Government, religion, and "secular" vs. "religious"

[Sonny Tufts]

The 10 commandments are a part of history and should be taught as history, particularly as part of American history

Mandating that they be displayed in every public school isn't teaching them as history.

[PAF]

The state is not establishing a religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise of one.
Nor is that state making legal distinctions based on religious beliefs.

Reading isn't your strong suit. Neither is standing on principle.

Louisiana public schools will now be required to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, following a new law signed on Wednesday by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry.

establish /ĭ-stăb′lĭsh/
transitive verb

To cause (an institution, for example) to come into existence or begin operating; found; set up.

To bring about; generate or effect.
"establish goodwill in the neighborhood."

require /rĭ-kwīr′/
transitive verb

To have as a requisite or necessity; need or depend on.

To stipulate as obligatory by authority.

To demand as obligatory or appropriate.

Louisiana Constitution
Article I: Declaration of Rights

Section 8. No law shall be enacted respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion


Referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

[Anti Federalist]

The same can be said about "displaying" q%eers in miniskirts in K-12. Would you want a law "promoting" that?

It's already being promoted.

The FBI investigates and local cops arrest parents who question it, in many places.

[Swordsmyth]

Mandating that they be displayed in every public school isn't teaching them as history.

I know, I want them taught as history too.
That wasn't a defense for posting them, I already did that.

[Swordsmyth]

Reading isn't your strong suit. Neither is standing on principle.

establish /ĭ-stăb′lĭsh/
transitive verb

To cause (an institution, for example) to come into existence or begin operating; found; set up.

To bring about; generate or effect.
"establish goodwill in the neighborhood."

require /rĭ-kwīr′/
transitive verb

To have as a requisite or necessity; need or depend on.

To stipulate as obligatory by authority.

To demand as obligatory or appropriate.

Reading isn't your strong suit.
Requiring government entities to post something is not requiring the public to do anything.
No religion is being established.

[Sonny Tufts]

The state is not establishing a religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise of one.
Nor is that state making legal distinctions based on religious beliefs.

Oh, get real. By posting a religious message based on monotheism the state is favoring monotheism over atheism, agnosticism, and polytheism. When it starts mandating messages from those faiths let me know. Better yet, let me know when a state even permits such a message.

[PAF]

Reading isn't your strong suit.
Requiring government entities to post something is not requiring the public to do anything.
No religion is being established.

Arguing with you is like arguing with Trump that spending is bad according to conservatives. Yet he outspent every president in history, including Obummer.

Believe what you want. This will be litigated. I'm sure the attorney's, good bad or indifferent know far more than you.


PS: No way in he|| you of people are going to change my mind.

[Swordsmyth]

Oh, get real. By posting a religious message based on monotheism the state is favoring monotheism over atheism, agnosticism, and polytheism. When it starts mandating messages from those faiths let me know. Better yet, let me know when a state even permits such a message.

Cry more.
There is nothing prohibiting it and it is the will of the people to defend their culture and values.
Nobody is being forced to believe.

[Swordsmyth]

Arguing with you is like arguing with Trump that spending is bad according to conservatives. Yet he outspent every president in history, including Obummer.

Believe what you want. This will be litigated. I'm sure the attorney's, good bad or indifferent know far more than you.

Trump didn't spend, Congress did.
And there is no comparison even if you were right, nothing I do is in contradiction with what I say.

You are joining the atheists, satanists, and communists in twisting words beyond their modern dictionary meaning, and far beyond their historical and contextual meaning in the Constitution in order to attack GOD's law and public virtue.

[PAF]

Cry more.
There is nothing prohibiting it and it is the will of the people to defend their culture and values.
Nobody is being forced to believe.

Spend spend spend. Who's going to pay for all of those "required" commandments to be mandatorily displayed in every school? Oh, the tax payer.

[PAF]

Trump didn't spend, Congress did.
And there is no comparison even if you were right, nothing I do is in contradiction with what I say.

You are joining the atheists, satanists, and communists in twisting words beyond their modern dictionary meaning, and far beyond their historical and contextual meaning in the Constitution in order to attack GOD's law and public virtue.

What's between my Lord God and me is my personal business. Not yours. Not some politician. Certainly not government. And I don't need any law to legislate my morality.

[oyarde]

Marxism is a religion.

Absolute and unlike Jesus no forgiveness

[Invisible Man]

If one opposes the display of virtuous things that is evil.

I don't see anyone in this thread opposing the display of the 10 Commandments.

[oyarde]

Jul 01 , 2000 Governor Frank Obannon ( D) in Indiana bill signed 3/16 went into effect allowing Ten Commandments to be posted in skools and Gov buildings. Passed representatives 90 - 6 and 40 -10 in senate, ACLU said planned to sue

[PAF]

Jul 01 , 2000 Governor Frank Obannon ( D) in Indiana bill signed 3/16 went into effect allowing Ten Commandments to be posted in skools and Gov buildings. Passed representatives 90 - 6 and 40 -10 in senate, ACLU said planned to sue

That's one of planks of the Heritage Foundation's Project2025 - Doing away with the separation of church and state. You know, the same group who wrote Obam-ney-Care for Romney. And Obama.

