were killing and raping in the name of their God, and there were many other Mormons who weren’t doing the raping and killing but they were sympathetic to it…and what if the writing in the Book of Mormon actually supported this raping and killing though most Mormons refused to carry it out themselves?

In fairness, the Old Testament of the Bible is very objectionable and violent, and homophobic, and intolerant, etc.. The pertinent difference between Christianity, Judaism..... and Islam is that for at least the last half century Christians and Jews have not been observing any of these directives. Perhaps the most disturbing difference is that Islam claims you at birth..if your parents are Muslim then you, at birth, are coerced into being Muslim. You have no choice in the matter and if you renounce your commitment to Islam you are described by the Koran as an infidel and you can be punished...sometimes by death. For example, in a

2013 Pew Research Center report, 88% of Muslims in Egypt and
62% of Muslims in Pakistan favor the death penalty for people who leave
the Muslim religion.

That is coercion, with the punishment being death. That is oppression, and emotional and intellectual imprisonment. It should be highly objectionable to everyone who believes in freedom and civil rights.

How would we feel if Jews or Christians or Vegans similarly favored the death penalty for people who abandoned that ideology? Imagine if you were considered KKK at birth (you had no choice) and if you renounced it a significant majority of people in your country felt that you should be put to death. We wouldn't carry signs on behalf of these groups.

No, these are horrible, prehistoric, ideas that should be criticized in the public arena. If you are silent to the oppressive hand of Islam then you are part of the problem. Perhaps it's time to let go of the "sheep's clothing" that often surrounds religions and that grants them unchecked immunity.

Europe is enduring a very different fate than presently confronts those in the United States….it’s very delicate in Europe. As the numbers of muslims in western European countries grows, there is an increased risk. In a poll taken in August 2014 and published in Newsweek it said that 16% of French citizens polled are sympathetic to ISIS. How would you, as Americans, feel if 1 in 6 Americans was sympathetic to ISIS? That should disturb all of us who believe in civility and tolerance….and human life.

Let’s just look at reputable polls taken in England….these are facts, statistics;

23% of British Muslims said Islamic Sharia law should replace British law in areas with large Muslim populations. That is 1 in 4 muslims in the UK...that is not a fringe....

On social issues, 52% of the Muslims in England surveyed said they believe homosexuality should be illegal, compared to 22% of non-Muslim Britons. Nearly half believe it is unacceptable for a gay or lesbian to teach their children. At the same time, almost a third (31%) of British Muslims think polygamy should be legalized. Among 18-to-24-year-olds, 35% think it is acceptable to have more than one wife. They didn't make this stuff up....it comes from the Koran, or the Hadith.

39% of Muslims surveyed believe women should always obey their husbands, compared to 5% for non-Muslims. One in three British Muslims refuse completely to condemn the stoning of women accused of adultery.

Imagine if 25% of the people living in your neighborhood believed in "Mercy" killings...

Of the British Muslims surveyed, 35% believe Jewish people have too much power in the UK, compared to 8% of non-Muslims.

These are statistics from Muslims living in a very open society like England….these statistics are available by the highly reputable Pew Research that polled every Muslim country in 2013. The results are very unsettling

www.PewResearch.org

If you are a liberal who believes in free speech and civil rights then support and defend those principles whenever you see them violated.

On Friday Bill Maher said on his show, "Real Time" that: “In a lab you couldn’t create an idea that would be more opposed by liberals” yet, for some reason, liberals see Islam as sympathetic. Refugees should be sympathetic. Children should be sympathetic…not bad ideas.

Liberals see a woman in a hijab or a burqa and they celebrate it….would they also celebrate a Chinese girl or women whose feet were bound so they were crippled in order to please the men in society. That practice went on in China for centuries until it was stopped in the early 20th century; No doubt due to criticism. Would they also celebrate a woman who had been circumcised, who had her vagina sewn almost completely closed when she was 8 years old in order to make her more pure for men?.. Those were (and are) strongly held cultural beliefs that were/are adhered to for centuries. They are “religious” beliefs.

If you are in support of liberal principles then you should abhor these ghastly ideologies that oppress women and punish speech that criticizes Allah, and believes in strong punishment for homosexuals, infidels, adulterers, etc.. Embrace immigrants…and that goes without saying, but be wary of ideologies that are enforced at birth via brainwashing and that require wearing religiously or culturally enforced costumes and conforming to behavioral morays.

As a government…we shouldn’t be in bed with religions (as per the First amendment)…instead, we should be aligned with American values of tolerance, equal rights, freedom of speech, etc…we should uphold American values at all costs…even, and especially, if it means opposing ideologies that would threaten American values….because, if enough people are in our society who don’t believe in American values…then American values are up for grabs….

By doing this we are showing respect for women, and gays and lesbians, and free speech.... NOT an ideology that is 1300 years old born of a warlord who took sex slaves.

In closing…let me say that I feel it is imperative that we treat all Muslims with respect…Muslims who are here should always be treated with kindness, but…Islam, the ideology, does not deserve our respect in a free society…for that matter, we are under no burden to respect any ideology….Scientology, Nihilism, Mormonism, etc…..we should respect people…not bad ideas….and certainly not oppressive and dangerously intolerant ideas….

my opinions.....