re: Cert Grant in Summum
I understand Dan's point regarding Justice Breyer in the resolution of the Establishment Clause issue. But in this case, counsel for Summum has not claimed a violation of the Est. Cl. Instead, his arguments and the claims of the complaint have been based on the alleged violation of the right to freedom of speech. Can the Establishment Clause question that is not included or presented derail this otherwise straightforward question of whether Pleasant Grove has created a forum for the display of privately donated monuments? Well, never tell the justices they cannot do what they decide to do. But in order to get to the Establishment Clause questions, they will have to go outside of the Questions Presented on Certiorari, outside the scope of the decisions below, and outside the claims made by the Plaintiff. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel The American Center for Law and Justice, Inc. **Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-guide/united-states?ncid=aoltrv000316) ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Jerry Falwell: A Catalog of Contributions
Truth be told, if I had the sufficient good sense not to have opened my digest version of the list three days ago, I wouldn't have posted that little story about Jerry Falwell. When the previous to mine post mentioned the nature of some of the blogging about his death -- none of which laid any greater claim to a reasoned discussion of principles of law than did my story -- I thought I would offer a balancing bit, and I did. No regrets. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ P.S. As for how much any of the posts on the lists contributes, or fails to contribute, I would be careful not to confuse prolixity with persuasiveness, verbosity with wisdom, or post-hoc rationalizations with truth. The men (sorry ladies, but a commitment to gender fairness cannot fairly serve its purpose if it unfairly recasts history) who crafted the constitutional bulwarks of our religious liberties did it with few words but much resolve. And it would serve us all better to recall that if there was any value to the later posts in this discussion, those posts were provoked by the ones earlier and the responses to them. ** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Falwell: Not Necessarily The Person That You Think
Shortly after Lee vs. Weisman, Jerry Falwell, two separationists, and I were invited to participate in a debate that was a feature of the annual convention of the Virginia Bar Association. In addition to the opportunity to enjoy a visit to Williamsburg, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet Falwell. To facilitate the debate, the VBA arranged for a private luncheon between the four of us. And in that luncheon I got an insight into Falwell that has served as a balance to all the rancor that has been thrown toward him as a consequence of his very public stances. It seems that, as a drove to Thomas Road one day, he noticed a sign being erected in front of a small home. The sign proclaimed the opening of a Palmistry shop. Folks who think they know Falwell from his public stances, me included, may think that he would have sprung into action by organizing public protests, etc. He didn't. When he got to work, he called for the junior-most pastor on the staff at Thomas Road. When the young associate appeared, Falwell slipped him twenty dollars and instructed him to go get his palm read, meet the owner and develop a relationship. Ultimately, the woman, through that friendship, came to faith in Christ, closed her shop, and pursued further education . . . ultimately becoming a licensed counselor . . . something that she had obviously had a penchant for previously. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Falwell: Not Necessarily The Person That You Think
In a message dated 5/16/2007 8:57:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This story shows that Falwell could be strategic and intelligent. Good thing the woman wasn't selling teletubby dolls or trying to assert her constitutional right to control her own body. What is the point of this story, to show that he used guile and dishonesty (make friends with someone so you can undermine her business) and that this is something you should praise? It may not be polite to speak ill of the dead, but surely we should not allow false praise just because someone who was deeply hateful to others is no long alive. Oh, please, don't confuse my message with an intention to promote false praise of someone who was deeply hateful to others. I was offering genuine praise of someone who was deeply loving kind to a person that might have seemed natural to present an instance for his powerful means of public coercion. The dialogue that will likely not occur in these circumstances may illuminate for those who wish for it to do so why there cannot be much hope for success in any dialogue between Evangelicals and Conservatives (on one side) and Secularists and Liberals on the other. Histrionic characterizations such as the one proffered about Falwell -- based on his principled disapproval of the judicial invention of the modern right to abortion and his stranger, but harmless, dislike for Tinkie or whichever Teletubby -- suggest that anyone who claims a basis in conscience for a view of opposition to legalized abortion can be expected to be recast as a hater. And God knows, as does Imus, there is almost nothing so fearful as to be subject to characterization as a hater in the current construct. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Texts for a Religion and Law Course
I have been using Ariens and Destro, Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Society now in its second edition, and have been doing so since it was in its first edition. Now that I have become entirely comfortable and developed my own approach to the use of the text, I am happy to report that the authors have produced an accompanying teacher's manual that arrived this summer. I have been reviewing, and have on my bedside table for that reason, Belsky and Bessler-Northcutt's Law and Theology to see whether/how I might incorporate it in our consideration of the large questions raised by this kind of course. best wishes, Jim (Lord have mercy, I thought he'd passed on) Henderson ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Federal Judges: Can they Violate RFRA? Does it Apply to Them?
Congress extended the application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the broadest terms possible for legislation (as opposed to an amendment to the Constitution). In doing so, Congress did at least two things directed to federal governmental impacts on religion. Second, and most commonly associated with the Act and its purpose, Congress created a cause of action to seek remediation for federal governmental actions that substantially burden religion without being the least restrictive means to serve a compelling government interest. All well and good. First, though, and, in my opinion, most importantly, Congress imposed a legal duty on every federal actor to consider whether any proposed action to be taken would, without employing the least restrictive means available serving a compelling government interest, impose a substantial burden on religion. The literal reading of the statute is that every federal actor must make this measure in each action he or she takes. So, for example, a Park Ranger in the Grand Canyon, must stop and consider whether, when he sees someone preparing to kneel and pray at the edge of the canyon, his about to be issued order to step back from the rim of the canyon is the least restrictive means to serve some compelling government purpose. So, some questions. Is mine an over reading of the statute, or does it really reach as far as it seems to in imposing a duty of care on all federal actors? If mine is a sound reading of the statute, what to do with the situation in which a party comes to court (federal court, that is) and seeks some relief (injunctive, declaratory, damages). Is the Court obliged to be aware of the possibility that RFRA issues lurk beneath the claims? If the judge's disposition of the case substantially burdens a religious practice, does that give rise to litigation in which the judge is a defendant? Any thoughts? Jim Henderson ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Secularization of Christmas
In a message dated 12/23/2005 3:29:53 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Christianist Christianist? Is that as in, of or inclined toward Christanism? Who are the Christanists? What makes them Christianist? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Dover Intelligent-Design Case
In a message dated 12/20/2005 6:19:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: With regard to the judge's commentary, what I find the most disturbing is thatthis particular judge -- a Bush appointee with pretty firm "conservative" credentials -- felt it necessary to preemptively defend not just his decision, but himself, in his opinion. What does that say for the current social climate andprinciplesof judicial independence? As for determining what is or is not "science," judges do that all the time when they decide whether or not to allow expert testimony. Actually, I find disturbing the fact that the judge is thinking about whether or not he might need to defend himself. His decision is either defensible on its own merits, or it is indefensible. The judge's comments in this regard suggest that he has been reading something other than transcripts, briefs and cases, or listening to something other than his iPod. Having picked up the flavor of disapproval for a certain category of outcomes on religion cases, he has decided to import squarely into his opinion an argument in justification that simply would not be there if he only did his job and ignored Fox News and/or Radio America. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Dover Case
In a message dated 12/21/2005 3:07:10 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But it stretches credulity that all the defense expert witnesses wanted to beaddressed as "professor" and all the plaintiff expert witnesses wanted to beaddressed as "doctor." It strikes me that especially when dealing with technical, scientific experts,"Doctor" would usually be considered the title that gives one's positions morewieght that "Professor." But this is, of course, a highly subjective judgment. It strikes this reader as evidence of some kind of design. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Dover Intelligent-Design Case
In a message dated 12/20/2005 12:05:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: "Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources." It will take me a while to review the decision, so I do appreciate the snippet that informs me of the even-tempered nature of a judge who obviously is free of bias and understands the careful and sensitive nature of invocations of judicial power to direct the pedagogical component of local school operations. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Dover Intelligent-Design Case
In a message dated 12/20/2005 12:39:32 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim, As you well know, judges can form opinions after hearing the evidence. And the 139 pages supports his conclusion in that even-tempered nature, free of bias, and with care-and-sensitivity- to-the -school-control-issues manner you are say you are concerned about. Sorry you couldn't be bothered to inform yourself before forming an opinion about the judge. Steve As I said, it will take a while to review the decision. Honesty from the law professors already discussing this decision: have you read the decision in FULL? In fact, Ann popped a corker from the decision to the list. Once I have read the decision in full, I will better know whether Ann did a disservice to the judge in her selection of snippet. As it stands, the prose quoted by Ann leaves the impression of a certain bias on the part of the judge. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Dover Intelligent-Design Case
In a message dated 12/20/2005 12:42:08 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: One can be careful and sensitive about intruding on the authority of local boards of education without abdicating to them. If in a particular case a school board acts in plainly unconstitutional way and a judge shoots it down, there is no proof that the judge is being intemperate or less than even handed. Unless of course, Jim intends that the careful and sensitive judge can never challenge what a school board does-but the ACLJ asks judges to override school official judgments all the time. Are judges who uphold ACLJ claims insensitive and biasaed? Fair enough, Marc. Although as I sit here, I am at a loss from my own cases or those within our past caseload with which I am familiar where the dispute was one that called for ajudge to wrest control from the local board over the pedagogical components of a school. We have certainly asked courts to issue injunctions and declarations regarding the Equal Access Act or regarding First Amendment rights of students to share their faith or political views. But I am thinking that perhaps you have confused the ACLJ with another one, for the reason stated above. Now, I should also say that I do not think the fact that the judge wrests control is dispositive of the issue; instead, as I indicated in my first response to Ann's posting, and in my answer to Steven's criticism, the snippet clipped by Ann leaves an impression of a very distinct bias. What would have been wrong with a decision edited to be from such evidence of bias? What judicial distemper inspires the insistence that folks know exactly how a judge feels? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Dover Intelligent-Design Case
In a message dated 12/20/2005 12:51:52 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Before we begin to see the inevitable character assassination here are some facts about the judge: Frankly, I am perplexed. Surely you are not asserting thatobservations about deliberate language choices constitutecharacter assassination per se. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Can a murderer ever be redeemed?
In a message dated 12/13/2005 1:20:06 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yet surely the answer is that it's perfectly legitimate forpeople to base either their support or opposition to capital punishmenton religious justifications, just as it's legitimate for people to basetheir opposition to murder, slavery, racism, and the like on religiousjustification. Am I mistaken? Would some on this list argue otherwise? Eugene, of course you are correct, so far as you take your point. There is no government orthodoxy, as I understand it, that may be imposed on the thinking of the People about matters of politics, religion, and the like (a separate fight, please, about the meaning of "imposed"). But what about when the question moves beyond support for or opposition to the death penalty to actual cases? What happens when people of faith enter the jury box? What then are the constitutional strictures? If Venireman Smithmay basehis support for, or opposition to, the death penalty, on the teaching ofhis faith, how may the government modify its treatment of him in respect of that religious fount for his opinions and actions? If, in honest answer during voir dire, heexpresses the view that the death penalty is illicit in all cases, based on that religious belief, must he be excused for cause? may he be excused for cause? If VeniremanSmith supports the death penalty for murder because of the teaching of his faith, must he be excluded from service while Venirewoman Jones be retained for service because her opinions on the death penalty are not traceable to religious teaching or faith? May the Prosecutor (as I suspect is more likely) or the defense counsel inquire into religious faith with the intent and purpose of rooting out veniremen whose religious identity would likely predispose them in one way or another on the question of death? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Can a murderer ever be redeemed?
