Talking turkey about religious freedom

A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News Nov. 22, 2017 https://www.skyhinews.com/news/muftic-talking-turkey-about-religious-freedom/


Update: Dec. 5, 6, 16 2017: Supreme Court to hear the Masterpiece Cakeshop case:
http://www.newsweek.com/masterpiece-cakeshop-v-colorado-civil-rights-commission-three-things-know-730892

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-weighs-bakers-refusal-cake-gay-couple-060222755.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-temporarily-blocks-trump-rules-birth-control-204222704.html


Hopefully not forgotten  when we feast Thanksgiving   is the reason the Pilgrims risked  the dangerous passage  across the ocean . It was to find a place to practice their religion free of persecution by the English crown.  It took another 160 years before the concept of religious freedom changed from  just for protecting  the practice of the majority group’s  religion to  Constitutionally enshrined   tolerance  of all to practice their religion free  from  government  restrictions and persecution, prohibiting  the establishment of a state religion that meant the separation of church and state.  Those. provisions were incorporated in the First Amendment :“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religions, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

To reach an agreement  from the desire of colonialists to protect only their  own colony’s majorities’ religious practices to protecting everyone else’s took time and  bitter experiences. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony hung Quakers for not going along with their concept of purification.  Roger Williams left the Colony to found Rhode Island  as a result. Nearly every colony had established their state approved religion before 1776 and some, like Maryland, found themselves entangled in anti-Catholic  turmoil.

Interpretation of  the meaning of the First Amendment is constantly under pressure for revision  by conservative  religious  groups who want to expand its meaning to suit their own brand of theology, sometimes  to the detriment of others who hold  different beliefs and values. A changing  ideological makeup of the Courts will help  the religious right find success  for years to come

 In our divisive partisan times  there is a concerted  fast track effort  by  the  GOP majority Senate  to approve  young appointees  to lifetime  federal bench  positions who demonstrate  allegiance to a   very conservative  religious based  ideology with less regard of  their professional credentials  and  judicial temperament. In the last Obama administration years, the GOP Senate dragged its heels in approving Obama's nominations, leaving 159 seats (1/8 of the total) vacant for a GOP Senate to fill in 2017-2018. Last week  a GOP dominated  Senate committee gave approval  for a federal judgeship to  blogger Brett Talley,  a  highly partisan Trump administration family member  with no court trial experience and who was  declared unfit to serve  by the  American Bar Association.  With the appointment of  Judge Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court  this year  even past decisions could be in jeopardy  of revision given the tilt of the Court to the right, including the reversal of Roe v Wade and the right to same sex marriage. It is likely to happen..

Could tax payer funded vouchers be issued for students to attend religious based schools?  In Douglas County, Colorado,  an election of a school board that  advocated such  vouchers triggered  suits claiming violation of the separation of church and state,  resulting in stalled  court decisions, and a  successful counter revolution against  the voucher advocates in recent school board elections  this  November 7. Outside groups supporting vouchers  plan to continue the  legal fight.  Courts have ruled against state legislation banning Sharia law on Constitutional grounds .Federal courts overturned President Trump’s “Muslim ban” twice  as  religious discrimination.  However, with a  third revision, the ban was given  partial life by the Supreme Court  on procedural matters, but other challenges on substance remain. A Trump executive order in October permitted employers to stop insurance coverage of birth control on religious grounds. A court case to permit businesses  to refuse service  to gays  because of religious beliefs, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ,will be heard and decided by the US Supreme Court in 2018.  

Even the  the candidacy of Judge Roy Moore in Alabama reminds us of his advocacy of the public  government display of the Ten Commandments to discrimination against gays were also struck down by courts on First Amendment grounds.

While Pilgrims and Puritans came to America to practice their own brand of Christianity free of the King of England’s persecution, tolerance of others was not their purpose. It was the son of the Age of Reason, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1779 and his concepts were incorporated in the First Amendment by those who argued for separation of church and state. disestablishment of state churches and protection of religious freedom.

For those who argue our country was founded on Christianity, that this is a Christian nation,  it  may have been  so at the beginning, but it was not  ultimately reflected in our Constitution.  It was the Age of Reason that was the non-religious, non sectarian view which prevailed in the First Amendment.  The new nation  reflected  Judeo-Christian values, if not a specific theology,  of the dominant  western European culture of the time.   Our founders did acknowledge that we had rights endowed to us, the people, by the Creator. Still fought by atheists is whether we are indeed “one nation under God” and much has been made that Masonic symbolism permeates our national symbols and architecture.  The model used as a form of government  by our founders mostly  was Roman. The philosophers drawn upon  in the enlightenment and age of reason  by Jefferson were Greek and their 18th century interpreters. A motivating pragmatic reason may have been the history of bloody wars and divisiveness of the Catholic-Protestant conflict that swept  England and Europe for centuries  after the Reformation, as well as the unfairness of Kings who claimed they had the divine right to govern absolutely.  By banning a state religion and providing for the separation of church and state, those bloody religious based civil wars were made less likely.

