Month: March 2017

Obstruction or democracy?

We keep hearing TV broadcasters asking Democratic members of Congress whether their attempts to rebut the Trump Administration’s platform isn’t just the same sort of obstructionism that Republicans were accused of during the Obama Administration.

In a discussion about whether Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation would be blocked by Democrats who a) were skeptical of his record and b) were protesting the Republicans’ refusal to give President Obama’s candidate Merrick Garland a hearing, a Democratic member of Congress was asked, “Isn’t that the same sort of obstruction of justice Democrats accused the Republicans of when they wouldn’t allow Merrick Garland a hearing?”

In interviews about blocking the Republican alternative to the American Health Care Act, Democrats are repeatedly asked whether their efforts aren’t just like the Republicans voting over and over to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act.

And discussions of the travel ban on seven Muslim nations have gone the same way: “aren’t you just obstructing anything the new president wants to do?”

The list goes on. We want to just step in to say no, it’s not obstructionist to stand up for democracy, liberty, and justice for all. Those Republicans who wanted to block expanded health care, a Democratic president’s Supreme Court Justice, and our Constitution’s ban on creating religious tests were all engaged in anti-American, anti-democratic harm. Those Democrats who are now trying to block reduced health care, the fantasy that the Constitution says a President can’t nominate a new Justice in an election year, and religious discrimination are engaged in pro-American, pro-democratic good.

It’s not just member of Congress of course; college students protesting the invitation of speakers to their campuses who promote discrimination and practice hate speech have also been accused of violating the First Amendment by denying those speakers their freedom of speech. But not all speech is protected, and hate speech is certainly not. Refusing to treat someone who promotes discrimination differently than someone who does not is not protecting fairness and equality, it’s protecting hate speech, and saying it’s no different than other speech in the guise of protecting, somehow, “diversity”.

As Kate Knibbs says, “The phrase ‘ideological diversity’ is a Trojan horse designed to help bring disparaged thought onto campuses, to the media, and into vogue. It is code for granting fringe right-wing thought more credence in communities that typically reject it, and nothing more.”

Let’s not let those who would violate our Constitution tell us that by standing up for it we are being obstructionist.

Next time: back–yes, back after all–to Obama’s farewell address.

The Constitution does not protect freedom of religion

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

We all recognize this as the text of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Most of us put it into our own words as “the First Amendment protects freedom of religion.” But it does not. It protects freedom of worship, which is very different.

What the First Amendment does regarding religion is: first, it forbids our federal legislature from making any laws creating an official state religion; second, it forbids our federal legislature from preventing people from worshipping as they see fit. That’s what “free exercise” means—how you worship. Whether you go to a church, synagogue, mosque, or have a prayer room in your home, you are protected. If you wear a head covering like a yarmulke or turban as a form of worship, you are protected.

The First Amendment is all about physical forms of religious worship. It comes from a time when people would burn Catholic churches or refuse to let Jewish Americans build synagogues. It stops this, and stops schools from forbidding students to wear religious clothing.

It does not protect religion itself, or as we usually put it, religious belief. It does not protect anyone’s right to believe certain things. If one’s religion prohibits homosexuality or birth control, that is a belief, not a form of worship. Belief is not protected because belief is so amorphous. One could claim any crazy notion as a religious belief and demand that it be protected. We could say that our religion says women shouldn’t ride public transportation, or men should not be allowed to use public showers, or cats can’t be kept as pets, and we would have to be accommodated.

The Founders were wise enough not to get into religious belief. They just made a safe space for public and private physical worship.

We were glad to hear someone get this in a radio interview last week. The article starts badly, with the author saying

The question under current debate is what it means to “exercise” one’s religion.

If a football coach is not allowed to lead his team in a public prayer, or a high school valedictorian is not given permission to read a Bible passage for her graduation speech, or the owner of a private chapel is told he cannot refuse to accommodate a same-sex wedding, they might claim their religious freedom has been infringed.

The first two examples are clearly not worship. They are expressions of religious belief. Only the latter is worship, concerning what happens in a house of worship. The article continues:

One of the thorniest cases involves Catholic Charities, whose agencies long have provided adoption and foster care services to children in need, including orphans. Under Catholic doctrine, the sacrament of marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman, and Catholic adoption agencies therefore have declined to place children with same-sex couples.

Again, doctrine is belief, not worship. Marriage being between a man and woman only is a belief, not a form of worship. Doctrine cannot be protected by our federal government. The article talks many times about “freedom of religion” clashing with “freedom from discrimination”, and that’s why: when you enforce belief, you enforce discrimination because belief can reach out beyond a religion to impact others while worship can’t. Put it this way: there’s no form of Catholic worship that impacts non-Catholics because non-Catholics aren’t in Catholic churches trying to worship. But there are forms of Catholic belief that impact non-Catholics, because non-Catholics will be impacted by them without ever setting foot in a church. Gay non-Catholics will be discriminated against by anti-gay Catholics if being anti-gay (a belief) is enshrined as a form of worship, and thus given protection by the First Amendment.