I have no certainty about guilt or innocence in this particular case.In any event, the real problem for me is trusting in a judicial system that concludes that blacks are chattel property, that Native Americans are not persons, and that children before birth are not endowed with the natural right to life, liberty and to due process of law.While as a matter of principle, the death penalty may be licit, in our society at this time it is not free from doubt on these grounds, as well as others that may be invoked. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Swedish Pastor Beats Hate Crime Rap
In a message dated 12/1/2005 10:58:46 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Free speech may be a human right, universal or not, but surely you don’t contend that the right is utterly absolute without any limit whatsoever, do you? Is there an absolute right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater? Just a small, but significant omission, but isn't the prohibition on crying "fire" falsely? After all, when there is a fire, do you prefer a toasty ignorance to a frightening awareness? I will leave it to others to defend bullies like the good reverend. I am perplexed by referring to the teaching ministry of a pastor as a kind of bullying. The teaching ministry of the Christian community is essential to, and central to, its identity and function. Pardon one biblical cite to demonstrate the point: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen." (Matthew 28:19-20) (AV 1917). We may not agree with the teaching at any particular moment.Perhaps one supports married priesthood and the Church does not, perhaps one supports ordination of women and the Church does not. Still, let's not pretend that there is something newly rude or unmannerly about the teaching ministry of the church. The founder of the Christian Church saw many who turned away and never return when he invited them to consume his flesh and blood. He saw a wealthy young man walk away when he was challenged to break the bonds over his heart that his wealth had tied. His cousin landed in jail when he engaged in public teaching on the licitness of marrying one's sister in law while one's brother yet lived. There should be a bumpersticker: "Offenses Happen." The bullying epithet is particularly troubling because, if I understand the facts, this was not some minister who'd shown up at a local version of the Metropolitan Community Church, and wasthere to decry the perversions of the truth of the Gospel. Instead, he inhabited his own pulpit of the church he pastored, and from there he taught according to the historic teaching of the Church and the Christian tradition on the subject of homosexual conduct. While I'd oppose application of the epithet in many other circumstances, no doubt, why does fulfillment of the historic, On the other hand, perhaps this is just another instance where a society chooses to treat discourse asbullying because it touches one of the sacred cows. It brings to mind the story about the elderly North Carolinian, who responded to each of the preacher's declamations, with "preach it, brother!" So he declaimed gambling, and she retorted, "preach it, brother!" And he declaimed drinking, and she retorted, "preach it, brother!" He declaimed carousing with painted women, and she retorted, "preach it, brother!" And he declaimed dipping snuff. And she griped, "now you've gone from preaching to meddling." Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Dueling Bible Curricula
The press release linked below crossed my email today and given the subject of it, National Council on Bible Curriculum in the Schools vs. Bible Literacy Project, I thought list subscribers might have an interest. It can be viewed in full at: http://www.earnedmedia.org/kjos1130.htm. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name
In a message dated 11/29/2005 9:18:49 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Steve is precisely correct on this. The United States culture owes a great deal to Christian principles, to be sure, but also to the ancient Roman and Greek cultures, among others. The triumphalist claims to Christian ownership or founding of this culture is hubris, not historical fact. And I say this as a committed Christian. I wonder. Why is it not a Christian culture that has filtered the contributions of other preceding cultures? It would be hubris to claim that art and architecture were begun as an _expression_ of Christianity in the broader culture. But would it be hubris to say that Christian thought and theology influenced the choices made in the adaptation of facets of other cultures to Western Civilization? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Swedish Pastor Beats Hate Crime Rap
In a message dated 11/29/2005 4:49:41 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Better to hear allsides than to drive the noise underground. And better to be highly suspicious of others who aggrandize the definitional power of categorizing speech as hate/love. After all, what specifically is the hate speech that is at stake in Pastor Ake's case? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Bronx Household of Faith v New York Schools
In a message dated 11/21/2005 6:28:34 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Many of the church-planting initiatives involve using the school the entire weekend, or at least almost all of Sunday. In 1992, at Garfield Elementary School, a church planting initiative here in Fairfax County, Virginia, gave birth to the inaugural Sunday service of New Hope Church. Thirteen years and counting, we have finally located and purchased property that the county agrees can sustain our permanent facility. During the interim, we have met only twice at locations other than public school buildings, both occasions were Xmas eve services when the school facilities were unavailable. During that time we grew from a tiny congregation very comfortably fitting inside the small facility of an elementary school. We have moved four times, first to a nearby public high school and then twice while that public school underwent reconstruction (if you watched Remember the Titans, then you saw the Titans take on the Hayfield Hawks, the Hawks are the home team where our church meets again, now that the school's reconstruction is complete). And we hope to move twice more, first to the new, south county high school which is situated near our property, and finally, when we can get Phase One started and finished, into our own facility. During the entire time we have been in various county school facilities, we have adopted, in cooperation with the schools' social services support staff, various low income families to provide needed school supplies and clothing at the start of the school year, and to provide Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas gifts. During the reconstruction project, we spent time at an alternative public high school site, whose student population includes many pregnant teens and new moms. There, our church adopted the expectant moms and the babies and provided Christmas gifts for the moms and for the moms to give to their little ones (even after the time we left the school, we maintained that relationship). Every October, at no expense to the surrounding community, we host, on the school's grounds a "Fall Fun Fest." This event runs to the tune of some $20,000.00 expense, not including donated materials from local merchants, and puts about two hundred church volunteers to work running carnival booths, moon bounces, and grills. On average, some 3000 to 4000 visitors enjoy the festival, which we put on to thank the community for the use of their school building. And, so far as pigging the space, we actually do not do that either. We use the auditorium, starting at 8:00 a.m. and are cleared out by noon. We use a large lecture hall for Kids Time (Sunday school) group activities. We use about 12 classrooms to host the meetings of individual age groups of Kids Time. Our use of the facilities, leaves the high school cafeteria free. It leaves the junior high school cafeteria free. It leaves the library free, the planetarium, all the other large lecture halls and the hundred or more other classrooms free. On 15 or more occasions during the year, we share the lobby outside the auditorium with others, typically organizers of youth sports activities including basketball and wrestling leagues (not, I note, the school systems sports activities). This happens because we also do not interfere with the use of the gymnasium. I can't really say whether our decade plus experience is the norm or not. I can't imagine that we really are all that special, but I suppose it is possible. But if we are the norm, than Marci's concerns about domination of the forum are misplaced. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Discrimination
In a message dated 11/22/2005 9:09:05 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Webster's Third International does not contain the word "totally" in either definition of "prohibit". But perhaps that is not the "Webster's" that Madison purportedly "expected" people to use? Well, can Madison be faulted for failing to use a dictionary that wasn't available, even in its first edition? As a general principle, I would note that the Supreme Court does seem to rely on the Webster's Third Edition International Dictionary for definitions of common and ordinary language. Is the Court's insistence on use of an international dictionary further evidence of our loss of national boundaries (he queries mischieviously). Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Bronx Household of Faith v New York Schools
In a message dated 11/19/2005 4:19:44 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think that "all exercisesof religion that involve _expression_ should be construed to be speech forspeech clause purposes *rather than* religion for religion clausepurposes" -- I think religious speech is properly understood as *both*speech *and* religion. This was, I thought, the bone of contention between the Court and Justice White in Widmar vs Vincent. Justice White, and Alan, if I understand his posting, would, essentially, denature the utterance of religious words by the exercise of a kind of "constitutional" distillation, but not necessarily because, denuded of any speechprotections such religious utterances would be bereft of constitutional shield.Is there any justification, as an initial matter, for thinking that he acted with any kind of ant-religious animus in Widmar, for example? Smith aside, Justice White was as good a friend of a vital Free Exercise Clause as could be found in the Warren-Burger-Rehnquist Courts. Suchdistillations of conjoined free exercise and free speech utteranceswould be unnecessary if the Free Exercise Clause was not the sad, pitiable and flaccid device that iteither (1) always wasor (2) has become at thehands of the Court. If judges and school districts (and public libraries, etc.) would have to be thought to be endowed with the dark science that would allow this purposeful segregation of utterances, wheat from chaff, secular from divine, then how will this be accomplished? Will utterers be required to self-report? "Hi, Principal Smith, we'd like to use your auditorium for non-religious discussions." "Hello, Principal Jones, can we pray in your cafeteria?" Among the problems with the distillation obligation is that it is meaninglesswithout some enforcement mechanism. And in what form will such enforcement come? Theobvious one would havegovernment agents listening to such religious utterances and evaluating them and then concluding that some, because they are free speech but not free exercise, enjoy constitutional protection, while others, because of their functionality as tools of religious endeavor, are protected by that sad, flaccid, 98 pound weakling, the Free Exercise Clause, but not by freedom of speech. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Voters Oust Dover School Board
In a message dated 11/9/2005 9:45:19 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I can understand the political reasons for waiting for Judge Jones' decision. But surely even if the Supreme Court decides in favor of the old school board's decision, that decision cannot require teaching intelligent design or insisting that evolution is just a theory and not a flawless one at that.So why not change the policy now? Presumably, the new board will not appeal the decision if it goes in favor of the defendant. (Is there still a defendant in the case?) But was the election between two slates of candidates, onewhich promised to abide by Judge Jones' decision whatever it is and on which did not? I am not searching for conspiracies behind large oaks on dimly lit streets, but what impact would the immediate decision of the board, on their own judgments about intelligent design vs evolution, to eliminate ID instruction have on the case, in particular, on the award of attorneys fees? What if the practice and policy changes and it is not caused by the catalyst of the litigation, but on a change of the political persuasions of the board? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: FYI: An Interesting See You at the Pole Case
In a message dated 11/7/2005 11:56:33 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, they can't have an outside leader under the Equal Access Act. But after Good News Club v. Milford Central School, they can have an outside leader under the First Amendment if other clubs are permitted to have outside leaders. GNC v. MCS was an after hours use of facilities case, not relying on a right of access under the Equal Access Act. The EAA, of course, is a Spending Clause statute. How do you see the First Amendment principles in GNC impacting the restrictions on associational freedoms imposed by the EAA? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: FYI: An Interesting See You at the Pole Case
In a message dated 11/6/2005 8:39:06 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Proselytizing, as Mike McConnell argued brilliantly in Rosenberger, is just a dirty word for persuasion, and persuasion is at the heart of the Free Speech Clause. Christian students have as much right toproselytize their beliefs as other students have to proselytize theirs. It brings to mind, again, that observation by Justice Holmes, that "every idea is an incitement." Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: non-disruptive speech ?
In a message dated 11/6/2005 9:17:31 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So let’s understand – the next kid that tells my 7 year old that we are going to hell, which whether Rick agrees or not is always where that conversation goes, is going to get a basic understanding of the karate classes Sam is now taking. The speech is in fact more then just disruptive, and it invites a response that will be equally unacceptable at school, but for which my son will not be disciplined at home. I have a fourth degree black belt son, a second degree black belt daughter, two first degree black belt daughters, and a first degree black belt son, all in the form of Tang Soo Do, the fourth degree is also about 3/4s of the way to his first degree black belt in weapons. On the wall of the school were my children obtained their degrees are a listing of virtues -- discipline, integrity, respect, obedience, etc. They memorize and discuss three student codes, including "I intend to use what I learn in karate constructively and defensively, and never to be abusive or offensive." The self-defense instructors always emphasize that the first way to win a fight on the street is to escape without the fight starting. And the second way to win the fight is to escape from the fight after it starts. The only time the techniques taught in class are taught as TO BE USED is when the aggressor makes avoidance of the fight or escape from it impossible. I am sorry, Joel, that the art has been so degraded where your student studies that these important principles have been lost or underemphasized. Jim "The Father of Five Black Belts" Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: non-disruptive speech ?
