Editorial Opinion
From Staff Reports
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791, states “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.”
The first part of this is commonly referred to as the separation of church and state. Do we as a nation truly uphold this separation though?
Currently there are debates throughout not only the national Congress, but also many state congresses with regard to legislation that is infringing on religious ideals.
For example, we look at the birth control issue. Abiding by the separation of church and state, the law cannot favor any religion. Since this has become a religious debate, it should therefore either not be enacted at all, avoiding the clash with the First Amendment, or an amendment should be made to the act that specifically states that anyone can be exempt for religious purposes.
This is not the only place in which this crosses over though. Anything that is funded by government, be it state or federal, should have no mention or affiliation with any religion. This is not an opinion, but law according to the U.S. Constitution.
Of course in certain areas this is overlooked and has been for decades, which seems to work as long as no one takes a case to the Supreme Court.
The United States is and always has be a religious country, but not one religion or sect; rather it was meant to be a place of tolerance. This is why many people immigrated to America.
The main problem with not abiding by this amendment is that there is not just one religion.
If, for example, Bible studies are allowed at a state school, then Koran studies will also need to be allowed so that no one religion is favored. The question of what should be allowed and what should not be allowed is pretty straight forward, our founding fathers made sure of that.
According to the Supreme Court website, http://www.supremecourt.gov, there have been at least 15 cases regarding the separation of church and state between 1879 and 1993. One of these is the 1971 decision of Lemon v. Kurtzman, which created three criteria to determine if an action of government has the potential for violating this portion of the First Amendment.
Going back to the birth control issue, we can look at the three criteria and determine if it is a violation of the separation of church and state.
Criteria one: “the government action must have a secular purpose.” Since the purpose of the bill is health care that would be check number one.
Criteria two: “its primary purpose must not be to inhibit or to advance religion.” As stated above, the main purpose of the bill is health care. Health care, in general, does not inhibit or advance religion, although it does, in principle it does advance life, and people do advance religion, that point could be argued. It is , however unlikely that the original purpose of the health care bill was to promote a religion, so that makes check number two.
Criteria three: “there must be no excessive entanglement between government and religion.” This one is, of course, the main debatable argument for those opposed to this bill. Technically if religion is indeed what causes someone to be anti-birth control, then that section of the health care bill does indeed cause entanglement between the government and religion. Since there are several religions that do indeed have a problem with birth control, then it can be argued that the bill, as is, violates criteria three. However if the bill were changed allowing exemptions based on religion, or specifying the use of hormone therapy versus birth control, thereby making it a non-contraceptive issue, then the entanglement would no longer be an issue and the bill would not violate the separation of church and state.
At the end of the day, if we do not want the government involved in our religion, then we should not allow our religion to get involved in the government.