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Reactions from irate members of the public, which seemed to dominate the news coverage, were along the lines of "This is a religious country", "If you're opposed to the Pledge you're either anti-God or anti-American", and so on.President Bush said the ruling was "wrong". Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott called it "ridiculous".
This is one of those things that really annoys me. People do not understand what separation of church and state means. It annoys me especially because the public is so uneducated that there is no chance that most people will ever understand the issue here.
But that's only the specific issue in this case. In a larger sense, people do not understand the Bill of Rights. In the most general sense, people do not understand that other people have a right to their beliefs even if they are different. Some people even think that there is never a distinction between fact and their own beliefs, and that no beliefs other than their own can possibly have any validity. (My father was often such a person, and perhaps because of that it is a particularly sore point with me.)I recall hearing about a "man-in-the-street" survey, as they were called at that time, which involved showing the Bill of Rights to Americans in America and asking what they thought of it. Most people did not recognize it, and most of them said it looked like a Communist document and that if they had the chance they would vote against it.
Some of our leaders apparently have no deeper understanding of it. To be fair, some of them may understand it but want to get reelected and know that their constituents aren't interested in fine points. For them, life is simple: I believe in God, so if you don't like honoring God in government, there is something wrong with you. They seem to think that making no mention of God is the same as making statements opposed to religion.
To me, life seems equally simple: I support the doctrine of separation of church and state which the Supreme Court has fleshed out from the First Amendment prohibition against laws with respect to any establishment of religion. I believe that according to that doctrine, the government should be silent on the subject of religion, or should treat all religious beliefs equally, including atheism. People are free to make religious statements outside of the public sector, such as in a house of worship, private club, their own homes, etc.
The argument is often made that this is a religious country, a Judeo-Christian country, or even a Christian country. That is beside the point. The government is prohibited from taking a position on religion. Even if every last person in the country were Christian, it would make no difference. Protection of the rights of minorities is a principle and would not go away just because at a particular moment no minority happened to be represented in the population.
An especially interesting argument is that the rights of minorities are not threatened just because the government mentions God. I once saw Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy talking about the Constitution with a group of high school students for an hour on PBS. He asked them why they thought it was unconstitutional for the government to take a position that seemed to support some group. I don't remember what group it was. Maybe it was white people. In fact it's really just as well that I don't remember, because the argument is the same in any case. The students all agreed that it was wrong for the government to do it but had a lot of trouble saying exactly why. Eventually one student suggested that it was simply that it would make you feel bad if you were not in that group. Kennedy said that was exactly right: The government is in a unique position because of the power we grant it over us, and it must treat everyone equally. He expanded on that. As I recall, the essence was that for the government to prefer one group over another hurts some of its citizens. In my opinion, it is the first step toward unofficial adoption of the government's preference by the society at large, which if unchecked can lead to official institutionalization of the preference and eventually to worse things than that.
Another argument is that the Founders were religious, or that they did not mean to exclude religion from government. Much weight is often put on what the Founders meant. However, they also put slavery in the Constitution. Today it is hard to find a person who will openly defend what they must have meant by that.
As the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about this case in March, 2004, the New York Times published this op-ed piece that describes how the Founders considered keeping religion out of government.
Some religious people believe that religion is good for you, or even necessary for your soul, and therefore that it should be made official by the government. That is not only unconstitutional, it is also unnecessary. No matter how axiomatic particular religious beliefs may feel to someone, different beliefs are equally axiomatic to other people. It would be like saying that vegetarianism is good for you and should therefore be incorporated into government policy. Right about here, perhaps some people who think vegetarianism is not for them will start to understand.
Most people seem to fail to understand that the Bill of Rights is intended to protect them. Although democracy in America means majority rule, it does not mean that only the majority has rights or is heard. In fact, an important function of government is to protect those not in the majority. After the ruling was announced, an atheist pointed out that if atheists were the majority in America and the Pledge were changed to say "one nation, not under God", the same people who think "under God" should be in there would think that "not under God" should be removed. Why? Because it conflicts with their beliefs.
That leads me to think that this is not really about God. People just want their own beliefs to be official. In this case, it happens to be about God.
As for me, I was not old enough to follow politics when "under God" was inserted in 1954. Obviously I think it was a mistake to insert it. See The Strange Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Some people may argue that the government does make laws with respect to religion, and that therefore the separation of church and state is not absolute but is interpreted for the convenience of whoever is doing the interpreting. For example:
I'm not sure about this, but I think the reason for not taxing religions is actually to increase religious freedom rather than to make a religious statement: If a religious establishment could not afford to pay taxes required by law, it would only be fair for the government to treat it like every other organization and take some action against it. By eliminating the tax, the government eliminates the issue and avoids ever being in the position of having to take an action against any religious establishment.
The theory is presumably that protecting the lives of minors is a fundamental and overriding responsibility of the state. A religious person might argue that failure of the government to mention God in school threatens minors, who are required by law to go to school, because if they do not believe in a certain God in a certain way their souls will be lost, and therefore the state must protect the souls of minors. I think that lives of minors are nearly universally accepted in America as government business but souls are not. I also think that the silence of the government does not argue against religion (although it does fail to promote it, which is different), and that everyone is free to teach and practice religion outside of the public sector, up to the point where it violates fundamental and overriding responsibilities of the state.The tricky issue here, obviously, is determining what is a fundamental and overriding responsibility of the state. To pick just one example, Americans can not legally claim that paying personal income tax is against their religious beliefs.
I'm singling that one out because it may look the same as the personal income tax issue (some laws clearly conflict with religious practice and the law wins), but the difference here is that it is not clear to me how the number of spouses one has is of fundamental interest to the state. There are many laws about marriage, and they would have to be modified if having more than one spouse were legalized, and that would be a nuisance for the legislatures, but that does not make it a fundamental issue. One would have to make a case that having more than one spouse is a fundamental threat to our society or government, or to the lives, property, or freedom of our citizens, and I am not convinced that that case has been made.
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Copyright � 2003 Alan Winson |
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