In a message dated 11/6/2005 12:40:27 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: While it may not be acceptable at school, it seems to me it is based, in some part, on the notion of fighting words, which is recognized in Free Speech jurisprudence (admittedly in the context of lying outside the protection of the First Amendment). Now, whether a remark disparaging another student's religion rises to the level of fighting words is a question a tribunal might well take into account--either when punishing the speaker and/or the student at whom the words were directed. There is an uncertainty to be injected into Free Speech Doctrine if Frances' suggestion takes hold. The concept of "fighting words" is not a license to bullies with fragile psyches or low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. It is simply not the case thatevery thing spoken is a fighting word. If some folks whose kids go to public schoolsare raising bullies at home and feeding them raw meat, giving "rah rah" speeches about how they don't have to take guff from no one, nowhere, no how, that is a sad commentary on affairs, but it doesn't change that Free Speech Doctrine so thatwordssuddenly rise to the level of fighting words because select, fragilely constructed individuals, act as though words are likely to provoke an immediate, violent response. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: IRS Enforcement Threat for Political Speech by Pastor
In a message dated 11/7/2005 1:46:33 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The press is reporting an IRS letter to a church whose pastor gave an anti-war sermon on October 31, 2004. Link below. Does anybody know of reports of similar letters to churches that were supporting the President's campaign? Doug, you are, I am sure, familiar with Church at Pierce Creek v. CIR, a decision of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, affirmed by the DC Circuit, sustaining the revocation of exemption of a church that, in 1992, ran newspaper advertisementsaskinghow a Christian could vote for the election of Bill Clinton. Perhaps you have not heard of the church in Manassas, Virginia that was threatened with revocation, although no action ultimately was taken, after Col. Ollie North was invited to give his testimony during an annual service coinciding with July 4th observances. During the Pierce Creek litigation, we provided the IRS with evidence showing that one candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 organized a concerted fund raising event from the pulpit of some 500 churches across America. And that, during the Clinton re-election campaign, campaigning for his re-election occurred from the pulpits of important African American pulpits in Harlem, New York and Richmond, Virginia. And, realizing that Barry Lynn will insist on disputing this fact statement, I know that the IRS has stated that a church would violate its exempt status if prayers were offered from the pulpit for the re-election of George W. Bush during the 2004 election cycle. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: FYI: An Interesting See You at the Pole Case
In a message dated 11/7/2005 3:11:57 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Catholics can’t do that. If there is a weakness to the EAA, this is probably where it lies. The Act disadvantages students forming religious clubs in ways that are different than other types of organizations. It does this by subjecting religious groups to the special restriction that they may only have custodial monitors (faculty or staff whose principal interest is in insuring the safety and security of propertty and persons) while other clubs can have sponsors (faculty and staff whose principal interest may well be and often is in the subject area of the club or in the service activities of the organization sponsored)). Of course, there may be religious observances that can be organized and led by laity that are appropriate for Catholic young people.For example, every Saturday here in the District of Columbia, a group of Catholic college students varying in number from 20 to 100 spend the morning praying the rosary on the public sidewalk in the vicinity of an abortion business. Certainly Catholic students could organize group prayer activities including the Rosary; and they could conduct studies of Catholic teaching and thought. In this sense, Catholic students probably are not so much disadvantaged as might otherwise seem. True, at least from my experience and perspective, that a student Baptist group could approximate a worship service that would not be hindered by the fact that none of the students was ordained as a minister of the Gospel, while a students only service for Catholic students would not take the form of a Mass. And you probably have in mind celebration of the Mass, and the EAA, by denying students access to outside participants on a regular, on-going basis, would seem to havea disparate impact on religious observants whose faith family reposes special spiritual authority or giftedness in a priest or minister. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Social Notes from All Over
And what symbolism is to be drawn when the invitation is to attend a luncheon at which the President and his wife will not be present? Weren't they in the air on the way to the Summit? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Alito Views SCOTUS Doctrine as Giving Impression of HostilitytoReligious ...
In a message dated 11/4/2005 12:32:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My organization represented CEF in the Stafford case. Prof. Volokh iscorrect that the school district argued that the Establishment Clauserequired it to deny CEF benefits available to other community organizations.The essence of their argument was that they needed to protect little kidsfrom religion. For anyone with the time and energy, read the brief of the State of New York in the United States Supreme Court in Lambs Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District. The hostility of the State of New York fairly reeks from the pages of the brief. Most notable is the "religion is only of a benefit to its adherents" remark. (Perhaps unfairly, Justice Scalia put a pointed question to the school board's attorney about that bizarre claim, even though the school board had not climbed quite so far out on the branch as had the NYAG. I still chuckle atrecalling hisinterrogatory, "How's life in the new regime?") That notion - religion only benefits those who believe- is fairly distant from the folks who, during our wastrel and misspent youths, urged us to attend our places of worship this weekend (public service announcements during Saturday cartoons, brought to us by "Religion in Public Life" and the "Ad Council"). If there are voices on this list who doubt the value of religions in which they place no faith, that is all well and good for them, but every time an all too human impulse to pulverize someone or steal their car or their spouse is suppressed by a sense of religiously inspired morality, then I count myself benefitted, and on that basis, even the most ardent atheist enjoys relative peace and quiet in this nation because religion, if nothing else, opiates the masses. And thehostility expressed in that brief is not the invention in the first degree ofthe Supreme Court, and of the lower federal courts in New York, but of the state's officials; the brief, after all expressed the view of the Attorney General of New York. There was, however, a trail of evidence indicatingindifference to or ignorance of the law or disregard for the teaching of the Supreme Court in the area of First Amendment rights in the lower court decisions, and in subsequent decisions of both lower courts in cases involving other challenges to denial of religious uses of New York school facilities.And that, I think, fairly supports the impression of hostility. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Alito Views SCOTUS Doctrine as Giving Impression of HostilitytoReligious ...
In a message dated 11/4/2005 1:23:44 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The idea that religion must be the basis of any good morality--concern and respect for others--is question begging, and I must say, with all due respect, offensive. And, of course, it completely ignores all the wars and violence throughout history based, at least in substantial part, on religion. If I offended, I apologize. I found the NYAG's myopic failure to recognize the value of hospitals, universities, savings and loan institutions, soup kitchens, vocational rehabilitation programs, benevolence funds, etc., to be offensive. These unassailable and yet annoying things, these facts, just cannot be swept under the rug with the convenient but inelegantly fitted charge of martial cruelties. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Social Notes from All Over
In a message dated 11/4/2005 5:05:58 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: and what symbol such an invitatinomight be said to convey. perhaps it means nothing more than that the invitees were estimated to have a healthy appetite. ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Stephen Carter on what Christians should expect from the Supr eme Court
In a message dated 11/2/2005 7:50:53 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The term "Christian" in recent history has been taken over by a minority of Christian believers who claim to speak for all Christians. I was recently contacted by an evangelical Christian in nearby, suburban Maryland, following a visit by Sheriff's Deputies to his door. He had distributed gospel leaflets of his own making in and around the neighborhood where he lives. He included his name, address and phone number on them. It turns out that the County Manager, who was then standing for re-election, had the same name, including the same given and family names and the same middle initial. The contact has had this name his whole life. No one asked him if he wanted it. It was given to him by his parents. He could, of course, change it customarily or with judicial order. But he was never inclined to do so. The deputies were present at his home to demand that he discontinue the distribution of his gospel literature with his name and contact information on it because it would be thought by some that he was the county manager then standing for re-election. This is a true story. I think it explains as well as anything why, even if what Marci claims above is verifiably, statistically provable, it is of no particular significance at all. That small minority, as she sees it, has not dominated the forum except to the extent that bastardized depictions of them in the media are an occasional component of the center left media glot and except to the extent that every one else that claims the same name seems content to sit on their lees and gripe about the too many of their brothers in the news. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: FYI: An Interesting See You at the Pole Case
In a message dated 10/31/2005 1:24:20 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I wish that the media and the right wing pundits would accurately state the law about religion at schools -- then maybe fewer people would misunderstand it. Please. The right wing did not intimidate school districts through litigation and threats thereof until suppression became the obvious safe choice. The correct spelling for those groups is PFAW, ACLU, etc. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Faith tests okayed for campus Christian group at ASU
In a message dated 10/19/2005 9:47:11 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If the rule is the other way, where does it end? What distinguishes discriminating against people with a certain status of homosexuality from discriminating against people of another status like race or gender once the state has decided that that form of discrimination is unlawful? If we allow the one, how can we not allow the KKK to be a recognized religious organization that excludes Jews, Catholics, and Blacks? Is it artificial and untenable to conclude that some kinds of classifications are different than others? Are race and gender really fungible, really just interchangeablecategorizations under the Constitution? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Faith tests okayed for campus Christian group at ASU
In a message dated 10/20/2005 4:25:13 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: easier to lampoon if one removes the context. I stand by my full post. On Oct 20, 2005, at 11:43 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 10/19/2005 9:47:11 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If the rule is the other way, where does it end? What distinguishes discriminating against people with a certain status of homosexuality from discriminating against people of another status like race or gender once the state has decided that that form of discrimination is unlawful? If we allow the one, how can we not allow the KKK to be a recognized religious organization that excludes Jews, Catholics, and Blacks? Is it artificial and untenable to conclude that some kinds of classifications are different than others? Are race and gender really fungible, really just interchangeablecategorizations under the Constitution? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ There was no lampooning. None intended. None accomplished. If that is how it came across to you, I regret it. I did not quote your entire email for no reason other than the one that has often been discussed on this list, namely that reposting entire emails in order to respond to them imposes burdens on all. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ALCJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: The Devil Went Down to Georgia
In a message dated 10/16/2005 9:57:34 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Most public school music instructors are probably not familiar with music traditions outside those common to the majority, nevertheless it is not the business of government, at any level, to establish religion of any kind. Because public schools are not churches, it would be constitutionally wiser for public school music programs to use music not related to any religion. The problem of course is that it takes a while to develop a "tradition" in music or other arts. Consequently, if you begin by emptying the field of permissibly taughtsacred music (taught for its style, form, _expression_), then you severely limit the instructional choices. Of course, I am sure that it can be done; but the issue is must it? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Military Chapel Invasions
In a message dated 10/9/2005 6:41:57 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sandy: I have only just now joined this discussion and see it mostly as a theoreitcal problem. I would like to know a whole lot more about the invasion of the chapel, but for starters, I would assume that the Army owns the chapel, not the Priest? Does that affect things? I think it might. Well, there is a case in the area generally, arising when the United States Air Force did, in fact, invade Catholic chapels service wide. Shocking claim, because you may not have even heard of it? Or perhaps because it eludes the memory? When President Clinton was in office, and the partial birth abortion legislation was pending in Congress and to be presented for the second (I think) time, the USCC/NCCB directed priests, on a selected Sunday, throughout the Nation, to speak to their congregants during the homily and urge them to make calls and/or send letters supporting passage of the PBA Act. In response, USAF honchos sent down a directive ordering Catholic chaplains not to do so. Judge Paul Friedman, of the federal district court in Washington, DC, issued an injunction against enforcement of the Air Force directive. The case was not appealed, so far as I could ever find. So at least once, when the camel stuck its snout under the nose of the tent, one federal judge found the constitutional moxie to swat that thing. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Air Force sued over religious intolerance
In a message dated 10/9/2005 7:11:23 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I assume, but am willing to stand corrected, that members of the armed forces can be prohibited from attending political rallies on such grounds. There are military discipline cases in this area. But they tend to focus on the identity of the attendee as a member of the Armed Services. And the importance of this identity issue increases as the numbers behind the E or O do (in other words, as one moves up through the ranks). So for example, did the captain wear his uniform when he stood on the stage and urged college students not to submit to conscription? Sometimesthe focus is in on mere attendance, but the issue is less developed than the identity and advocacy cases. The military has always maintained its prerogative to identify places as "off limits" and to enforce through disciplinary proceedings adherence to such determinations. As an example, during the tenure of one base commander at Camp Lejeune, a standing order issued listing specific "adult" businesses as off-limits because of frequency of violation of prostitution laws and service of alcohol to underaged soldiers, etc. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Air Force sued over religious intolerance
