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Filibusters and Bullies
Posted by Kevin

Several of the judges the Democrats have filibustered have a desire to do away with the separation of church and state and with the right to privacy. That is why Dobson and his ilk are pushing Frist so hard. And that is why the filibuster is so important: to protect people’s rights.

The separation from church and state is vital to American freedom. There are far too many people who would impose their own views of religion on anyone within their view — students, employees, people needing social services, etc. And that attitude inevitably turns ugly:

n Minnersville School District v. Gobitis, two Jehovah’s Witness school children, 10 and 12 years old, were suspended from school because they refused to salute the American flag during mandatory morning exercises. According to their beliefs, the Bible forbids having any false idols before God; and since all human governments are ultimately instituted by Satan, pledging to them would be a sin.

In a preview of what was to come, the children suffered horrible teasing, taunting, and attacks from the other kids. A local Catholic church started a boycott of the family store and business dropped off. Because of their eventual expulsion, their father had to pay for them to enroll in a private school, resulting in even more economic hardship.

What these bare facts fail to adequately describe is just how rancorous the situation really was. Gobitis (actually Gobitas, but a court clerk’s error has made the altered name stick ever since) was only recently a convert to Jehovah’s Witnesses. The national leadership had recently decided to make an issue of the forced pledges and asked people to stand up for their rights.

Jehovah’s Witnesses who challenged the practice were accused of working with or being duped by German sympathizers - which is ironic, because many Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany were persecuted for refusing to pledge allegiance to Hitler. It is also ironic because, at the time, many flag pledges were done not with the right hand over the heart as they are today, but instead with an outstretched right hand which has now become associated with the “Sieg Heil” salute of the Nazis.

And that kind of religious based assaults continued through out American history. Jeanne and Emma provide us with more recent testimony:

None of my memories having to do with religion are as traumatic as Elayne’s, but I know that even members of fairly large religious groups can be hit by discrimination once this starts. As a third-grader, I lived, for less than a year, in a small town in Tennessee. Except for my mother and I, it was probably one hundred percent Baptist. It was 1962, the year before prayer recitation was thrown out of public schools. Now, having been through my first two years of school at Sacred Heart in the Bronx, I was pretty used to the idea that the school day started and ended with prayers. The Baptists, in fact, said fewer of them. But the prayers were different, and they left out some of the best ones — weird to my eight-year-old’s ear. And barely into the school year, I made the enormous mistake of asking why, thereby letting everyone know that I was in the habit of saying the “wrong” prayers. I was soon informed, much to my surprise, that I worshipped statues, didn’t know Jesus, and was going to hell. That was also where I first heard that nuns all had babies, killed them, and buried them behind the convents. The “wine” in the chalice? Babies’ blood.

We were back in New York before the school year ended, so the torment never progressed beyond frequent reminders that I was bound for hell. But I know that Elayne is absolutely right that those displays and public prayers make people feel excluded to begin with, but worse, they empower the bullies among the favored group, reminding them every day that they are sole possessors of the truth.

And Emma has even worse stories:

When I was a kid I faced a hell of a lot of anti-Semitism, from having stones and eggs thrown at our house when we dared to put up Chanukah decorations, to being chased home by mobs or surrounded by kids on bikes and pinned to a tree until the tree-bugs started crawling all over me and… Sorry, the memories are still pretty painful, even 40 years later.

Now, maybe some liberals who didn’t grow up experiencing this irrational hatred (and Ezra’s kinda young) have no idea what seeing symbols of the majority religion all over the place does to your psyche. I’m convinced that the public celebration of others’ Christianity was a major contributing factor to the prejudice I experienced as a child. It just seems to me that public displays of Christ-stuff are another version of the tyranny of the majority - if they made me feel that left out, how isolated and excluded must Hindu kids feel now, or Muslim kids, or Buddhist kids? Don’t they count? Don’t atheists? They sure seem to worldwide (see chart above), but in a country that’s specifically prided itself for 200+ years on its acceptance of people from all different nations and creeds and beliefs? Not so much.

And lest anyone think these are relics of the past, may I remind you that the United States Air Force Academy is accused of encouraging and participating in the same kind of bullying:

Among the allegations are that cadets are frequently pressured to attend chapel and take religious instruction, particularly in the evangelical Christian faith; that prayer is a part of mandatory events at the academy; and that in at least one case a teacher ordered students to pray before beginning their final examination.

The report said it found that non-Christian cadets are subjected to “proselytization or religious harassment” by more senior cadets; and that cadets of other religions are subject to discrimination, such as being denied passes off-campus to attend religious services.

The report said that in at least two cases “highly qualified individuals were dissuaded from attending the academy … after learning of the official culture of religious intolerance and hostility toward those who do not subscribe to and practice evangelical Christianity.

The people behind the push to end the filibuster — the Dobsons and the Robertsons — are pushing for judges that would destroy the wall between church and state and make even the bullying of young men and women willing to put their life on the line for this country.

The filibuster debate is really this simple. Whose side are you on — the side of freedom, tolerance, and an America for everyone who wishes to be an American, or the side of intolerance, the enshrinement of one religion over all others, and the ones who would bully Air Force cadets because they are the wrong religion?

May 19th, 2005 Politics, Church & State | 2 comments