By Mark Baisley
Monday, June 27, 2011
It must require an Ivy League degree in relevant truth to buy into the ACLU’s separation clause arguments. The relevant portion of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Pretty straightforward.
This shrewdly crafted sentence should keep government in its place while citizens work out their own salvation. In order to unclarify this succinct instruction, the ACLU has pulled a bait-and-switch maneuver that tricks ‘em every time.
In 1789, the wording of the First Amendment was proposed in Congress by Representative Fisher Ames, debated at great length, voted on by both houses, and ratified by three-fourths of the states.
In 1947, Justice Hugo Black embraced a newly proposed interpretation of the First Amendment, citing a phrase from a letter written by a President of the United States.
Last Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the ACLU filed its latest lawsuit against an American school district for violating their “separation between church and state” mantra. The specific offense is allowing parents to spend vouchers for their children at schools that have a religious foundation.
The Supreme Court was created by the nation’s founders to interpret components of the Constitution in light of their original meaning. Purportedly, that was the action taken in 1947 with Everson v. Board of Education when the separation clause mandated that children attending religious-based schools could not ride a publicly funded school bus.
No, I am not kidding.
The decision has been the basis for challenges against prayer, nativity scenes, mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and every other recognition of the Creator where the ACLU can gleefully find an application.
The famous words, “wall of separation between church and state” came from a letter of assurance from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church. That same letter from Jefferson also includes the sentiments, “I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man.”
And yet, there is no insistence by the courts nor the ACLU that public schools recognize the Father and Creator of man.
Thomas Jefferson was not a fan of having a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
Yet his unofficial words that were never debated, voted on, nor ratified have become the phrase used to hammer school districts who would dare allow voluntary attendance to schools that acknowledge an intelligent design behind the science that they teach.
If the 1947 Supreme Court were sincere in their desire to discover the original intent of the writers of the First Amendment, they would more appropriately have cited the following statement from Congressman Fisher Ames himself; “Why then, if these books for children must be retained, as they will be, should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book?“
I see no one asking for vouchers to fund the education of religion.
Rather, it is anticipated, reasonable, and very normal to explore the possibility of an intelligent designer behind the consistency in math, matter, and natural laws.
It is an insidious agenda that denies parents the choice of spending public dollars on educating their students at a school that also teaches about faith.
Rather than ensuring that the First Amendment is respected, the ACLU and their fellow plaintiffs are misappropriating a precious legal process to destroy a civilization.
New York artist Makoto Fujimura recently said, “We today have a language to celebrate waywardness. But we do not have a cultural language to bring people back home.”
To the ACLU and their plaintiffs, I would say, “Stop dragging the public into your personal struggle with God.”
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