In a message dated 10/8/2005 11:45:42 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In any event,the chaplain can clearly be told that there are limits to his/her evangelism with regard to those who are not voluntary attenders of what might be called "regular" services, just as there are certainly limits to my evangelizing, either politically or religiously, in my classroom. Now this is a statement of the principle with which I can live. I suspect that there are, that there must be, limits to the chaplain's evangelistic activities. I am altogether unsure of what they are, or what, under the Constitution, they must be. I suspect that the hypotheticals that I offered earlier illustrate just some of the many instances in which a chaplain's religious liberty is closer to its apex than to its nadir. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Air Force sued over religious intolerance
In a message dated 10/8/2005 8:22:38 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: With respect to Brad's distinction between involuntarily convert, pressure, exhort, and persuade, it is one large linguistic stretch to argue that pressure, exhort, and persuade are voluntarily accepted. They are means by which one person is trying to alter another person's views. Chaplains have no business "informing" recruits that their religious faith is "wrong" from his perspective. The members of the military are a captive audience in these circumstances, which makes the involuntary element in these circumstances more involuntary than usual. Well, I would think that the First Amendment might give us briefest pause before categorical prohibitions are laid down. To show why Marci cannot be right when she says, "Chaplains have no business 'informing' recruits that their religious faith is 'wrong' from his perspective," let's start with the following hypothetical: Fr.. Morgan is credentialed by the Archdiocese of the Military to serve as a Roman Catholic chaplain and is commissioned as such in the U.S. Navy, and is detailed to serve as a chaplain to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, in coastal North Carolina. He is one of several chaplains aboard the base, which hosts, depending on deployments, between thirty and fifty thousand Marines. He is one of three RC chaplains. As part of his pastoral duties with the Catholic Chapel, he conducts an inquirers class once a week at the base's Catholic Chapel. During his classes, he includes an open period for questions. As it turns out, a class for inquiring into the Catholic faith attracts, among others,those who are on spiritual journeys and who are actively thinking about matters of faith and religion, in other words, people with questions. Lance Corporal Jones,whose family is Baptist, has found himself attracted to the Catholic faith because of the rich intellectual tradition that it has developed, together with its orthodoxy regarding things he believes are essential to Christian doctrine. He has not decided to convert, though, but he is considering the consequences of such a decision, in part his considerations take place in the inquirers' class, where he learns more about RC and where, on a regular basis, he engages Fr. Morgan in dialogues related to unique difference between RC and Baptist doctrine. When L.Cpl. Jonesputs the questions directly to Fr. Morgan aboutRC distinctives (such as celibacy for priests, the seven sacraments, veneration of Mary and the Saints, the Papacy, transubstantiation), Fr. Morgan carefully explains the basis in the Magisterium of the Church, in Sacred Scripture, and in the traditions of the Church. These areas are the ones about which L.Cpl. Jones entertains greatest doubt and trepidation over conversion. In essence and, when pressed, in fact, Fr. Morgan tells L.Cpl. Jones that his faith tradition is wrong on these questions. In this case,is it true that "Chaplains have no business 'informing' recruits that their religious faith is 'wrong' from his perspective?" Other examples abound. In a field hospital, a battle wounded evacuee asks to speak with a chaplain. The situation is grave, and so is the soldier's demeanor. "I'm afraid that I am going to die in sin," he whispers, his breathing catching as he pushes the words from his battered body. "But my dad always told me that foxhole conversions weren't real and that people that turn religious in moments of crisis are weak." Brief additional discussion confirms that the wounded soldier is an atheist experiencing doubts about his faith, and now asking how/whether he can turn to God in his time of need. Is it true that "Chaplains have no business 'informing' recruits that their religious faith is 'wrong' from his perspective?" Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Air Force sued over religious intolerance
In a message dated 10/8/2005 11:26:46 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That rationale for government-sponsored religion provides no rationale for government-sponsored efforts to initiate discussions of religious conversion. I am not entirely certain that this is, as a blanket rule, correct. What about chaplains credentialed by religious bodies whose creeds and vows and ordinations commit them to evangelism? Does the employment as a chaplain, together with the forward placement of the chaplain with a battle contingent constitute "government-sponsored efforts to initiate discussions of religious conversion?" What if all the government does is maintain a military, employ chaplains, and fail to order, affirmatively, such chaplains to refrain from sharing their faith to service members outside their faithgrouping? Is that "government sponsored efforts?" Before you leap to say "no," and "how silly can you be?" remember that the opponents of the EAA, in their briefing at the Supreme Court in the Mergens case said that the EAA suffered from the vice of creating a ready made pool for proselyzing (an argument rejectedby the Court). Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Air Force sued over religious intolerance
In a message dated 10/8/2005 1:11:47 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim, of course, has taken my points out of context. When a recruit seeks out a chaplain for information about the chaplain's religion, that is entirely different from a chaplain engaging in proselytization on his or her own initiative. As Doug so rightly pointed out, the chaplain corps exists for the comfort of the soldiers, not as a new opportunity for a member of the clergy to gain new recruits. Those chaplains that cannot respect this distinction should not be military chaplains. There are plenty of positions in the private sphere for that kind of activity. More precisely, what I did is inquire into whether there were principled limitations on what was, as stated by you, a fairly flat, fairly complete rule of prohibition. An aside: During the Vietnam Era, protests in front of the White House tested the administrative and police responses of the National Park Service. In a case arising out of mass arrests, the DC Circuit essentially said, you can't take the hamfisted approach you have hear. For example, if you are going to have a permit process for allocating scarce speech resources, then you have to comply with the prior restraint doctrine. Ever since then, the National Park Service has claimed that the DC Circuit has ordered it to employ a permit system for allocating scarce speech resources under its control. In fact it did no such thing. Here, there are probably two, three, four or more different approaches that might be taken to providing chaplain services to military service members. But if we are going to pretend that the one that is used is the only one that there can be, a failure to be consistent about it probably signals that some kind of nonsense is afoot. For example, if we are going to employ actual credentialed ministers from faith groups, in rough approximation to population, and if they are to be employed for the benefit of service members in keeping with the strictures of the credentialing bodies, how can such conflicts be avoided. Do we reject evangelical ministers, do we order Chaplain Klingenschmidt to silence? It's fine for an Episcopal Bishop from Indianapolis to claim (as one did in a debate with me at the ICLU annual convention a few years back) that religion is a private matter for one's home and one's place of worship. But not everyone shares that view of faith. Some believe that they are compelled to share their faith. Not necessarily to be bludgeons for belief, but to present the Gospel with gentleness and respect, but to present it. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Sex Ed and Jewish schools in Belgium
Or the fish rots head first. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ In a message dated 9/29/2005 3:02:54 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Or, he who pays the piper, calls the tune.At 08:16 AM 9/29/05 -0400, you wrote:Moral: who lives by the subsidy, dies by the subsidy.VanceOn 9/29/05, Joel Sogol mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:image0011.gifhttp://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15807intcategoryid=2http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15807intcategoryid=2image0023.gifAfter refusing to teach sex-ed,Belgian Jewish school loses fundinghttp://www.jta.org/page_bio.asp#Gidon+van+EmdenBy Gidon van EmdenSeptember 6, 2005mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]image0031.gifimage0023.gifimage0023.gifimage0041.gifimage0023.gifimage0051.gifimage0023.gifimage0061.gifBRUSSELS, Sept. 6 (JTA) — A Jewish school in Belgium has lost government recognition because it refuses to teach the required sexual education curriculum.Five other Jewish schools are negotiating their status with the Department of Education over the issue.Losing status as a recognized school entails a loss of subsidies, as well as the schools' ability to award state-recognized diplomas.RELATED ARTICLESimage0071.gif http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15749intcategoryid=2 http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15749intcategoryid=2Belgium considers kosher slaughter ban"The standards for sexual education are incompatible with Jewish beliefs," said Mordechai Stauber, principal of the Satmar Bais Rachel primary school in Antwerp, which lost its recognition.The Satmar school took the decision to court, but lost. The school has applied for renewed recognition, and is negotiating with the Department of Education on the matter.As in much of Western Europe, Jewish schools in Belgium are eligible for state funding for the costs of teaching the secular curriculum. This curriculum is set by the state, and schools that receive state recognition are mandated to teach it in order to award recognized degrees.Universities in Belgium, many of them also state-funded, will only accept students with government-sanctioned diplomas.The issue arose since the curricula have become increasingly detailed and controls have become more stringent.Education policy in Belgium is carried out on the regional level, and the Flemish law on education, which applies in Antwerp, states that children who finish primary school must "be aware of their bodily functions."Antwerp's Jewish community of around 15,000 people includes a strong fervently Orthodox community, and few liberal Jews.As much as 90 percent of the Jewish community is estimated to attend Jewish day schools. Not all Jewish schools in Antwerp are affected by the matter, as some follow the prescribed curriculum.Meanwhile, some community leaders claim that the state curriculum is acceptable according to Jewish law."Sexual education is most certainly not against Jewish beliefs. The Torah openly discusses all kinds of sexual behavior, and so do Jewish codes of law," said Henri Rosenberg, a local lawyer who teaches Torah law at Radboud University in the Netherlands.Officials with the Consistoire, the central group for Belgian Jewry, said it would not take a stand on the issue because it concerns a secular topic, not a Jewish one.image0081.gifJoel L. SogolAttorney at Law811 21st AvenueTuscaloosa, Alabama 35401ph (205) 345-0966fx (205) 345-0971mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED]Ben Franklin observed that truth wins a fair fight -- which is why we have evidence rules in U.S. courts.___To post, send message to mailto:Religionlaw@lists.ucla.eduReligionlaw@lists.ucla.eduTo subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlawhttp://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlawPlease note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.--Vance R. KovenBoston, MA USAmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED]___To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.eduTo subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlawPlease note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.No virus found in this incoming
Re: From the list custodian
In a message dated 9/6/2005 3:41:32 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My point was a serious one about how one organizes a course, and reminder that when people teach a course to argue for a viewpoint and to ignore other information it undermines academic integrity. The fact is this: a "History of the Influence of Christianity in American history" taught in a fundamentalist Christian school would not likely teach many of the topics I suggested; most American history coursres would teach a number of them, as well as teach about Puritans, the two great awakenings, the role of religious people in the antislavery movement and the civil rights movement.If Rick wants to play the list game, I think it only fair to explore the issue. I wonder. Several Christian denominations, for example, have engaged in close self-examination and repentance for their role in some of the things listed; justification of slavery, oppression of First Peoples, etc. Paul, did you derive your course topics from experience with Christian schools, or from your expectations of what you would find? Rick, it seems to me, wasn't playing a "list game," although he can speak for himself on this point; I took his listing of approved courses as a shorthand indication of how likely it was that a leftward liberal, non-western-tradition valuing decision-making body can engage in what by titles only seems to be a highly subjective and highly narrowly focused search for overly narrowly focused studies. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Every Idea is an Incitement
In a message dated 9/2/2005 8:39:27 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I wonder whether in this time of disaster, several list memberswhose contributions are consistently valuable may wonder whether a) theyinadvertently picked a fight with people who had civility reasons fornot fighting at this time or b)overreacted to an effort to raiselegitimate questions that was probably unncessarily provocative. Candidly, the pique about my posting is a bit much.The most sublime moments in personal history, graduations, memorial services, ground breakings, etc., have been marred by individuals whose view of the EC compels them to tell Johnny that he can't mention the Bible in his valedictory address, telling Suzie that she can't remember aloud for her classmates that her now-dead friend drew great comfort and solace during her illness by resort to prayer, by insisting that some memorial plaques, ones reflecting a keenly felt nexus between crises and faith, are less equal than others. If you are not one of the dunderheads who have taken a red pencil and scratched a line through the text of Johnny's or Suzie's remarks then I am not speaking about you, I am merely advising you that these real life instances occur. For those whose nestling into academia is complete, who do not practice in the real world at all, the antisepsis of their circumstancemay overwhelm the ability to understand just how harshly their efforts to vindicate their perception of the requirements of the EC are felt by those whose words, works and memorials are desecrated by the efforts. Hamfisted government actions, often taken out of fear of litigation, do not happen in a vacuum. They happen during the real lives of real people. The lawsuit to remove the cross in Los Angeles is provocative. It is a memorial to lives lost; to sacrifices made. Where is the chastening of the provocateurs? For that matter, how many on this list have used the cross case as an illustrative fact pattern with students, or on this list, or in academic writings, without pausing to reflect on the fact that for a generation described as the greatest that memorial offers a permanent, appropriate and keenly felt commemoration. "Unnecessary" provocation is a standard that seems inevitably to lead to subjective judgments and provide little effective guidance. In this regard, we could look at the recent list discussion on the conlaw list regarding the Iraqi constitution deadline. In the run up to the deadline set for the proposition of an Iraqi constitution, as government ministers, citizens, police, and our soldiers, were constantly in harm's way, one of the conlaw list members, one whose contributions to that listundoubtedly fits many readers'view of "consistent value," provoked a discussion with serious political overtones, in essence even if not in purpose, maligning the administration here at home for the artificiality of the deadline, the failure to grasp that such a difficult goal would not be won by hamfisted efforts, etc. I will not go back by date and see how many folks -- the good, the bad, the ugly, the innocent, the guilty -- died at the hands of the terroristic insurgency or police/military responses to it on each of the days that the discussion on the conlawlist went forward. I know that the number is significant. Did the ongoing slaughter silence the discussion? No. Was it provocative? Was it susceptible to the kind of reading that would lead to undermining support of the effort here at home?Ask those on the list who support the administration's and our Nation's efforts there. But, and this is the important question, should the question have beensilenced?Shouldlist members browbeat withpersonal epithets the parties who provoked a discussion that is continuing to this day on that list? I don't think so. Sure, I think the question was based on a misguided failure to appreciate the importance of the venture, but tell that provocateur to "shut up"? No. To seek to shame him into silence? No. Disagree with him? Vigorously, passionately, reasonably, fine. Silence him? No. Jim "Getting that Chief Joseph Feeling Again" Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Floodwaters and Undermined Walls
