Many of America's Founding Fathers, especially Jefferson, believed that education was the key to preserving our republican government. If so, one wonders how much longer the republic has when, for instance, the University of California (Santa Cruz) offers courses like "Feminist Cyborg Fiction," which includes stories about a "lesbian-of-color vampire." How secure are the foundations of freedom when Cornell students can get credit for "Radical Democratic Feminisms," which focuses on "socialist feminism, radical democratic pluralism, critical race theory and radical antiracist and anti-heterosexist multiculturalism"? Where's our republic heading when Amherst offers, "Taking Marx Seriously" (at least someone does) and students at the University of Pennsylvania can get "Vampire: The Undead"? Will the nation survive with courses like "Lesbian Personae," which explores the profound question facing every Republic: "What does it mean to read as a lesbian"?<\/p>\n
Literary critic Harold Bloom wasn't too far off when, commenting upon the intellectual and cultural shift in the Western studies, he lamented, "After gods, heroes, and humans, there remain only cyborgs."<\/p>\n
That's feminist cyborgs, mind you.<\/p>\n
JEWS, TURKS, AND INFIDELS<\/p>\n
Despite all the rhetoric about a bunch of unelected despots (i.e., the U.S. Supreme Court) running roughshod over the Constitution, last we heard the document is still dispositive, including Article Six, clause three, which reads: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Don't tell that, however, to the God-fearing saints in Texas who, in the last election, wanted to ensure that only full-blooded bona fide kosher Christians would hold public office in Galveston County. According to Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Molly Ivins, Citizens for Better Government mailed to prospective candidates a questionnaire asking things like, "Do you believe that homosexuals should be afforded the minority status equal to that afforded to minority races?" or "Do you believe that the moral and ethical character of a candidate (including what he\/she does in 'private') should be an issue?" No matter how crass, these could be considered legitimate political questions. But they also asked, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, died for the sin of man, rose the third day and presently sits at the right hand of God"?<\/p>\n
Now, the Constitution stops the government, not private citizens, from imposing a religious test for public office, so–as private citizens–these folks were within their legal rights to ask whatever they want. What the question does show, however, is what's really in the minds of the Christian Right, which–at least at the national level–has developed enough political savvy to avoid such overt expressions of its theocratic aims.<\/p>\n
Yet however immoral and crude, the attitude expressed by Citizens for Better Government merely reflects the concerns of many less enlightened 18th century Americans who wanted only Christians in the government. In one case, a Massachusetts deposition filed against the original proposal to include Article Six, clause three in the U.S. Constitution warned that if passed, the proposal would open "a door for Jews, Turks, and infidels" to run for public office.<\/p>\n
Horrors! We need only Christians in those positions . . . like Southern Baptist Bill Clinton, for example.<\/p>\n
THE ROMAN "HOLY" DAY OF MR. ROBERTSON<\/p>\n
Last year on his 700 Club, Pat Robertson, after quoting Isaiah 58–which promised a blessing for those who keep the Sabbath–explained how during his failed presidential bid, he refused to campaign on Sunday. In fact, he said that he would at times be scheduled to land somewhere at one minute before midnight on Saturday night in order not to violate the day of rest, even during the heat of a presidential campaign. "I mean," he said, "I'm gonna have a day of rest, and that's just the way it is." The only problem is that by midnight Saturday, the day of rest that Isaiah (as well as both the Old and New Testament) recognize had already long passed.<\/p>\n
First, calculating the day from midnight to midnight is a pagan Roman innovation; in Scripture, the new calendar day begins, not at midnight, but at sundown. Secondly, the Sabbath is the seventh-day, Saturday, not Sunday, the first. In fact, Sunday-keeping is another innovation that arose under the Romans. This means that the biblical day of rest commences on sundown Friday and ends sundown Saturday. So Pat, by beginning at midnight Saturday, is keeping "Sabbath" about six hours after the Sabbath ends and about 30 hour after it begins. <\/p>\n
Sorry, Pat, but to justify your position, perhaps you'd be better off quoting the Pope's recent apostolic letter in favor of Sunday-keeping (see pg ?) Dies Domini, not the prophet Isaiah.<\/p>\n
RUSSELL'S CHICKEN<\/p>\n
In his book on parallel universes, Oxford University quantum physicist David Deutsch told a story about Bertrand Russell's chicken, which represents a human being trying to understand the regularities of the universe. The chicken noticed that the farmer always came to feed it, and thus predicted that the farmer would continue to bring food every day. "Inductivists," wrote Deutsch, "think that the chicken had 'extrapolated' its observations into a theory, and that each feeding time added justification to that theory." It happened over and over again, the farmer coming to feed the chicken, with the clockwork regularity. Then one day, as usual, the farmer came, only this time, instead of feeding the fowl–he wrung its neck! So much for deducing truths from past experience.<\/p>\n
This story is somewhat like what happens with church-state jurisprudence. Over and again, the courts rule in a certain way, making one extrapolate that there's finally a coherent theory–only to have its neck wrung. Such as in Peck v. Upshur Country School Board of Education, where the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the school board did not violate the Establishment Clause by allowing private groups to "passively offer" Bibles and other religious material on school property. Despite all the court's dicta about an "open forum" and "view point discrimination" or that the Bibles were left on the table for anyone to pick up and that no one pressured students to get them, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled against attempts to promote religion or religious doctrine in public school, where students are by law forced to attend. Whether from Engle v. Vitale (1962) and Abington v. Schempp (1963) through Stone v. Graham (1980), Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) and Lee. v. Weisman (1992), the High Court has made it clear that public schools are not to be used, in any manner, no matter how supposedly passive, to promote religion. Even in Equal Access cases, the activities were after school without any kind of pressure upon students to participate.<\/p>\n
Now comes this Fourth Circuit decision that allows religious groups to set up, in public schools, a table filled with Bibles and other religious literature that will be there during the whole school day–all under the rubric of "simply lifting one forum restriction on religious speech"? Under that rationale, why shouldn't the teacher, during class time, be able to teach Jehovah's Witness theology to the students? After all, if the teacher can talk about math, science, or history, why should his or her free speech be infringed upon by not allowing eloquent discourses on the coming kingdom of Jehovah? That there's less coercion from the books being left on the table is besides the point: it's still using the power of public schools to promote religion among students. <\/p>\n
The Establishment Clause itself, but its very wording, demands that certain restriction apply to religion that don't apply to other forms of speech and action. Just as the Free Exercise Clause give religion special protections–at least until Smith (another of Russell's chickens dead)–that other actions and speech don't have, the Establishment Clause puts limits on what the government can do for religion. That's not persecution, that's not bigotry, that's not anti-Christianity–it's what's known as keeping the government from taking the responsibility that churches and parents are supposed to bear.<\/p>\n
Another question, perhaps the most important, needs to be asked: Are the good religious folk in Upshur County so weak in faith, so unable to evangelize their neighbors and friends and young folk that they need the "godless, atheistic, heathen" public schools to help them preach the gospel? Do they need the state doing for them what they–tax free–can't seem to do for themselves?<\/p>\n
And, finally, one wonders if, in the interest of free speech, how the good Christian folk in Uphsur County will react if some Latter-Day Saints roll into town and want to place on the table the book of Mormon alongside the King James Bible?<\/p>\n
Let's hope they do. The reaction will then prove that this case isn't about free speech, but about people using the government to promote certain sectarian views, and (sadly), about the government willing to oblige.
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