[Occam's Banana]

I don't think posting the ten commandments, in and of itself, rises to the level of "establishing" a state religion.

Merely posting them doesn't.

Mandating that they be posted does (or at least heavily smacks of it).

But forbidding that they be posted does, as well.

No, forbidding their posting would simply reflect government neutrality in matters of religion. Unfortunately, too many people think that the government's failure to promote their particular faith amounts to the promotion of some other ideology, which they like to call secular humanism or that it somehow violates their right of religious expression. What they fail to understand is that the law isn't required to favor their faith over all others, and that if the government must recognize their faith in some way it must recognize all faiths, an impossible task.

The belief in "government neutrality" [1] (which, if it actually existed, would be as miraculous as the wine at Cana) is every bit as "religious" in nature as the expression of any other articles of any other faiths.

It just comes from a different "sacred text" - e.g., a grade-school civics-class textbook (instead of a Talmud, Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, etc.) - and is conveyed to new generations via different "temples" - e.g., "public" schools (instead of synagogues, churches, madrasas, etc.).

Plus ça change ...



[1] Or the endorsement of the imposition of that supposed "neutrality" upon others under threat of force (in the form of either mandates or prohibitions).

[Swordsmyth]

Spend spend spend. Who's going to pay for all of those "required" commandments to be mandatorily displayed in every school? Oh, the tax payer.

About $2 for a poster?

LOL

Even the price of stone tablets would be pocket lint.
There are much better targets for cutting spending.

[Swordsmyth]

What's between my Lord God and me is my personal business. Not yours. Not some politician. Certainly not government. And I don't need any law to legislate my morality.

LOL

Nobody is legislating your morality.

[Swordsmyth]

That's one of planks of the Heritage Foundation's Project2025 - Doing away with the separation of church and state. You know, the same group who wrote Obam-ney-Care for Romney. And Obama.

Separation of Church and State in the way it has been interpreted by the left is not in the Constitution and is wrong and evil.

[PAF]

June 25, 2024


The creation of a Catholic public school violates the separation of church and state.

In a win for the separation of church and state, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma’s approval of the nation’s first religious public charter school violates the state constitution and charter-school statute, as well as the U.S. Constitution. The decision affirms what we already knew: A religious school can’t be a public school, and a public school can’t be religious.

Last year, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School applied to the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board to become a public charter school. The school, which would have been managed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, proclaimed in its application that it would carry out “the evangelizing mission of the [Catholic] Church” by fully embracing its religious teachings and incorporating those teachings “into every aspect of the School.” The school also acknowledged that it would discriminate in admissions, student discipline, and employment, as necessary to satisfy the Catholic Church’s religious doctrine, and that it would not accommodate a student’s disability if doing so would violate the school’s Catholic beliefs.

Despite warnings from the Oklahoma attorney general, education groups, and civil rights organizations that public schools—including charter schools—cannot legally teach a religious curriculum or discriminate against students and employees, the Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore’s application and entered into an agreement allowing the school to begin operating for the upcoming school year. Today, in ordering the state board to rescind its contract with St. Isidore, the Oklahoma Supreme Court sent a pointed message: Our public schools are for education, not evangelizing.

“Our public schools are for education, not evangelizing.”

The court held that charter schools, which are funded by the state, created as government entities, and expressly characterized in state law as “public schools,” are, of course, just that – public schools. As a result, the court explained, a religious public charter school violates not only the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, but also Oklahoma’s charter school law and constitution, which forbid public schools from imposing religious teachings on students. “Enforcing the St. Isidore contract would create a slippery slope and what the [state constitution’s] framers warned against—the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention,” the court stated.

The ruling comes in response to a petition filed with the Oklahoma Supreme Court by the Oklahoma attorney general, who sought to rescind the Charter School Board’s contract with St. Isidore. Although some people may be surprised that a Republican attorney general would object to the nation’s first religious public charter school, safeguarding the separation of church and state is not, and never should be, a partisan issue.

That’s why the ACLU, along with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Education Law Center, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case supporting the attorney general. Even before the attorney general filed his petition, we brought suit in Oklahoma state court on behalf of parents, faith leaders, and public-school advocates who don’t want their tax dollars used to fund a religious public school that discriminates against students and staff and promotes religious doctrine.

Church-state separation is a cornerstone of our democracy. It’s critical to preserving the right of every person to decide for themselves—without pressure from the government—which religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice. It also ensures that the government doesn’t undermine religion either by co-opting it for political purposes or rendering religious institutions dependent on the state to spread their faith. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the separation between religion and government is particularly crucial in our public schools, which, by design, freely serve all students equally regardless of religious background or preference.

St. Isidore is, and has always been, free to open as a private religious school that taxpayers would not be forced to support. It is not free, however, to assume the mantle of a public school—including all the associated legal and financial benefits—while flouting the Oklahoma and U.S. Constitutions. The Oklahoma Supreme Court recognized as much, explaining, “What St. Isidore requests from this court is beyond the fair treatment of a private religious institution receiving a generally available benefit…It is about the state’s creation and funding of a new religious institution violating the Establishment Clause.”



https://www.aclu.org/news/religious-...charter-school

[CaptUSA]

“Our public schools are for education, not evangelizing.”