In a message dated 9/1/2005 4:11:37 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In a purely legal vein, I would note that the governor's call carries no penalty for noncompliance, nor any penalty for complying by praying differently, or to a different deity. These define a standard by which adventures in Establishment Clause violations could be measured. In fact, I suspect that a record of evidence could be mounted to show that, in the early history of our country, at least in the colonial period, that individual but public failure to honor days of fasting and prayer did, in fact, carry these kinds of penalties, and help to characterize and define the established nature of the respective colonial state churches. Of course, what happened in the colonial period, or in the States before Incorporation, for that matter, does not per se inform us of the meaning of the Establishment Clause but, as with the jailing of Baptist preachers, it can provide a persuasive backdrop against which to argue for Jefferson's or Madison's view of maximizing religious liberty. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: State no longer funding circumcisions, except religiously mandated ones
In a message dated 9/2/2005 3:43:12 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Any thoughts on whether this is constitutional?http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/12542049.htm ASSOCIATED PRESS ST. PAUL - The state's insurance programs for 670,000 low-income Minnesotans no longer include coverage of Viagra, sex-change operations or circumcisions, unless required by one's religion [or medically necessary] . . . . I was uncertain, based on the grammar, whether the religious exception applies only to religiously required circumcisions, or whether the religious compulsion modifier also applies to use of Viagra and the need for gender reassignment surgery. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Floodwaters and Undermined Walls
The wall is the central metaphor defining the meaning and work of the Establishment Clause for many commentators including on this list. When the government "gets away" with some emblematic behavior tinged with religious connotations, the hue and cry of breach is predictable. We are all watching with horror as the situation on the gulf coast goes from terrible to unimaginable. And in the midst of it, suddenly, the breach of the levee walls made the unimaginable simply a stop on the road to the unthinkable. But this list is for thinking. As I have heard the cable news bulldogs talking about lack of sufficient preparation on the part of the federal government, I wondered, "Is that really the case? Have all federal government officials really fallen down on the job?" It took me a few minutes of thought to recall that at least one federal official, a judge, had looked ahead to this day. Like the proverbial ant laboring through the summer's sunshine, he prepared for this eventually. And, unlike so many "talkers," he actually did something. You may be wondering about the identity of the judge in question. I am wondering how you could forget a judge who would have the prescience, the forethought, to see the inevitability of a future disaster of, well, biblical proportions, and take action. I am, of course, referring to Judge Ira DeMent. After he concluded that the Alabama Prayer Statute was unconstitutional, he issued a permanent injunction that was, if I correctly recall, much debated and with heat on this list. One key feature of his order, the one which demonstrates today his prescience then was his judicial ban on _expression_ of religious or devotional sentiments over school public address systems even in times of war, natural disaster, or serious community distress. This week, as Katrina has worn away at the levee walls in New Orleans, we have the news that another assault on the wall of separation took place yesterday, when Louisiana's Governor declared a Day of Prayer. Governor Blanco urged Louisianans to pray to God and even told them how to pray and what things for which to pray. You can read her declaration here.Or point your browser to http://www.gov.state.la.us/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=988. I wonder whether anyone will be found to stand in this breach?Will any forward thinking, DeMent-minded person or group will step forward to close it again, to push back the might rushing waters of government-encouraged, government-endorsed religious invocations of divine aid?Will People For, or AmericansUnited, or the ACLU, ride in to the rescue? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Hostility
In a message dated 8/29/2005 6:46:25 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: How does government subsidy of religious schools that discriminate in hiring and indoctrinate students in particular religious beliefs avoid 1A issues? Because taxpayer funding of schools necessary to accommodation and toleration of religion and religious difference respects high principles of the First Amendment. It is a necessary precondition to avoiding unconstitutional conditions in public education. Remember that the decision to require mandatory attendance is not imposed by the Constitution on the States, the States, by constitution or statute, choose to impose this requirement. But the strictures of the First Amendment (made applicable to the States by the Supreme Court's contortions of the Fourteenth Amendment) are imposed on the State. Having concluded that religious, and religiously diverse, students will be compelled to be in attendance at some school, universal funding can be accomplished without risking endorsement of any particular religion or of religion in general, simply to accomplish the government purpose of universal attendance. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: UC system sued
In a message dated 8/29/2005 8:49:47 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Or do you think that the Constitution requires the universities to be standardless and admit and pass anyone? They shouldn't have to learn anything they don't like or already believe to be true, should they? Where would you draw the line? I would start by recognizing that private associations are entitled to greater deference in the creation and maintenance of their relationships, and that government entities are entitled to significantly less deference, and very little discretion, certainly none that is "unbridled" or that is "standardless." Once I have that distinction drawn firmly in mind, I would invited anyone who is addicted to the exercise of standardless, unbridled discretion to take their thirsts to the private setting of colleges and universities not created by and funded by the State. There they may slake their thirsts for just as long as the wallets of those who crave such petty tyrannies can sustain them. In the state institutions that remain behind, I would insist upon strict adherence to the constitutional principles to which earlier I had adverted. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
The Original Message: UC system sued
In a message dated 8/28/2005 12:05:34 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A group of Christian schools is suing the University of California system claiming discrimination because they won't recognize and accept credits from certain courses, including one that includes a young earth creationist textbook in a science class. Two links on it:http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21474~3026833,00.htmlhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050827/ap_on_re_us/creationism_lawsuit;_ylt=Aj9doupMbYBM4QWi9_AfpjtvzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUlIs there any legal basis for such a suit? (Emphasis added.) I think that this case presents fascinating possibilities for discussing law and religion. Ed's question is whether there is any legal basis for such a suit. I think to the point of tears I have made clear where I would go looking for legal bases for the suit: (1) viewpoint discrimination and (2) standardless and unbridled discretion. In "normal" cases, that is, one's not apt to be distorted by one of the Court's peccadilloes (the "abortion" distortion factor, for example), any constitutional litigatorwould be drooling over a case that carried the possibilities of government viewpoint discrimination and standardless discretion. Mr. Brayton obviously doesn't need my help to defend himself, but as an experienced constitutional litigator let me say that I find Mr. Brayton's posts more careful with the facts, more logical, and better grounded in the law, than the posts on this subject by either Prof. Duncan or my friend Jim Henderson, whose statements about "standardless, unbridled discretion" seem to have little to do with the real world. I, for one, am glad to be able to benefit from Mr. Brayton's knowledge. I object to my friend, Art Spitzer's accusation that I am being less careful with the facts. I have adverted to the facts only a bit, and in doing so have adverted to the news source that Ed cited at the start of this thread. I haven't gone looking for other sources, read the UC webpages on approved and disapproved courses, etc. Just took the facts as Ed offered them. What I did do, and Art's reaction does surprise me here, is ask questions about other fact patterns, more and less related to this one, in order to try and tease out a discussion of governing legal principles. Art finds "standardless, unbridled discretion" discussions to have little to do with the real world (as a side note, the Supreme Court has agreed with Art of late on this point; see the majority opinion in Hill v. Colorado). I wonder why this concern in "other worldly." Has the ACLU developed a position that prior restraint doctrine as it has been is passe? Has the ACLU concluded that precious liberties, of religious exercise, of speech, press, assembly, know no truer friend, no dearer guardian, than the cop on the beat, the bureaucrat in the maze of government agencies? It is, perhaps, unfair to ask that Art speak for an organization when his voice on this list was only his own. But I get the ACLU email blasts and the kind of discretion that bothers me here and doesn't apparently bother Art is precisely what bothers the ACLU about the powers endowed on the feds in the Patriot Act. (When I poke at Art I feel that I must express my personal appreciation for positions on the right to freedom of speech and press that he has staked out in the past, including in cases in which I was representing parties). There was another comment by Rick that I inadvertently erased asking if I didn't think the First Amendment was at least a bit implicated in such controversies. I still tend to think the answer is no, for reasons given earlier about the irrelevance of content- and viewpoint-neutrality to assessing the way that universities organize themselves. And as for this point, again, I would not think that a search for constitutional grounds would succeed if this was a case in which "universities [had] organize[d] themselves." But of course, this is not such a case. As I understand it, the State of California has organized the University of California system. These are state schools, state institutions. I know that Sandy does not dispute this point. I can prove it. Let California make a condition of admission the taking of the following oath: "I attest to the literal truth of the Holy Scripture. I attest to the creation in six days of all that exists. I attest to the Virgin Birth. I attest the teaching ministry, miracles, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ." How quickly would Sandy, or his stand - in, be in a federal court challenging the condition of admission. This is about government conduct. True there is discretion to be had. But it is not vast. It is not standardless. It is not unbridled. Ed asked if there are legal bases for the suit. These, at least, are such bases. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel
Re: The Original Message: UC system sued
In a message dated 8/29/2005 7:06:40 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In a message dated 8/29/05 4:52:39 PM, Jim Henderson writes: Art finds "standardless, unbridled discretion" discussions to have little to do with the real world ...No, that's not what I was trying to say. I think many First Amendment cases can still be won -- some by me, I hope -- because the government is engaged in "standardless, unbridled discretion." What I was trying to say was that Jim's assertion that the UC system was engaged in "standardless, unbridled discretion" when it refused to accept credits from, e.g., a science course that used a young earthcreationist textbook, had "little to do with the real world." In other words, it seems to me that the rejection of credits from such a course is a clear example of *applying* reasonable and relevant academic standards, not the absence of standards. (I suppose it's possible that discovery will reveal that the UC system decides which high school courses to accept and which not to accept in an arbitrary and irrational way, but that seems to me quite unlikely.) But Art, I specifically eschewed the discussion on the science courses because the facts reported in the sources cited by Ed indicated the denial of accreditation for literature, history and civics courses. So I could get to the nub of his inquiry about legal bases for litigation via other avenues then the contentious ID/evolution grounds. And that's precisely what my posts show. From your response, I am wondering if the notion that the other kinds of courses were also subjected to disapproval troubles you in some way because you have, like Ed, recurred to the science issue. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: UC system sued
In a message dated 8/28/2005 2:33:39 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The admissions office sends the following letter to an applicant: "You have a course labeled 'American history' on your transcript. We've examined the syllabus, and, as far as we can tell, the course covered only the period from 1763 to 1861. Because you have not satisfied our admissions requirement, we are returning your application to you." Or, suppose the admissions office writes and says, "we note that you have a course labeled American History on your transcript, but we understand from a review of the curriculum and materials that the course probably emphasized the positive values of exploration and conquest, and employs the pre-Columbian/Columbian distinction to suggest that American History prior to European Exploitation was dark, dank and meaningless. We are returning your application to you for this reason." Rather than focusing on the Science issue that is so difficult for some to move off of, what will the Constitution tolerate in the way of viewpoint bias in these areas? Once we flavor the university's objection with implications for religious freedom, is there some constitutional reason why less rigor should apply to the defense of freedom? Should it tolerate more because religious voices are targeted by the bias? Should it be less careful of bias because of possible victims of anti-religious bias? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: UC system sued
In a message dated 8/28/2005 12:56:19 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Set aside the likelihood of success on litigation of this particular challenge. Ask this question instead. Why would a public university system decide to jeopardize its commitment from the people of the state and the legislature -- its necessary source of funding and the legislative grant of its existence -- to beard the lion of Christianized Christian schools? I have no idea what this odd prose means, but it appears to be entirely irrelevant Try this on for size. University exists at public grace. University is funded with public dollars. That same public has chosen to accommodate religious needs by creating a statutory framework for schools with religious affiliations. University tells public and religious schools to take a hike because it knows better how things out to be. Seems pretty clear, as it was before. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: UC system sued
