Florida’s “Religious Freedom”

| Sat 2 Jun 2012 | 13 Comments | 1840 Views

Author Bridget Gaudette

I'm an ex-Jehovah's Witness with a focus on Black atheism, humanism, and sex-positive dialogue. | @BridgetGaudette

On November 6, 2012, Floridians will be asked to decide whether or not they want to amendment the state constitution. The ballot item will read:

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution providing that no individual or entity may be denied, on the basis of religious identity or belief, governmental benefits, funding, or other support, except as required by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and deleting the prohibition against using revenues from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

Also known as Amendment 8 or “Florida Religious Freedom”, the amendment, fundamentally, moves to repeal the state’s ban of public dollars for religious funding, aka the “Blaine Amendment.” Those of us that stand for the separation of church and state strongly oppose this amendment.

In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant called for a Constitutional amendment that would mandate free public schools and prohibit the use of public money for sectarian schools. He opposed government support for “sectarian schools” run by religious organizations, and called for the defense of public education “unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistical dogmas.” Grant declared that “Church and State” should be “forever separate.” Grant felt that religious teachings should be left to families, churches, and private schools and not to be funded with public monies.

Currently, 38 of the 50 state constitutions in the United States forbid direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation and this is how it should remain. We want all 50 to adopt this progressive stance.

The potential harms are many, affecting our children, religious communities, civil rights, church/state separation and how our tax dollars are used.

The Truth about Amendment 8

Erodes Church/State Separation
Religious entities already can and do get state funds but Amendment 8 would remove all safeguards currently in place.

Hurts Religious Communities
Amendment 8 would allow taxpayer dollars to flow directly to religious organizations. The faiths most likely to receive such funds are those that are most popular in the community, disfavoring minority religions. Amendment 8 would also turn religious entities into government contractors, making them subject to government oversight.

Harms Floridians’ Civil Rights
Amendment 8 could allow religious groups to discriminate in hiring for positions funded with your taxpayer money. It would also erode protections prohibiting those groups from requiring the most vulnerable Floridians to participate in religious activities in order to receive government assistance.

Opens the Door to School Vouchers
Vouchers force taxpayers to fund religious education. And, there is no evidence that vouchers improve student achievement. Furthermore, private schools that receive vouchers are not required to meet the same standards as public schools, including civil rights protections and specific educational goals.

…

Make a difference by registering to vote and opposing Amendment 8 or by contacting your local officials.

Show your support for the plaintiffs on the case:

  • Rabbi Merrill Shapiro of Temple Shalom in Deltona and president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State
  • Rev. Harry Parrott Jr., a retired Baptist minister and president of the Clay County, FL, Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State
  • The Rev. Harold Brockus, a retired minister with the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ
  • Rabbi Jack Romberg of Temple Israel in Tallahassee
  • The Rev. Kent Siladi, Conference Minister for the Florida Conference of the United Church of Christ
  • The Rev. Bobby Musengwa, Pastor of Maximo Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg
  • Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association
  • Lee Swift, president of the Florida School Boards Association
  • Susan Summers-Persis, president of the Florida Association of School Administrators

 

Plaintiff’s Co-Counsel:

 

…
Your generous contributions will go towards my travel expenses to secular conventions and help to keep me blogging. Thanks in advance!  -Bridget

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  • Tommy Adams

    This is the same tactic used to suppress reproductive rights: using obfuscation and circular reasoning under the guise of protecting the constitutional rights of organization or group of individuals. These bills only survive with a lazy voting electorate. The Republican are masters of fear-mongering the public into believing they serve their best interests but are only beholden to very rich and constitutional twisted fundamentalists. This happens every time there is economic upheaval in this country. We need protest on the magnitude of the 1960′s but I fear those in power are following the lead of China to keep the masses fat and placated and they won’t care if they have rights.
    We can still vote, for now.

  • George Klaes

    First, you will notice the majority of the litigants against amendment 8 were protestant ministers. Generally, of the anti-Catholic type who favor continuing the privilleged status of protestantism in public education in Florida.

    Second, if you knew anything about American history you would know that President Grant was an anti-Catholic bigot himself who ordered the Catholic indian missions seized and turned over to protestant minsters. The primary beneficiaries of Grant’s action were Methodist ministers, and Grant himself was a Methodist.

    Third, it is erroneous to claim that the First Amendment requires a wall of separation; indeed, the First Amendment prohibits such a ban when properly interpreted. Hugo Black, a life long member of the Ku Klux Klan, was the first justice of the Supreme Court to write in a majority opinion of the court that the First Amendment required a wall of separation. Traditionally, the justices of the Supreme Court had rejected such an extreme misinterpretation of the first amendment.

    It is imperative that we pass amendment 8. It is merely the first step in restoring true religious freedom in Florida.

  • http://sight66.com Doug Philips

    Interesting. I wasn’t aware of this. Looks like I have a political issue to rail against.

