This is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:
The Bill of Rights - Article the Third - Amendment I
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Those first 16 words are the sole constitutional basis for the oft cited “Separation of Church and State”.
There would seem little doubt, even to the non-scholar of the Constitution, that the intent of the Founders was to insure that the Congress could not mandate by law a requirement for adherence to a specific set of religious beliefs and also, via the second clause of the amendment, to insure that there would be no mandated prohibitions to the free exercise of any set of religious beliefs.
So how have we arrived at this juncture in our political and societal evolution where the Constitution is continually cited as the font of the ‘requirement’ that our public life be stripped of all public expressions of prayer, that all Christian symbols of worship be publicly banned, that we, a society of people comprised of a religious majority be denied and prohibited public expression of our diverse beliefs.
I believe that the extremism of the tyranny of ‘Political Correctness’ provides the ubiquitous foundation upon which is built an inane concern for offending anyone at any time for anything. I don’t suggest that there is not a basis for concerning oneself with proper courtesy and consideration for the feelings, cultural patterns and beliefs of others, but to extend that concern to the outright banning of any societies beliefs, because someone, somewhere, holds a different belief, is the denial of ones own personal value system.
If an individual holds a belief in a Supreme deity, being, or entity and refers to that entity as ‘God’, why is it a reprehensible affront to expose a non-believer or a believer in a somewhat different deity, to the mere mention of ‘God’. Why is ‘Political Correctness’ right in assuming that anyone exposed to these verbalizations will be horrified and demeaned and insulted and if , by chance they were; what kind of people would they be, that they would not respect us enough to accept politely, a verbalization of our belief in a deity. I think the truth is that any reasonable, rational individual would not suffer offense, at all.
We, ourselves, have carried this asinine, self denial of our beliefs to an unacceptable extreme on the altar of ‘Political Correctness’ and in so doing have provided a tool for the use of those among us who would fashion a new society founded in secularism and the prohibition of religions of any stripe.
The truth would seem to be that there is at work in this country a highly vocal and aggressive component of our society and our educational system that harbors an obvious bias against the Judeo-Christian heritage of America and will go to great lengths to expunge that heritage from our teachings, our public life and our culture.
The citing and misconstruing of the Constitution, in furtherance of acceptance of bans and prohibitions of religious traditions derives in part from the work of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Their political agenda, backed by substantial financial resources, has an entirely disproportionate impact on government, the educational system and the public in general. Their successful involvement in the civil rights movement in earlier decades, won them, and properly so, considerable national support. Such support, unfortunately, is sometimes too general in nature and too easily re-granted, deriving immediate acceptance for all future actions taken, on the presumption that those actions will reflect a societal good, such as may have been derived from their past work.
But, as in most organizations that achieve a degree of substantial influence and have a changing base of participants and adherents, the views, positions and actions of yesterday are not necessarily reflected in the views and positions and actions of tomorrow.
Any assumption that the ACLU has no ‘political agenda’ is patently incorrect. The ACLU is comprised of two separate corporate entities, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation. The ACLU engages in legislative lobbying, while the ACLU Foundation affiliates handle their general litigation efforts and their National Projects agendas.
In the arena of ‘Religious Rights’, the ACLU champions causes of and for the anti-religious and the proponents of secularism. Their constitutional interpretations revolve around the concept that the Constitution is a ‘living document’ and therefore subject to reinterpretation and application, that reflect the societal desires and focus of a minority of special interests and that the ‘intent’ of the Founders holds no relevancy in those interpretations.
Utilizing that constitutional view and their substantial financial position, the ACLU is able to effectively mount a strategy best labeled as ‘intimidation’, using the threat of lawsuits which must be defended against at substantial costs, to wrest compliance with their secular, predominately anti-religious positions.
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