In a message dated 8/28/2005 12:56:19 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I would argue that rejecting the pedagogical validity of such a textbook is not a "naked bias" but an exercise in educational responsibility. If the textbook said that science must take a backseat to interpretation of the Quran or the Vedic scriptures, it would be equally necessary to devalue such a course in preparing a student for college level science courses. Again, if the sources cited for the existence of this litigation are to be believed, the UC system is not focused on the ID/evolution question. It is one source of disqualification of coursework. But courses in history, literature and civics have also been put in jeopardy. The focus is not ID. You have banged the drum on the ID question and made clear how unscientific ID thinking is, but for the love of Pete, could you formulate a law and religion argument for why the university system is sending out form letters threatening invalidation of courses in history, literature and civics? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/23/2005 3:51:26 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The facts are what they are. Many American students have been drivenaway from the natural sciences because of the overreaching of somereligionists. But you didn't say that at all: you said the ID'ers want to drive students away from the natural sciences. Your conclusion that some students will walk away because of the overreaching of religionists addresses a remark you did not make, and answers a question no one asked. Did you have something to support the earlier charge, or are you abandoning it? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/23/2005 7:36:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In 2003 the Justice Department investigated a report of religious discrimination at Texas Tech University, where a popular and tough biology professor required students to pass his classes in biology before he'd write them a recommendation to medical school. He also required kids to explain evolution to him, to indicate that they understood the science. The protesting student argued it was a religious burden to try to meet those qualifications. It would appear that religious students are not driven from science so much as they ask science to be changed to accommodate them, from anecdotal evidence. That certainly reflects a re-writing of the history of that episode. I visited Professor Dini's webpage during his witch-burning era (when he warned students who doubted the fact of evolution that they would not be, in his opinion, suitable for further scientific training and that they would, therefore, be ineligible for a reference to higher education by him). He was, of course, welcome to his opinion, but he made a place of public accommodation very unwelcome on grounds of religion and deservedly drew on himself the heat and focus of the DOJ. And, at the end of it all, he took down his offensively noxious declaration. Particulary troublesome about your rewrite is the fact that it was only after he was the subject of a DOJ investigation that he changed his requirement from expressing affirmatively a belief in the truth of evolution with the requirement that students be able to explain the theory. Seehttp://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/April/03_crt_247.htm. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/23/2005 11:21:48 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The accusation that he was antagonistic to religion was and remains patently false. The fact of the matter was that the kid had made no demonstration of the academic horsepower required, and I suspect any suit would have been tossed for lack of standing. There was no showing, nor even hint of a showing, that Dini would deny a recommendation to any student who had scored well academically, but believed in creationism -- so long as the student could explain the theory of evolution. Dini was asking academic rigor only. How many times must a black man try to use a whites only water fountain before he has standing to complain abouta law enforcing the segregation of government owned water fountains? If he would use the whites only fountain, but never tries because of patent racial discrimination enforced with criminal law, do you claim that he has not been injured by the discrimination? A student wants to take a class offered by a professor, ultimately because he concludes that the professor's recommendation (should he do well in the course) would be an important factor in his effort to be admitted to some program of graduate education. The professor lists on his webpage the requirement that students acknowledge that white folks are biologically superior to black ones. Do you applaud the DOJ for recognizing it had no business involving itself in some "made up" case by a student who lacked the intellectual rigor for the professor's courses in any event? Jim Henderson Senior CounselACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
Michael, Ask Pascal about the role of faith in inspiring reason. Ask Newton. For that matter, ask Einstein. It is nothing but pap and drivel that can be found in the mischaracterization that those who find design in nature are seeking to drive high school students away from the natural sciences. Now if you had said the unnatural ones, of course, that is another matter entirely. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ -Original Message- From: Newsom Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Sent: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 13:10:34 -0400 Subject: RE: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article There is no secular purpose here. ID is not science. It is a cover for the theology of a particular religious group. To say that one should teach religious objections of a particular religious group in science class clearly violates the EC. There can be no secular purpose behind this selectivity. The IDers are not asking that the views of those religious that are comfortable with evolution be taught. It *might* be possible to construct a course on evolution and religion, or on science and religion (although I think that it would be exceedingly difficult to construct such a course for primary and elementary school students). But that is not what the IDers are asking for. They want special privileges for their religion, and their religion alone. Again, such special privileges would clearly violate the EC. They also want to drive American high school students away from the natural sciences, and there is, alas, some evidence that they are succeeding. News accounts have reported that in some school districts, peer pressure by overzealous religious students has caused other students to opt out of science courses. In a post-9/11 world, this is nothing short of a disaster. This doggedly persistent quest for special privileges for a particular religion or religious point of view poses great danger to our national security. The ?values? of the IDers will not keep terrorists and others at bay, but science might. But, this is nothing new or revolutionary. The country went through this in the period 1930 ? 1976 when science clearly trumped religion, largely for national security reasons. How quickly we forget, it seems. -Original Message- From: Rick Duncan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2005 12:22 AM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article Well, Ed, I think you are just misreading the decision. The case was decided based solely on the legislature's non-secular purpose. The Court did not hold that any particular book or curriculum was religion and not science. Indeed, no book or creation science curriculum was even part of the record in the case, which was a facial attack on a statute not a particular creation science program. This is why it seems clear that a school board that required Behe's book to be taught in science class as part of the discussion of evolution would not violate the EC--provided they were careful to clearly articulate a secular purpose. Teaching the controversy (i.e. exposing students to the ID theory) is a secular purpose and Behe's book is not religion (and Behe is a scientist, not a theologian). Whether ID is good or bad science education is not an issue the Court can (or should) decide. It is an issue for school boards and/or state legislatures to decide. Cheers, Rick Duncan Ed Brayton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rick Duncan wrote: Edwards did not hold that creation science could not be taught in the govt schools. Nor did it hold that creation science was religion and not science. It held only that the particular law (the Balanced Treatment Act) was invalid because it did not have a secular purpose. Even here, the Ct accomplished this only by misinterpreting the stated secular purpose--academic freedom for students--and saying that since the law did not advance academic freedom for teachers it was a sham. Scalia's dissent demolished the majority's reasoning on this point. I don't think this description squares with the decision itself. Here is the actual holding: - 1. The Act is facially invalid as violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it lacks a clear secular purpose. Pp. 585-594. ! (a) The Act does not further its stated secular purpose of protecting academic freedom. It does not enhance the freedom of teachers to teach what they choose and fails to further the goal of teaching all of the evidence. Forbidding the teaching of evolution when creation science is not also taught undermines the provision of a comprehensive scientific education. Moreover, requiring the teaching of creation science with evolution does not give schoolteachers a flexibility that they did not already
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/21/2005 10:47:54 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The district court in Edwards issued summary judgment, based in large part on the decision in McLean. It is worth remembering that in that case, in deposition, each of the creationists' experts was asked whether there was science backing creationism. Under oath, each said there is no science behind it. Each said creationism is based on scripture. A train stops at a suburban depot in Alexandria. Twenty people board. All are northbound. Some to Philly, some to New Jersey, some to the Big Apple, some to Boston. Some for business, some for pleasure, some returning to school, some to visit sick or dying family. Sure they can be described as doing the same thing at the same time. This result is obtained by proceeding on the most superficial level of examination. And this is the approach by which the "experts" in McLean can be argued to have something in common with, and speaking on behalf of, anyone else who shared doubts about Darwin's explanation during their long dark nights of the intellect. The folks who voluntarily abandoned any pretense of science were obviously working toward a different entirely goal than one of establishing a scientific validation for non-evolutionary models for the origins of life. Why would expert witnesses testify that it was scripture, not science, that filled the sails of creationism? At least two reasons occur to me: one, the view espoused by Ed, that there is not, in fact, any science beyond non-evolutionary models; the other, that, while there may be science behind such models, there were other fish (gills and all) to be fried in the McLean litigation. Those fish include taking square on the judicial establishment of religious sterility in the schools; or, perhaps,bearding the lion of science "faith" community over its hegemony in the schools. Before the big poo-poos start dropping on the list, I'd like to offer a present day example that demonstrates just these kinds of splits within a community that is viewed from the outside as so homologous. When Judge Moore decided to place a monument in the Alabama Supreme Court building, he chose an approach thatI thought was doomed to failure, even though I think that there are permissible ways to display the Decalogue on public spaces, and even though I share his apparent view that such displays have valuable purposes.This clash of views spilled out into the public during Moore's Decalogue stand. See http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=16555. If the proponents of creationism in McLean were motivated to overturn Lemon or to re-establish the right of local schools to espouse religious ideas in the schools, that is a choice they were at liberty to make. And if they eschewed the tender of scientific supports for creation or design, that was their choice. But Ed's decision to tie everyone's hands for ever based on their decision to go in to battle without weapons just doesn't carry the water he wants it to carry. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/20/2005 12:48:40 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, the notion that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny has long been discredited. And the reason it is a test subject on the MCAT would be . . . . . ? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/20/2005 8:31:03 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And, in any case, it's a college level exam. There is no way this outline could be presented as evidence of what high school texts and curricula say. You seem to be suggesting that the level of biological sciences education is more sophisticated and update in the high schools than in the colleges. Perhaps. I don't know. I do know that evolutionary sources are quick to dispel concerns that they still proceed on a recapitulationist model such as suggested by Haeckel. But if that recapitulationism is rejected, why not say something different than the discredited old saw. Otherwise it gets, despite its decrepitude, an undeserved intellectual nod. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/19/2005 2:14:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And do Mark and Sandy really equate Behe's scholarship with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Holocaust Denials? I wonder whether anyone on this list has read Darwin's Black Box? On equivalencies, I wonder whether anyone is willing to equate the author of the Protocols with the authors of Dred Scot and of Plessy? Jim "What's Hiding Under those Robes" Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/19/2005 4:15:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A physician qua physician simply has no professional competence to say, "I'm sure you're son is in heaven" OR "You're son's life has no meaning other than the meaning you choose to give it." No professional competence to provide comfort? Sometimes when I read this list, I think I've fallen into a Dean Koontz novel. The rise of the healing arts was surely more rapid because the Hippocratic Oath assured patients that the physician had a good heart, not an evil one, or, in the case of Sandy's physican, no heart at all. JimHenderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/19/2005 4:59:45 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim, it seems to me that your are ignoring the "physician qua physician" part of Sandy's post -- a physician has no special expertise or knowledge or training from her professional training to damn my child to heaven or hell than you do. Steve, Actually, I read Sandy's post and understood his meaning. I simply stand in amazement at the concept he put forward. With respect to your observations, it would be odd for a physician to think that providing comfort at the time of loss would be accomplished by making an observation about the eternal damnation due to any particular person. My point is that what Sandy says just doesn't work in the real world of patients and physicians. Patients expect more from clinicians; medical schools actually teach more. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/19/2005 5:50:57 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There are companies traded on the NYSE whose sole raison d'etre is evolution. This observation, is, frankly, strange to me. The meaning of the EC is derived from placing one's future public trading availability in the hands of an organization that pays its departing Chair exorbitant severance packages. Things have certainly evolved. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/19/2005 5:50:57 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We have methods for determining good science from bad, or current science from disproven science. Here we agree and disagree. Utter silence from that side of the aisle when I mentioned the long-discredited ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny nonsense. Good science doesn't look to the hopeful monster. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
In a message dated 8/19/2005 6:26:19 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No textbook in the past decade, and maybe in the past 40 years, that I have found, claims ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It's a red herring (there are those fish again!) to claim that is an issue in evolution classes. It's not. Of course, over time the specifics change. Eventually, my professor will have gone into the land of emeriti and future generation of students taking that class will not be entertained by his misconception. But in 1980 (not 40 years ago, yet) at college in North Carolina, one dinosaur taught it just this way. Oh, and by the way, as recently as the 2003 MCAT, that gatekeeper to medical education has tested, or had as a possible subject of testing, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. See http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/studentmanual/biologicalsciences/biology.pdf. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
