Alright, I thought I might bring this up.

Seperation of the church and state is a constitutional law.

There is a seperation between religion and politics in the First amendment.

Does anyone know the difference between these two?

Does anyone know what this means?

There are several religious issues in the constitution:

Establishment Clause:  The First amendment bars Congress from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

So this means in the most basic terms:  (1) the US government cannot look like it supports any religion (including by how it uses its tax dollars), and (2) it may not make laws prohibiting people from freely exercising their religion.

From there, it gets complicated...

To make this discussion worthy, issues that might come out of this are:

school prayer

use of tax dollars to fund religious private schools

barring certain religious practices (polygamy, peyote use, animal sacrifice, etc.)

clash of laws:  gender discrimination and sexual purity for teacher hiring, for example.

prohibition of clergy participating in political process

And then there are cases about nonprofit activity exemptions for taxes based on the nonprofit religious entities requiring adhesion to its religious codes.

This is inacurate, seperation of church and state is not mentioned in the constitution.  People just sort of accept this lie, they shouldn't.  The whole seperation of church and state was the result of activist judges who took a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote that had no legal authority and desided that there had to be this invisible law of seperation between church and state.  Big lie don't believe it!

As for the establishment clause, it is meant to keep the state from sponsoring religion.  Back when america was made, almost all of the european countries had an 'official' religion, some countries were catholic others lutherian and so on.  The puritians recieved persecution because they believed that the only real authority for spirtual matters was the Bible, not the king of england, this got them chased out of england by the govenment.  The whole point of having an establishment clause is to keep the goverment out of religion, not the other way around.

"Separation of Church and State" IS the first part of the Establishment Clause.  The State must separate itself from appearances that it is supporting religion.

Here's a good discussion:  http://members.tripod.com/~candst/studygd1.htm

Goes into what Paulos says as well.

Apparently, there is another provision for separation of church and state:



When we study it in law school, though, we look at the Establishment Clause.  The above clause is plain enough.

Sorry heath but this just isn't true.

congress shall make no law establishing religion does not equal there must be an invisible line between church and state.

The argument is very simple and straightforward.  Why am I the only person that is annoyed that 9 people in black robes that are not accountable to the public get to make society changing decisions?
This message was last edited by the player at 07:26, Fri 05 Nov 2004.

You're not the only one.

Currently right now in Canada, there is a big hoopla on homosexual unions, and how it might not even be voted on, but just given to the supreme court.

Does it make sense non elected people are deciding for the people? Do we not elect people to represent us?

Judges are basicly safe in america, they get a lifetime term and the only way to remove them from office is the same procedure that was unsucessfully tried on clinton if I recall correctly.  50% to impeach and 2/3rds to remove from office.

What do you mean it isn't true?  What I'm saying is that what people commonly refer to as "separation of church and state" is based on what is listed in the Establishment Clause.  Do you think they are basing it on something else?

Who said anything about an "invisible line" (I think that's what you're referring to)?  You can't make up phrases and references and then say I'm wrong.

Let me summarize:

(1) There is no mention of "separation of church and state" in the Constitution;
(2) What people are primarily thinking of when they say that is the Establishment Clause;
(3) The Establishment Clause is interpreted by three tests:

(a) The law must have a secular legislative purpose;
(b) Its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and
(c) The statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

(This is the test established by the US Supreme Court in 1971 still in effect.  Not all people agree it is the proper test, but it is currently the controlling one.)

--Believe me when I say I know what I'm talking about on this subject.

What I'm saying is that even the phrase seperation of church and state doesn't come from the law.  It was just jefferson's interpretation of it.  I believe the context of the letter he wrote was to explane why he didn't proclaim a day of fasting like presidents before him did.

(1802 ad)

It's not line sorry wall.  I believe you that you know what you're talking about I just don't agree with you.  I think the supreme court was way off on that ruling.  Hopefully if we get some new justices they can get another shot at a similar case and overturn the previous ruling.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:34, Fri 05 Nov 2004.