Good one...

[PAF]

Good one...

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Church-state separation is a cornerstone of our democracy. It’s critical to preserving the right of every person to decide for themselves—without pressure from the government—which religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice. It also ensures that the government doesn’t undermine religion either by co-opting it for political purposes or rendering religious institutions dependent on the state to spread their faith.

I see the push to eliminate "separation of church and state" as a way to appeal to people to support and stay in public school. If folks are so inclined to raise their children morally, home school, send them to Sunday School, pull them out of public school and send them to a private school. I don't want or need another reason to pay for public indoctrination camps with my tax dollars.

[PAF]

Religious freedom is not only one of our most treasured liberties, but it is also a fundamental human right and a defining feature of our national character. Given this nation’s robust, longstanding commitment to freedom of religion and belief, it is no surprise that the United States is among the most religious and religiously diverse nations in the world. Indeed, religious liberty is alive and well in this country precisely because our government cannot tell us whether, when, where, or how to worship, and because our government cannot take sides on matters of faith.

Recognizing the importance of religious freedom, our founders set forth the Establishment Clause as the very first freedom enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is a guarantee that the government will neither prefer religion over non-religion nor favor particular faiths over others.

Unfortunately, the government sometimes strays from this ideal by, for example, using taxpayer dollars to support religious activities, erecting religious symbols on government land, or discriminating on the basis of religion in government programs. These actions violate the Establishment Clause, which recognizes that religious freedom thrives best when the government stays out of it. Matters of religious belief should be left to individuals and faith communities, not to governments or political majorities.



https://www.aclu.org/issues/religiou...otion-religion

[CaptUSA]

Two wrongs don't make a right.



I see the push to eliminate "separation of church and state" as a way to appeal to people to support and stay in public school. If folks are so inclined to raise their children morally, home school, send them to Sunday School, pull them out of public school and send them to a private school. I don't want or need another reason to pay for public indoctrination camps with my tax dollars.

Agreed... I was just calling out the hypocrisy. What they call "evangelizing" has a VERY limited definition.

I want ALL kids pulled out of government schools and have the properties sold to pay down debts.

[CaptUSA]

So then... When does the ACLU go after wokism, DEI, and ESG??? These are the state's religions and the symbols are plastered all over the place in government buildings. They will actively discriminate on the basis of that religion in hiring, promoting, and implementation of their government programs.

I guess the ACLU doesn't care about the "establishment" clause if you pretend it's not a religion??

[Invisible Man]

our government cannot take sides on matters of faith.

Dream on.

Everything the government does takes sides on matters of faith. Any conceivable justification for the government's existence at all must necessarily take sides on matters of faith.

In fact, the view that government should not take sides on matters of faith is self defeating because it is itself the taking of a side on a matter of faith.

[Invisible Man]

The belief in "government neutrality" [1] (which, if it actually existed, would be as miraculous as the wine at Cana) is every bit as "religious" in nature as the expression of any other articles of any other faiths.

It just comes from a different "sacred text" - e.g., a grade-school civics-class textbook (instead of a Talmud, Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, etc.) - and is conveyed to new generations via different "temples" - e.g., "public" schools (instead of synagogues, churches, madrasas, etc.).

Plus ça change ...



[1] Or the endorsement of the imposition of that supposed "neutrality" upon others under threat of force (in the form of either mandates or prohibitions).

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Occam's Banana again."

[oyarde]

So then... When does the ACLU go after wokism, DEI, and ESG??? These are the state's religions and the symbols are plastered all over the place in government buildings. They will actively discriminate on the basis of that religion in hiring, promoting, and implementation of their government programs.

I guess the ACLU doesn't care about the "establishment" clause if you pretend it's not a religion??

aclu doesnt care about establishing religions of pecker chopping , marxism etc , those are on approved list

[PAF]

About $2 for a poster?

LOL

Even the price of stone tablets would be pocket lint.
There are much better targets for cutting spending.

How many classrooms are in the state of Louisiana?

2 bucks here, 8 trillion there...

How about don't spend it in the first place.

You just want to keep those public indoctrination camps running, don't you. To the point of merging church and state.


Nationalist, Communist... to me, what's the difference?

[Snowball]

Here's the problem.

Although the Constitution certainly did allow STATES to establish religious preferences, and they did, over time, the liberalization (masonification) and the influence of Jewish activists and lawyers was able to politically affect those states, and to alter their Christian favoritisms.

For example, Massachusetts amended their Article III in 1917. South Carolina didn't get around to it until 1970 and 1971.

The point of conflict is high since the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That being a conflict for courts to rule upon. Because the states AND municipalities which run publc schools and public lands still have these rights, it's UP TO the individuals, most often sponsored by the ACLU and such, to bring complaints that they FEEL their rights have been infringed upon by the state, municipality, etc.

So, it's still an unresolved matter. Which is why it's going to court.