The relationship of the brachial arches in different mammals, for example, demonstrates evolutionary heritage. Critics complain it's inaccurate to call them gill slits. Well, yeah -- they only develop into gills in gilled animals. But the heritage relationship is shown whether they are labeled correctly or not. So, you can holler all you want to about ontogeny and phylogeny. The facts are that the brachial arches demonstrate that giraffes and all other mammals share a heritage with sharks and fishes (especially with regard to the vagus nerve and the aorta). That heritage relationship is what the critics don't want shown, under any name, accurate or not. You say that similarity of structures demonstrates evolutionary heritage. I say that art experts testify, even in court cases, that similarity of form is evidence of common design and origin;"this painting is a Van Gogh," they tell us, and with experience and study, they identify the period of the artist's life in which it was created. Commonality certainly suggests common origin, but what is the basis in science for disputing common designer? You call"critics" those that complain that it is "inaccurate" to "call them gill slits." Language matters. How can science be served by making words meaningless. Because gills are related in some way (functionality) to lungs, why not call them lungs. In fact, why not pretend, all of us, that our lungs are gills? We can jump into the ocean, and conduct an empirical observation of whether calling something gills makes them gills. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article
David Klinghoffer reports on findings of the OSC in the flap over discollegial reactions to publication of a intelligent design article in one the Institution's journals. See http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/klinghoffer200508160826.asp. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: religiously-motivated political strife
In a message dated 8/3/2005 7:57:37 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, religiously-motivated political strife was important to the decision in West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette. And yet it is only in the fog of hindsight that Barnette became a religious freedoms case. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Establisment clause and oppressive taxation
In a message dated 8/3/2005 11:28:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I would suggest you reread Madison's remonstrance on Religious freedom; one of the clear motivating factors for the establishment clause was to preclude the possibility that people would have to pay for other people's religion. That was what was going on in Va and that, quite frankly, is what the voucher system is all about; when tax money ends up in a religious school, it means that taxpayers of one faith are forced to support the religious schools of someone else. Madison understood how deeply wrong, dangerous, and offensive that was. I am surprised that you and Rick don't see this. Of course you are right that the remonstrance addresses this issue. Perhaps the offense among folks whose religious faith prevents them from accessing government schools would be lessened if public funding was as faithful to Thomas Jefferson's vision as the Court has tried to make funding models be to Madison's worries. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: religiously-motivated political strife
In a message dated 8/3/2005 11:42:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I am surprised you cannot understand how executing people based on Biblical Law might be seen as "religious strife." Similarly, the taking of farm animals to destory them because they were "contaminated" by Granger might lead to religious strife. Yes, the Turkeys were not private property so that might not lead to religious strife, per se, but it does indicate the dangers of allowing religious law to regulate civil society. And that, is what the establishment clause is all about. The Bible prohibits beastiality. The Biblical commonwealth enforces the injunction in keeping with the command. You see religious strife. The Bible prohibits murder. Is the enforcement of the Biblical command evidence of religious strife? As an example of religious strife contemporaneous to the framers and the founding, the treatment of Baptists in Virginia works pretty well. The enforcement of laws against unnatural sex acts, as an example, is, well, a turkey. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 9:47:45 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For a more thorough analysis, see my essay about it or the full report itself. I have a hard time believing that this curriculum could survive a court challenge. Even without the obvious sectarian nature of it, the scholarship and pedagogy alone is utter garbage. Yet this curriculum is endorsed by groups like the American Center for Law and Justice. It's astonishing to me that an organization like that would endorse a curriculum as riddled with lies and nonsense as this one is. Ed, you are right to doubt that boobery and nuthatchism should be likely to survive a court challenge. Of course, I felt much the same way, when pursuing my undergraduate degree in biology, when a professor in the Marine Biology department, teaching a course on evolutionary biology, gave the lecture on the already long discredited then theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Obviously, instead of simply pointing out to the professor after class that the fields of embryology and fetology had discredited entirely that theory, I should have sought a judicial determination that his teaching of an unfounded article of human evolutionary faith constituted an establishment of religion. On a more serious note, why shouldn't ID and evolution and YEC and other origins philosophies be the subject of instruction in a sociology or psychology or philosophy course. I know, not so many of those taught in our elementary and secondary schools. One thing I know that I know is that a great deal that is taught in high school biology courses is taught, and is capable of being taught, from a point of view agnostic on origins, and without reference to origins. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 11:26:50 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think you missed my point, Jim. Why on earth does the American Center for Law and Justice, an organization for whom you are senior counsel, endorse a curriculum that is A) obviously sectarian in nature and B) literally full of false claims. Because the question you ask involves our past representation of a client, I must take care in how I respond. So let's try it this way. If you set aside the particulars of the NCBCS materials, and go to the underlying, constitutional law question, would you agree that, given appropriate materials,elective courses on the Bible as literature, as history, or in comparative religion, could be taught in our public schools under the current Establishment Clause analysis? It seems to me that there are not only afew answers to that question (yes, no, depends) but a few approaches to answering the question (I have to read your curriculum first, I don't have to read your curriculum first). And as counsel, there are often, you may not realize, questions that you do not ask your client, because you do not want or need to know the answer. I mean, a curriculum that passes on the ridiculous NASA myth as true, contains numerous false quotations (acknowledged as such even by the very man whose work they cite and who is on their advisory board) and presents the work of cranks and frauds like Baugh and Kinnaman is hardly worthy of your organization's endorsement, is it? One should be careful to distinguish between the NASA myth and the biblical accounts referred to in the NASA myth. For more on the myth, and why commonsense Christians don't pass along the NASA story, see http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-a001.html. It's unconstitutional because it's obviously sectarian and proselytizing in nature; the fact that the scholarship is also mostly crap is a separate issue. And it was to that precise point that I offered the ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny example. There is a lot of fecal materials in the wide world. Some of it masquerades as faith, some of it masquerades as science, and some of it, masquerading as science and faith. If there is a flaw in the execution of the idea of Bible curriculum in the schools, that is not proof that the answer givenby a lawyer specializing in constitutional law was or is wrong. As for debunked voices quoted by others, I don't spend a great deal of my time trying on or proudly displaying the mantels of such "frauds" so I am certainly not going to spend anytime defending them or joining in your crusade against them. I choose to focus on the neat question of whether instruction may occur. On a more serious note, why shouldn't ID and evolution and YEC and other origins philosophies be the subject of instruction in a sociology or psychology or philosophy course. I know, not so many of those taught in our elementary and secondary schools. One thing I know that I know is that a great deal that is taught in high school biology courses is taught, and is capable of being taught, from a point of view agnostic on origins, and without reference to origins. Well how would you go about teaching such things? Should teachers discuss young earth creationism without pointing out the myriad reasons why we know it to be utterly false? Wouldn't it depend on the particular course of study? If the course seeks to inform students that among the great questions that humans pursue the answer to one is their origin, and if YEC is an example of the kinds of answers, whether you or I agree on the rightness/wrongness of that explanatory mechanism, why couldn't teaching ABOUT it occur? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 12:05:32 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My main problem with the ID folk is that they are pushing it as an alternative to evolution and claiming that evolution is simply wrong rather than admitting evolution has happened and is happening and pulling to one side the philosophical and religious issues of soul and deity and the like. Well, insisting ongenuflection to the evolutionary hypothesis will get a guy in trouble, I think. At least, if I recall, the DOJ made some prof. in Texas uncomfortable when his practice of treating evolution agnostics and antievolutionists as nuthatches and boobs to whom he could not give a reference for graduate educational advancement. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 12:07:44 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, if appropriately written and taught, I not only agree that it could pass constitutional muster, I think it would be an excellent course to offer. But this curriculum is clearly not appropriately written or taught. The question is not whether a hypothetical course curriculum should be endorsed, but why THIS one has been endorsed. Read Gerald Bradley's 2003 response to Frances Patterson's criticism of the NCBCS curriculum and you may have some answers on why some have endorsed it. You can find his letter on the NCBCS website (I had to hunt the site down as I had no idea there was one). See http://www.bibleinschools.net/sdm.asp?pg=endorsements. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 12:33:41 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The US used to lead the world in science and engineering advances. If we insist on going down the road of anti-science and pseudo-science, we will continue to undermine one of the most important engines of our economy as the rest of the world surpasses the Americans who refuse to teach their children biology, geology, chemestry, and other sciences and instead teach them religious doctrine that has no place in the science class room. How old did anyone "THINK" the world was, when the wheel was invented? When the Roman aquaducts were built? When the Sistine Chapel was painted? When an apple's fall cemented an idea in Newton's mind? Is there a polite and professional way to communicate the following? I realize it comes across as harsh, but to be honest, I don't think that you were particularly concerned about how you communicated your views in the last missive. That would not justify be rude or needlessly sharp and harsh. But, at the base of it, your comments are fairly read as adopting an ugly, factless, lampooningversion of folks whose principal offense is to have developed and maintained, perhaps based on their faith, some commonsense doubts about evolutionary hypotheses. To exacerbate matters,you blame America's supposed educational decline and leadership in science on these dunderheads. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 12:07:44 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: yet it's trumpeted as proof of the bible's accuracy in the very curriculum that the ACLU endorses. Art, are you there? Has the ACLU finally been freed from the dark side? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 12:07:44 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If teh course is about the history of false ideas that have long been disproven, I suppose one might do that. You have a harsh distemper for Young Earth Creationists. Yet you seem not to realize for just how little time the hypotheses that you tout as laws of the Universe have held sway in the scientific community. And you seem unaware of how much human development occurred in the absence of any awareness of these ideas that you call facts: as though, like Athena springing full grown from the head of Zeus, all knowledge, all understanding, all truth, leaped fully integrated, from the head of Darwin. And as Athena insisted upon worship, you seem to think it would be appropriate to demand some kind of slavish devotion to the evolutionary hypotheses. As a sociological phenomenon, I find the talismanic devotion to the evolutionary hypothesis fascinating and instructive. It resembles, in important ways, the demand made, in C.S. Lewis' "The Hideous Strength,"on Mark Studdock by the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments that he stomp upon, revile, and spit upon, a mosaic of a cross in which he had no faith. In service of so-called science, this talismanism, this kissing the baloney stone (apologies to the Irish among us), presents one of the great dangers of evolutionary cohorts:the extent to which they feel no regard for constitutional limits on government conduct that intrudes into faith and conscience. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 2:16:07 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is an illogical conclusion. How does it follow that because I think that young earth creationISM has been disproven that therefore I have a "harsh distemper" for young earth creationISTS? I suspect that it is evidenced by tone of writing. If your tone was unintentionally harsh, then I accept that you are, like us all, human and fallible. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 2:30:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So your answer to my question of whether you just don't care that your organization is endorsing a curriculum packed with lies and banalities and presenting the work of frauds and cranks as credible appears to be "no, I don't care. It's legal to teach some type of bible curricula, so I don't care whether this one contains accurate information or not." The folks that wrote this drek are clearly hopeless. But one would think that otherwise credible organizations like yours, and otherwise credible people like Robert George, would be a lot more discerning before endorsing this kind of nonsense. It's every bit as bad as an historian endorsing a textbook full of holocaust denial or a physicist endorsing claims of a perpetual motion machine. Your response is fascinating to me. I have explained -- to the extent I think it is permissible to do --precisely why the ACLJ is listed as an endorser of the NCBCPS, that is, as an endorser of the concept that such instruction is constitutionally principled. You may do with that explanation whatever delights your soul. Repetition is not likely to produce greater insight so I will let go at this point. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Elective Bible Classes
In a message dated 8/2/2005 2:45:02 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Very interesting. Frances "Polemic Author" PatersonI would suggest that list members read my article (available on Westlaw and Lexis) and judge for themselves whether Professor Bradley remarks are fair and objective. And I have a funny feeling I already know who will conclude that they are. Dear Jim, Kindly tell Professor Bradley the next time you see him that "all of [Professor] Paterson's allegations are easily falsified" is very poor English and I would expect better from my betters (a law professor yet) at Notre Dame. Will you do me the courtesies (undeserved no doubt) of pointing him out to me, because I do not know him from Adam and of taking it up with him more directly. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: John Lofton/Oaths
In a message dated 7/29/2005 6:33:44 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Any alternativeargument must have Madison flip-flopping on religious freedom, and I don't think there is any evidence to support such a claim. From his first success persuading Mason to put religious liberty into the Virginia Bill of Rights, Madison's views on what the law should be never varied. The Virginia Statute had as its objective the governance of affairs internal to Virginia. It could, by the act of a subsequent legislature, be overcome. It did not affect the religious establishments or inclinations of any other of the States. The First Amendment, was, to borrow from Tolkien, "one ring to find them all (all 13 of them) and in the darkness bind them." I will grant that Madison's views did not change. But why must we ignore that different things were occurring when the Virginia Statute was put forward and when the First Amendment was crafted for propounding to the States? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: John Lofton/Oaths