This is true of federal judges, not state or local judges.  (I wish they were all lifetime appointed.  Elected judges are always swayed by politics as much as the law, whereas lifetime appointments assure that there will be more evenhandedness, and since they are hand selected for their abilities instead of voted in by an ignorant public, in my experience they are by far better judges.)


I think our wires were just crossed.  I was trying to give a source to pin down the discussion to what is actually law, whereas you were focused more on the history of the phrase "separation of church and state" which is not in the Constitution.

I still don't know what exactly it is you disagree with.  What is it about the supreme court standard that you disagree with?  Do you believe tax dollars should go to support religious groups?  If so, how much is too much?  How much entanglement with religion is "too much"?  Obviously, there has to be a line somewhere between theocracy and restraint of religion.  Where do you draw the line?
This message was last edited by the player at 08:53, Fri 05 Nov 2004.

Who do you think should make the decisions?  Besides, judges only make law by interpreting law.  Usually, if you don't like their decision, it is simply because of the original law being bad.  They're not perfect, but I'm not sure what your alternative solution is.

I'd be fine with it if that is all they did, but contemporary judges seem to ge beyond the scope of what they are supposed to do.

That's so true I won't even expand on it. <*grumbles about personal experience and bad judges*>

http://story.news.yahoo.com/ne...tus_ten_commandments

Yeah, this cleansing america of religion is just hog-wash, so maybe scripture offends, SO WHAT?!

What laws says people have the right to be offended?  And why does someone being offended make it ok to silence someone else's voice?

This one is cool too.

Crazy, huh. :)

Anyone see this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11...shington/11sect.html

If a city accepts a donated 10 commandments monument for their park, should they have to also accept a donated "seven aphorisms" monument as well?  Is a donated monument part of the free speech of the government, or of the donor?  If the former, does displaying a donated religious statue indicate governmental preference of that religion, and rejecting one indicate governmental rejection of that religion?  If the later, can the government choose who gets to exercise their free speech in the public park?  Its an interesting twist on the 10 commandment monuments issue...

One more question if I may... Isn't it just splitting hair?

Not sure I follow, Tzuppy.  How do you mean?

Isn't the issue of one monument in one park too small to warrant scrutiny?

Well, every situation is just one thing in one place.  The ruling that courts make, though, will apply to all parks, and all government property probably.  Its a specific situation, but how it turns out will apply generally.  And, since it's a matter of the separation of church and state, and of freedom of speech, the core issues are quite important, even if the specific case that brings the conflict into consideration isn't particularly important.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:41, Tue 11 Nov 2008.

I don't believe separation of church and state applies to local governments, only to the federal and state governments.

That's an interesting take, and one I haven't heard before.  Do you know if anyone has made that kind of argument in these kind of cases before?

Do you think it would be legal for a state to select a state religion, then, and ban all others from being practiced within the state?

Put another way, are you saying the bill of rights only limits what the federal government can do, not what state governments can do?  If so, could states ban firearms?  Could city councils eliminate habeas corpus?

While I could see the argument from a purely legal standpoint, it would seem to open a very dangerous loophole if it worked.

No, banning religion is a violation of the first amendment.



No, the bill of rights limits what the states can do through the 14th amendment. City councils and the like MAY HAVE powers that are not limited as such. I don't believe city councils have the power to define criminal law (which would include Habeas Corpus issues) or even civil law (banning other religions from practice), but they can levy taxes, fund things, put in place minor regulations, etc. I believe a city could choose to support a church, or a religious ceremony, if it chose, but I may be wrong.

Hmm, that's interesting really.  I'd be quite keen to know just how much power local governments have, and how the constitution affects them, actually.

Heath (or anyone else in the know), can you shed any more light on how the constitution applies to local governments?

The separation of church and state is one of the fundamental principles of the federal constitution.  To my knowledge, all state constitutions have a similar provision.