“Exercising” one’s religion means worship, plain and simple, and exclusively. It’s a literal word: you exercise (move)  yourself physically to do something to worship God.

So Charles Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Center at the Newseum Institute in Washington, is completely wrong to say “We may not like the claim of conscience, but you know, we don’t judge claims of conscience on whether we like the content of the claim. We are trying to protect the right of people to do what they feel they must do according to their God. That is a very high value.”

Americans may have a “right” to do “what they feel they must do according to their God”, but only when it comes to forms of worship. One political charter, like the Constitution, could not possibly protect all “values” and all “feelings” about what is right, because they will naturally conflict. And the Constitution does not deal in feelings, but in political rights.

Now here’s where the article gets good:

…Bishop Michael Curry, leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States, said he has witnessed the persecution of Christians in other parts of the world and doesn’t see anything comparable in the United States.

“I’m not worried about my religious freedom,” Curry said. “I get up and go to church on Sunday morning, ain’t nobody stopping me. My freedom to worship is protected in this country, and that’s not going to get taken away. I have been in places where that’s been infringed. That’s not what we’re talking about.”

Curry’s reference only to “freedom to worship,” however, missed the point, according to some religious freedom advocates. They say they want the freedom to exercise their faith every day of the week, wherever they are — even if it means occasionally challenging the principle of absolute equality for all.

“We can’t use equality to just wipe out one of the [First Amendment] rights,” Carlson-Thies says, “or say you can have the right, as long as you just exercise it in church, but not out in life.”

Bishop Curry gets it! He realizes that “worship”—getting up and going to church and not being stopped—is what is protected. “My freedom to worship is protected in this country”; that is correct. We were really gratified to hear him say this.

Then to have his opponents say that having “only” freedom of worship isn’t good enough is very telling, because they come right out and say they want freedom of belief—if only for themselves. They want to “exercise their faith every day of the week”? They have that right in the Constitution. What they really want is to “challenge the principle of absolute equality for all”; that is, they only want freedom of belief for themselves. Anyone whose beliefs clash with theirs should be shut down.

To say as Carlson-Thies does, that “equality wipes out rights” would be laughable if it weren’t so dire an example of double-speak destroying our democracy. Equality is “rights”. They are one thing. Our guaranteed equal rights give us… well, equality. How can guaranteeing everyone’s equal rights destroy equality?

His final statement tells us the truth: he wants to get rid of freedom of worship (“in church”) and put in freedom of belief (“in life”). But only for himself, and his beliefs. All others that clash with his would have to be discriminated against.

We need more Currys in this country, who understand that no democratic government committed to equality of opportunity can protect freedom of belief because that is the opposite of democracy. It is anarchy. Beliefs will always clash. The federal government cannot uphold any one set of beliefs over another. If equality feels like oppression to some people, we need to help them resolve that struggle. That’s the American way.

George Washington didn’t show his tax returns

…yes, this statement was made on national television last week, in an interview that Bill Maher conducted with Trump supporter and virtual spokesman Jeffrey Lord, who answered Maher’s demand that the current president show his tax returns “as all presidents have done in my lifetime” in this way:

I totally disagree with this. I don’t think he should ever show his tax returns. We’ve had presidents in the United States from George Washington all the way through to Lyndon Johnson who never released a single tax return.

There was scattered laughter in Maher’s audience as people realized the enormity of Lord’s seeming ignorance. Income tax was not instituted in U.S. law until 1913. While an income tax was levied during the Civil War to help the U.S. pay for the war (the Revenue Act of 1862), that was an emergency measure that did not last beyond the war. The 1894 Tariff Act imposed an income tax, but Congress was still debating its constitutionality, and it was not until 1913 that the Sixteenth Amendment was passed, legalizing and instituting a national income tax.

But Lord isn’t ignorant. No, he doesn’t know about the Revenue Act of 1862 or the 1894 Tariff Act, but few Americans do, or need to. Most Americans do, however, know that the U.S. income tax does not stretch back to Washington. There are no cherished stories of Washington traveling to New York City or the new capital, Washington, DC to turn in his 1040-EZ. For Lord to bring up Washington is more than ignorant, and worse than ignorant: it’s dangerous.

Lord is dangerous because he believes the American people are stupid. He’s dangerous because he wants to drape the flag over a breach of trust with the American people. He invokes George Washington to shut people up. We’re not sure whether Lord knows there hasn’t always been income tax in the U.S., but we get the feeling he does, and said what he said to sound a) knowledgeable and b) patriotic. People who peddle you patriotism to cover lies or crimes are un-American, and the opposite of patriotic.

Is the current president hiding criminal activity by refusing to share his tax returns? We have no idea. We will not say that he is, because we don’t know, and that’s not something one should assume. But we do agree with critics that his refusal invites speculation on criminal activity—the worst-case scenario for why he won’t share them.

Those who would defend Lord’s Washington line will say that only pedantic nitpickers would focus on his “little mistake” in the timeline instead of his grand point about individual freedom. They are wrong. Because Lord used Washington in a deliberate attempt to propagandize Trump’s refusal to share his returns as patriotic. That’s the grand point.