In a message dated 7/29/2005 7:46:50 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No, most cookie recipes use both salt and sugar. A pinch of salt removes bitterness in other ingredients, and makes the sugar seem sweeter -- in the end, requiring less sugar for better taste. Sometimes a bright line just doesn't do the job. Nice try, Ed, but honestly, would you substitute the portions of sugar and salt? If your recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt, you do not substitute the salt for the sugar, unless you are going to transform the concept of cookie into something roughly approximating a saltine. Obviously, toleration and pluralism often are discussed in the same materials, much as salt and sugar appear in recipes. But not because they are substitutes for each other. Nor is toleration a substitute for pluralism. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: John Lofton/Oaths
In a message dated 7/29/2005 8:05:20 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim, are you seriously saying that pluralistic and tolerant are not able to mutually exclusive? A society cannot be both pluralistic and tolerant? I've never heard tolerance offered in contrast to pluralistic. I've only ever seen them hand in hand -- we are pluralistic and tolerant of difference that comes along with being pluralistic. I guess I've missed something. While I may not substitute salt for sugar, I will use both in one recipe. I think that the sine qua non of toleration is that there is a predominant thought or belief system, whether established by law as in England or existing de facto as in post-Revolutionary America. Toleration means that non-established or non-predominant systems are not the basis of entire exclusion from the political and social life of the community. Pluralism begins with a quantum difference; no one system enjoys establishment or particular predominance. No other system of thought/belief requires the permission of either the government or the established/predominant system to exist and have its adherent enjoy full participation in the political and social life of the community. If I am in the ballpark on the definitions (and I haven't looked them up to be certain), then Steve and I will simply have to disagree on the co-existence of pluralism and toleration. On the other hand, the results, the operation, of such societies probably look very similar on a day to day basis. Canada under the crown and the United States, for example. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: John Lofton/Oaths
In a message dated 7/29/2005 7:26:42 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: England passed an Act of Toleration in the late 17th century. It coexisted withan established church andtest oaths. The Americans a century later substituted "free exercise" for toleration. The idea was that toleration was something government or a dominant church granted to subordinate churches -- tolerated but not of equal status. I don't know if this is the distinction Jim intends between tolerance and pluralism, but it has a long historical pedigree. This is precisely what I had in mind. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Humpty Dumpty, James Madison, the States and Meaning
In a message dated 7/28/2005 2:33:37 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A. Jim Henderson. Well not quite. I guess Jim claims to know what they mean, and is not really claiming the prerogative claimed by Humpty Dumpty to define words any old way his fancy suits him. Now there's glory for you! But some others of us also think we know what they mean and see things differently from Jim even when looking at the same words. He sees unambiguous hard edges (and yet still must list what respecting establishment prohibits!) whereas I see a hard core meaning a fuzzy mushy area around that core. Jim and Gene see the same way, but not the same thing. I see it differently. Steve With an answer like that, you obviously cannot have studied any bar review course. A and D are never good guesses. I am surprised that you missed the entire text of the message save for the humorously intended hook. I think I was perfectly clear that what the framers knew precisely what was an Establishment of Religion. I was also perfectly clear that where uncertainty arose, it was due to the "respecting" language. Hard core center; any uncertainty in the edges. JimHenderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: John Lofton/Oaths
In a message dated 7/28/2005 9:22:03 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think we are both pluralist and tolerant or at least aspire to be, especially for constitutional and legal purposes. But I'm not sure how they both play out. It can't be that we're exhibiting tolerance by insisting on the Bible as the only authorized text upon which to swear an oath to God in court, etc. "Tolerating" one of many religions to use their holy scriptures exclusivelyfor various governmental purposes can't be tolerance. Can it?Excluding Muslims, Buddhists, and other religions from using their holy scriptures for the purpose of swearing an oath to God, that is, compelling them to use theholy scriptures of others doesn't strike me as tolerance, but the existence of these groups, that is the plurality of religions suggests that tolerance should permit a plurality of holy scriptures for the relevant use in court. But maybe I've misunderstood Jim's question. If I understand Locke's objections to receiving testimony from atheists and infidels, it was that there was nothing binding to the conscience such as the future state of rewards and punishments bound the conscience alike of Anglicans, Protestants, Papists and even Mohamatans. So, as in the evidentiary treatises, it was the oath, taken upon the Holy Writ, treated as Holy by all these faiths, that bound the conscience to duty and that evidenced reliability. Along come some who claim they cannot swear upon the scriptures (as the scriptures themselves forbid us to do) or that they cannot swear at all (although they also press the case that they are bound in conscience to tell the truth even without an oath. Intolerance would be to deny the evidentiary value of such testimony because of the scruples of the declarant. Tolerance with wisdom would insist that whatever binds the conscience in the way of oath or expressed understanding of the solemn obligation to tell the truth be allowed (well, perhaps not the sacrifice of chickens and the sacrificial deposit of entrails around the courtroom). But if a Hindu would swear upon an ancient Sanskrit scroll, a Buddhist upon his kharma, a Catholic upon the rosary or the pope, etc., tolerance would allow such deviations from the standard and wisdom would urge adapting to the circumstance in order to obtain the highest indicia of testimonial reliability (if, in fact, oath taking is, in some calculable way, related to truthtelling). Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Humpty Dumpty, James Madison, the States and Meaning
In a message dated 7/26/2005 10:53:47 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This was so even though jury had meant agroup of 12 ever since the 14th century. If "jury" isn't a fixed concept,I would suggest that"establishment" isn't either. Wouldn't it make more sense to reconsider the decision in Williams? Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Of the indefiniteness of Constitutional terms
In a message dated 7/26/2005 9:30:16 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I agree that one should use an author's intent to help define words and find meaning. But the words of a document such as the Constitution do not belong just to the person who first drafted them or who transcribed them or even to the body that collectively wrote them. The words of the Constitution belong to the people who ratified it as well as to the people living under it today. Steve and I almost agree. I would only have said, the meaning of the words of the Constitution belong to the people who ratified it . . . . Of course, there's a lot of difference in that difference. By allowing the meaning of the Constitution to change as the peoples' understanding of language changes obviates one important function of the amendment provision of the Constitution. Another obviation is in judicial constructions: Thomas Jefferson was keen, and I share his feeling, for a written document of certain scope and meaning. His feelings about the Revolution of 1800 being confounded by a judiciary populated by Federalists and the dangers inherent in letting judges decide what the Constitution means rather than being bound to a written text are eminently sensible IMHO. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Humpty Dumpty, James Madison, the States and Meaning
Here, for 100 points, is today's religion and the Constitution trivia: "Words mean precisely what I say they mean." Name the speaker: A. Jim Henderson B. James Madison C. Humpty Dumpty D. Thomas Jefferson Remember always through out A and D. So is it James Madison who demands that language bow to him? or is it Humpty Dumpty who is the omnilog? If the First Congress had sent out to the States a proposed amendment stating that, as used in all constitutions, statutes, ordinances, regulations and decisions of the United States, the number "one" shall be that number that is one whole integer more than zero and one whole integer less than two, there are still some folks who would argue about zero and two, and others who would claim that a disputed text to which the amendment was sought to be applied was not a constitution, statute, ordinance, regulation, or decision of the United States. For most of us, the task of figuring out the meaning of "one" would have been immeasurably simplified. Is the Establishment Clause as simple as all that? Well, Gene and I agree and disagree. I think it is simple in the main. That is, I think that the framers and the ratifiers knew precisely what an establishment of religion was and what it was not. They knew that tying the right to vote, serve on a jury, or enter a profession on membership in the established religion would be a direct indication of establishment; as would tax support of the established religion. The fuzzy edges are in the word "respecting" and its application to the Establishment of Religion. Now Madison, it seems, chooses to write, years later, about his thoughts on what the clause was to acccomplish. Gene wants this intention to control meaning. Perhaps it could or should. If his intended meaning fits the words used, then I would agree. If his intended meaning requires the words to be broken and then remade in the image of his thoughts, I disagree. I can't imagine why the thinking, years later, of a single, even important, legislative manager, should control the words he/she actually chooses to use. And I cant imagine why the States and their ratifying conventions should be denigrated if meaning must be packed into the amendment like ground meat and sage into a sausage skin. Of course, the same difficult task is faced by anyone who would divine meaning from the ruminations of the ratifying conventions. But, for me, the task is, as I said, made elegantly simple by the fact that Establishment of Religion is a know, definite and limited concept. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Where's the passion in the opposition to Roberts?
In a message dated 7/25/2005 12:53:10 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Does any liberal seriously think this president, with a solid Republican Senate majority, would appoint anyone we could expect more from? We Democrats and liberals should save the all-out attacks for unprincipled or unqualified nominees. As we closed in on the end of this President's first term in office, I reviewed the ABA Standing Committee's evaluations of his judicial nominations for the first term. These evaluations included successful nominations, and some that are still pending after re-submission (because of the "filibuster" problem) and withdrawn nominations (Estrada). Despite the Republican majority's previous disinclination to give special place to the evaluation of candidates by the Standing Committee, this President has shown that he has nothing to fear from such evaluations. From my review, treating the evaluations as a grading opportunity, I concluded that the President certainly deserved high marks, perhaps an A or even an A+ based on the generally overwhelming number of well-qualified unanimous evaluations and the number of well-qualified/qualified split evaluations. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Assaults on the England language
In a message dated 7/25/2005 2:12:25 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The First Congress separated religion and government by prohibiting Congress from establishing religion by law. But of course the First Congress did not do this. They proposed to the States that they do whatever it was that the Establishment Clause accomplished, by propounding amendments to the Constitution. In turn, the States prohibited Congress from doing whatever it was the EC prohibited Congress from doing. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: inJohn Roberts' America.....
In a message dated 7/23/2005 2:28:25 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: FYI, it is not a child, it is a fetus. And fetus, you see, is derived from latin, and means, "little one." This begs the question that follows, "little one" what? In a recent thread, it was pressed upon me that everyone deserved from every other one some elemental point of respect, and that absent such respect, we face the Shoa and the Holocaust. From everything I've read about the sociology of the Holocaust, it was not possible to accomplish without certain precursor steps that fit in neatly to the Nazi thinking and propaganda: distinguish and dehumanize. And even though the "its a fetus not a child" reflects a profound failure to understand our language and its derivations, it also the sociologynecessary to accomplishthat era's most inhuman behaviors. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: inJohn Roberts' America.....
In a message dated 7/23/2005 2:28:25 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Keep you laws off my body. Your religious views are not the same as mine, and you have no right to impose them on me against my will. I am more important than the contents of my womb, and FYI, it is not a child, it is a fetus. There is a bit more to be said here. Support for reversal of Roe, support for the ratification of a Human Life Amendment, support for respecting the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the OTHER, without regard to the OTHER's identity, is not a particularly religious concept or value. Unless I have missed something in this regard. Forget for a moment the glorious prospect of Roe undone. Leave the unborn child to the whims of its mother. Does anyone on this list contend thatit violates the EC to prohibit murder? Even ifwe knew for certain that the early, original statutory prohibitions of murder were premised upon the commandment to do no murder, and entirely religiously motivated? Jean's appeal, "keep your laws off my body," is made to emotions, not to reason. Her opposition to restoring the historic prohibitions on abortion appears not to be "constitutionally dimensioned" but personally derived. It is entitled to the same deference as this list would give to any other appeal to emotion. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Assaults on the England language
In a message dated 7/23/2005 10:17:08 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The problem, in terms of conflict, it seems to me, arises, not from use of the public square, but from the desire on the part of some to use government space and property for the promotion of religion and for direct attacks upon the constitutional principle of "separation between Religion and Government," (James Madison, "Detached Memoranda," William and Mary Quarterly, 3:555). But this is the essence of thefree speech and peaceable assembly principles that are the underpinning of the public forum doctrine: use of available public spaces (virtually always "government owned") for promotion of ideas of the speaker free from exclusion based on the disapproval of those ideas by others, whether government actors or private parties. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: inJohn Roberts' America.....
In a message dated 7/23/2005 2:35:10 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So long as Casey remains on the books, even if it is narrowed, it would, presumably, make impossible the kind of totalitarian system that Jean Dudley may rightly fear. Totalitarian system. Hysteria substituting for thought. Is it totalitarian to tell the white man that he may not, with impugnity lynch the black, steal the land of the red, and drive the yellow man out of his economic community? Is it totalitarian to tell men's business groups that they harm others by excluding them? Is it totalitarian to prohibit theft? Murder? Spitting on the sidewalk? Jean can and should do with her body whatever she likes, but she ought to be prevented from taking the life of a child even if, by the acts of others, it finds itself in so hostile a land. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
