APRES CA, LE DELUGE

In what supporters have called a "major psychic boost to the school choice movement," the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a voucher program that allows tax money to pay for private religious education. Though a lower court had previously ruled that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was unconstitutional (a decision upheld at the appellate level), the state's highest judicial body overturned (4-2) that position, stating that the program simply "places on equal footing options of public and private school choice and vests power in the hands of parents to choose where to direct funds allocated for the children's benefit." Based on the quaint egalitarian notion that poor parents should have the same options in educating their children in private schools as do affluent parents, the Milwaukee plan provides vouchers worth about $5,000 to the children of families near the poverty level. Prior to the June decision, those vouchers were good only at non-religious private schools. Now, however, the money can go toward everything from Catholic to Adventist to Wiccan education. Opponents want to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps not the smartest move on their part. After all, even if the High Court will hear the case, long gone are the halcyon days when strict separationists would argue their cases before the likes of Justices Warren, Marshall, Brennan, Black and so forth. Today they'll stand before Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, which means that more than likely the anti-voucher lobby will get judicially clobbered. If so, then a case that now directly affects only one state could establish principles applicable to all 50. Perhaps, in the interest of their cause, they ought to cut their loses and run.

CORPUS CHRISTI

"Censorship" is such an easy word to invoke these days, especially in America, where it has been pulled, stretched, elongated, and distended to fit so many different positions, sizes, and circumstances that it has hardly retained any meaningful vigor or recognizable shape. Censorship used to mean something important, and often what it meant was the government–with the force of law (everything from fines to gaol)–stopping people from expressing certain views, or punishing those who expressed them. Once fraught with such meaty and weighty moral and political connotations–the term has been so defined down that even free market pressures which could cause someone to not express certain views is suddenly "censorship." In other words, if a publisher decides not to publish a manuscript because it might offend, or might not even sell–this is now covered under the increasingly distended term of "censorship."

An example of how the word has been turned into silly putty is the brouhaha over the play Corpus Christi, ("Body of Christ"), by three-time Tony Award winner Terrence McNally. In the play, Jesus Christ is portrayed as a homosexual, the Virgin Mary as a drag queen, and the disciples, well . . . guess. "Are thou king of the queers?" Pontius Pilate asks Christ. "Thou sayest," he responds.

Surprise of surprises, but outraged Christians voiced their protests, so loudly and forcefully in fact that the Manhattan Theater Club, where the play was to make its debut, decided to cancel, a move which brought out sanctimonious and self-righteous cries of the nasty C-word from the doyens of the cultural elite. The club, spurred on by this spasm of patriotic fervor, changed its mind and then decided–in the interest of free speech, Lockean natural rights, and the fate of the free world–that the show must go on, and that it wasn't going to be the victim of censorship.

Censorship? The government didn't ban the play. The police didn't close down the theater. No one was arrested, or even threatened with arrest. The FBI didn't confiscate the manuscript. The authorities did stop Mr. McNally from writing his trash or harass him for it afterward. Instead, all that happened was the those who found the play offensive expressed their views loudly enough to make the producers think twice. This is nothing but John Stuart Mills' "market place of ideas," where people are allowed to produce blasphemous and offensive works just as much as others are allowed to express their outrage at these productions. If this is "censorship," then Jean Dixon is an astrophysicist.

It was the latter Wittgenstein who talked about "the language game," in which the meaning of words are nothing but subjective cultural constructions and social conventions. If true, then in a society where outrage against blasphemy is now "censorship" (and a play like "Corpus Christi" is "art")–the rules of the game have become so broad and distended that they're no longer rules, and the game is a free-for-all.

WHEN PRAYER IN SCHOOL WORKS

Even without the so-called Religious Equality Amendment (which met its demise in the U.S. House of Representatives), faith is alive and well in America, even in public schools, thank you. Often excoriated as religion-free zones promulgating a militant secular humanism, public schools–for all their faults–are in many places blessed by a growing number of voluntary religious clubs and groups. "Politicians may bicker," said an article in Time (April 27, 1998), "about bringing back prayer, but in fact it's already a major presence–thanks to the many after-school prayer clubs." Some estimate say that 1-in-4 public schools in the country have religious clubs, while in some areas the numbers are much higher.

Indeed, despite all the hype and rhetoric about the government and the courts trying to drive religion out of American public schools, this phenomenon of after-school voluntary prayer and religious clubs proves a premise of church-state separationists as far back and Madison and Jefferson, which is that religion works better when voluntary and without the coercive power of the state. Unlike teacher-led classroom prayer and religious exercises, where prayer and Bible reading are mandated by decree (like math) and thus worthless (does God really care about prayer and religious exercises required by law?)–what the student groups are doing on their own time, without the power of the state forcing people to attend, is what the First Amendment was designed to do, and that is allow Americans, students included, to exercise their religious rights in a manner that doesn't infringe upon the religious rights of others. Mandated prayer or religious exercises in public schools does infringe upon those rights–after-school, voluntary prayer and religious groups, where the only ones there are those who choose to be, doesn't. That's the crucial difference–a difference that the Religious Equality Amendment ignored, which is why Americans should be thankful it died the ignoble death it well deserved.

MODERN MARTYR

Of all the spurious claims by Christians about the persecution, or the denial of their religious freedom in America today–this one deserves an award. It appears that one Paul Samuel Gunning, an employee at the Quail Heights Post Office in Florida, filed suit against Marvin T. Runyon, Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service, in which Brother Gunning alleged that his free speech rights, his free exercise rights, as well as his rights under RFRA (now history) were violated. What Neronian indignity did the post office do to the newest candidate for Foxe's Book of Martyrs? It refused to broadcast a Christian radio station over the building loudspeakers though some employees asked for it. After denying the request (other employees had complained about the station), the post office turned off the radio altogether; instead, it allowed employees to wear headsets or have small radios at their works places, in which they could listen whatever they wanted, from U2 to Pat Boone. Well, Mr. Gunning, not about to allow the those pagans in the post office to trample upon his divine right to have Christian radio played over the loudspeaker during work hours, sought judicial remedy. At summary judgment, however, the court threw out the suit, saying that Mr. Gunning's religious and free speech rights were not violated by the refusal to play his favorite Christian station over the office loudspeaker. What's the only solution to this blatant act of judicial anti-religious prejudice? A constitutional amendment forcing the post office to broadcast religious radio over the loudspeaker, what else?

PRAYER VIGIL

The case of Mildred Rosario proves that advocates of legislated prayer in public schools want more than just, as they say, "voluntary," "non-sectarian" and "non-proselytizing" exercises. Rosario was fired as a teacher in New York after she led her six-grade class in prayer and then asked the children "if anyone would like to accept Jesus as their Savior." One would think that the legislated prayer-in-school folk would distance themselves from Rosario, whose action exemplifies the blatant, in-your-face religious promotion that we've been told isn't what these people want. Instead, she has become, as the New Republic said, "a martyr of the religious right." Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council asserted "We need countless teachers like this." While House Majority Whip tom Delay said: "What was wrong with bringing that kind of message to children?" Nothing, really, as long as it's the parents or someone else doing it who doesn't have the power and authority of the state behind them. The attitude toward Rosario proves what critics of the moves toward legislated prayer have been saying all along: the Christian Right wants to use the power of the secular state to do for it what it, in its spiritual poverty, can't do for itself. Kind of ironic, coming from a group who claims as their Leader someone who, for His whole ministry, shunned secular power.