  • George Klaes

    You will discover that Florida’s Blaine Amendment had roots in anti-Catholicism and racism.

    Catholic nuns were charged with violating the law for teaching black chlidren.

    Also see:

    http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/B_001_Colonies.html

  • George Klaes

    Funny. Americans United For the Separation of Church and State has already banned me from its Amendment 8 information page.

    They only pretend to welcome debate on the page. They only pretend to believe in the First Amendment.

  • George Klaes

    In 1922, the people of Oregon passed legislation requiring all children to attend public schools. For the nativists and progressives who had campaigned for the Oregon School Bill, it marked the first victory in a national campaign to homogenize education—and ultimately the populace. Private schools, both secular and religious, vowed to challenge the law. The Catholic Church, the largest provider of private education in the country and the primary target of the Ku Klux Klan campaign, stepped forward to lead the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    “In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the court declared the Oregon School Bill unconstitutional and ruled that parents have the right to determine how their children should be educated. Since then, Pierce has provided a precedent in many cases pitting parents against the state.

  • George Klaes

    “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments of this Union rest excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only” SCOTUS Pierce V Society of Sisters

    I would advise you to research Pierce V Society of Sisters and read the opinion of the court.

  • Merrill Shapiro

    I am delighted that you and I, George Klaes, have declared our mutual respect and our willingness to agree to disagree–or to disagree without being disagreeable!

    So, do help your readers out on this one. Are we to understand that General Ulysses S. Grant, first ever United States presidential candidate to name a Catholic running mate was, in fact, “an anti-Catholic bigot?” Doesn’t seem to make sense. Can you help us?

    Didn’t President Grant order the Indian Missions more equitably distributed? Weren’t they all Catholic and weren’t the Quakers, Methodists, Baptists and other Protestant applicants to run those missions disenfranchised? Why couldn’t other denominations also have missions, just as the Catholics did?

    Finally, is it your contention that James G. Blaine, himself a Catholic, the author of “Florida’s Blaine Amendment” had his “roots in anti-Catholicism and racism?” Help us to understand how this came about?

  • George

    His great-grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, served as a Commissary-General under George Washington in the American Revolutionary War.[4] Blaine’s mother and her forebears were Irish Catholics who emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1780s.[5] Blaine’s parents were married in 1820 in a Roman Catholic ceremony, although Blaine’s father remained a Presbyterian.[5] Following a common compromise of the era, the Blaines agreed that their daughters would be raised in their mother’s Catholic faith while their sons would be brought up in their father’s religion.[6] In politics, Blaine’s father supported the Whig party.[7]

    From the above it is evident Blaine was raised Presbyterian not Catholic.

  • George Klaes

    “President Grant sought to capitalize on the existing anti-Catholic sentiment by
    vehemently opposing the funding of such “sectarian” schools.”
    “It is that background that fueled Representative Blaine’s proposal.
    The Amendment did not receive the needed two-thirds majority in
    Congress to pass.”
    “Nonetheless, ‘Blaine would live in perpetuity as a symbol of the irony and hypocrisy that characterized much future debate: employing constitutional language, invoking patriotic images, and repeatedly appealing to individual rights as a distraction from the real business at hand—undermining the viability of schools run by religious minorities.’”

    http://www.slu.edu/Documents/?law/Law%20Journal/Archives/?LJ51-1_Manta_Article.pdf

  • Merrill Shapiro

    As to Blaine’s Catholic roots see “American Catholic Researches, Volume 8, January 1912, page 261 where we are told by Reverend Morgan M. Sheedy of Altoona, PA, (whose statement of
    November 20, 1895 was later quoted by James Cardinal Gibbons in the Cardinal’s Sermon of Sunday, March 6, 1910) that “many historical inaccuracies led to the belief that Blaine was not Catholic.”

  • George Klaes

    “In 1884, he finally won the Republican presidential nomination (on the convention’s fourth ballot). The general election contest was very close, and was decided by New York, where Blaine lost by 1,047 votes. During the campaign, Blaine listened impassively at a New York rally at which Rev. Samuel Buchard, a Presbyterian minister, derided Democrats as “the party whose antecedents are rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” The slur angered the large number of Irish Catholic voters in the state, and when Blaine declined to disavow Buchard’s remarks, his chances of winning the state slipped away.”

    Appears he was true to his Presbyterian upbringing.

  • George Klaes

    Perhaps the most compelling reason for Bridget Gaudette to support amendment 8 is that the supporters of the Blaine Amendment, the current version of Article I, Section 3 arrested Jacksonville/St Augustine area Catholic nuns for defying state law and teaching black children.

    Remember, the KKK supports the Blaine Amendment version which amendment 8 is trying to eliminate.

    Vote yes on 8.

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Category: Activism, Church-State Separation, Politics