Dec. 4 2017 update.
In the recent version of the tax bill that passed out of the Senate and is on the way to conference committee, Orin Hatch sneaked in an amendment that permits tax deductions for the cost of going to a private school...any...including religious. However, for expenses parents may have to attend public school, there is no tax break. Expect this to be challenged in court.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gops-plan-to-rule-the-courts-until-2050

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0

https://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501476919/gop-strategy-paved-way-for-trump-to-nominate-supreme-court-justice

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/07/dougco-school-board-race-election-results/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/09/douglas-county-school-district-voucher-program-in-danger-after-election-2017/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/trump-rule-limits-obamacare-s-birth-control-coverage-requirement

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/10/victory-trump-supreme-court-dismisses-travel-ban-case/752401001/

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/09/12/bakers-supreme-court-case-set-tone-religious-liberty-us/

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/05/roy_moore_timeline_ten_command.html

Also, see the 9/19/17  blog posting on this site: Islamphobia Comes to Grand County.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-pilgrims/2013/11/22/9f93e822-52c1-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html

http://www.shmoop.com/church-and-state/supreme-court-school-vouchers.html

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa031700a.htm

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/21/judge-removes-block-funds-gender-reassignment/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=pushnotify&utm_medium=push

Why separation of church and state is such a treasure

My column in todays' print edition of the Sky Hi Daily News:
Some of the most precious legacies left by our country's founders are separation of church and state and the freedom to worship.

Attacks on those constitutional rights surface time and time again. Most recent examples, subject to court rulings, are a voucher movement to allow taxpayer money to pay for the tuition for students to attend faith-based schools and anti-Muslim fervor proposing laws to restrict the right to practice a certain religion.

In Colorado's Douglas County the local school board voted to offer such vouchers. Others elsewhere wanted to ban mosques in neighborhoods and there have been attempts to restrict the rights to practice the Muslim religion.

Court rulings on the matter consume case law, laying down precedents which protect that legacy, but it does not stop others contesting its meaning and application. The political right, which embraces small government and professes to be libertarian in the matter of government intrusion into personal lives, has been the most eager to pressure governments to violate that separation on both the voucher matter and anti-Muslim laws.

Various countries have approached separation of church and state differently. Through brute political force, Kemal Ataturk turned Turkey into a secular state with secular laws, banning the fez, head covers, and the veil. In the past few years, women students who covered their heads were kicked out of schools and the conflict resulted in the emergence of Islamists gaining more political power as a cultural revolution against secularism got wings.

Post-Mubarak Egypt will be shaped by the conflict between those who desire secular laws and the Muslim Brotherhood who wants an Islamic legal system. One Brotherhood pitch against secularism is that a “secular system means Egypt could allow gay marriage.” Sound familiar?

We often hear those who fear institution of Sharia law as the law of the U.S. point to England which set up Sharia courts to resolve civil issues between mosques. In England, there is no separation of church and state: There is an official religion. It is the Church of England. English history is full of strife between official religions practiced by their monarchs and the religion of their opponents. It was in that frame of reference our founders included separation of church and state in the bill of rights. Contemporary Britain dealing with diverse immigration now has a practice of tolerance applied to all. 

The French follow the secular model of Ataturk, banning the wearing of garb (including headscarves) and any symbols of any religion in public schools. The anger of the Muslim minority added to the frustration of discrimination flared up into scenes reminiscent of Watts during the '60s.

Here is the beauty of the American system that sets us apart and, so long as we uphold our system separating church and state, why some of those kinds of conflicts are less likely to happen here.

The U.S. system does not follow any of these models. Both Constitutional amendments protecting free speech and separation of church and state have taken some causes of conflict off the table. If a person wants to wear a headscarf, a Burka, a yarmulke, a ruffled cap, side curls, saffron robes, a turban, a cross, or a Star of David, one can in our America. Likewise no U.S. government can require anyone to subscribe to a religion. Taxpayer-supported vouchers to underwrite tuition to attend a faith-based school have been interpreted as government support of religion, violating the constitution's prohibition against government's establishment of official religions.

If an exception to these rights is made for one religion, the legal precedent would be established to allow for other exceptions in the future. So long as we uphold these constitutional rights to practice a religion freely, to strictly observe this sacred separation of church and state, forced adherence to certain religious laws or canons will not have a prayer in the U.S. of A.