It applies to ALL public entities.  A local government is always subservient to the state laws.  Think of it like this:  The states are sovereign in and of themselves.  They are like independent nations....EXCEPT to the extent they have ceded that sovereignty to the federal government (i.e., to be a part of the "United States").  So state law is really the most important one for local affairs, but the federal Constitution applies to all states (as part of the sovereignty handed over).  So separation of church and state trickles down and applies to all public bodies, local, state, and federal.

Local governments really don't have all that much authority.  They typically pass ordinances.  A really good example is San Francisco.  Its local government has passed ordinances such as banning discrimination against transexuals and androgynous individuals, a higher minimum wage, detailed requirements for employers providing health insurance, etc.  They all comply with state laws, but impose more restrictions in some areas (and could be challenged potentially as violating state laws, such as the gay marriage issue was challenged when the SF mayor was charged with violating state law by performing gay marriages which was against the law created by Proposition 22; then the supreme court created a new fundamental right to dignity and stature under the state constitution to justify the social issue of gay marriage (which 3 of the 7 justices said was completely improper), which then led to Proposition 8 to change the state constitution to ensure that marriage is between only a man and a woman--so now (or by Dec. 3) gay marriages cannot be performed by public servants because the state constitution says so.)

Cool, thanks Heath.

In light of that, what do people think of this case?  If the city rejects one religious monument, but allows another, is that violating the establishment clause?  Should the city allow the 7 aphorisms monument?  Get rid of the 10 commandments monument?  If the city tries to argue that the 10 commandments monument isn't really a religious message, do they have a strong case?

     From what I understand (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong <grin>), the 10 commandments thing was a private donation. If someone wanted to also make a donation of a different set of rules (7 aphorisms or 3 laws or whatever), then that ought to be allowed as well, but I can't see the legal basis for removing the thing just becos no one else donated a different one.

Yeah, that's basically what the case is about: should someone else be allowed to donate their monument as well.  The city doesn't want to let them.  So one option they could use if the court rule against them, would be to say "no donations of any religious monuments at all."  Then they could keep out the new monument, but they'd also have to get rid of the old one.  I don't think anyone is arguing that the city can't accept on monument if no other group also gives one.  I think they're arguing over whether the city is allowed to pick and choose which religious groups can donate monuments to the city's parks.

A similar battle has been raging for years in San Diego.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...ad_cross_controversy

Is it a war memorial or a religious monument?

That is bollocks. What is wrong is wrong. Like slavery. Individual states may not violate rights of its citizens.



Of course not. Everywhere in the world, (possibly except in US) municipal governments and councils are considered a part of executive (not legislative) branch of government.



Only a mind of a US conservative can fathom something ridiculous like that.



Again we're reliving a South Park episode.



That's my point. The matter is so miniscule that no court should bother with it.



And if a religion should decree that black skin is a mark of the devil or that women cannot attain salvation except by complete obedience to men?



That's a bit difficult to understand considering 14th amendment was passed some 77 years after the bill of rights.



Again slavery.



This is for a different conversation.



Precisely my point, splitting hairs. Should we obliterate every trace of majority culture to "preserve" the minority ones? In Belgrade we had a tax placed on public transportation for completing (Orthodox) Temple of St. Sava. Liberals rose the rout, of course, but courts didn't want to bother with 1 dinar (two US cents) per ticket. Of course they should have split the money proportionally among churches so only 85% should go to the Orthodox Church, but to say that government cannot put money or use a cross as a symbol of reverence for the dead is simply wrong.

I think it's offensive to try to remove the monument.  The only ones complaining are the atheists, not the Muslims or Jews, and not me, even though my religion does not use the cross as a Christian symbol.  This nation was founded "under God," and people need to remember that the government just can't support a particular religion (but could actually support its humanitarian efforts, education, etc., if reasonably applied) or suppress religious freedom.  But monuments and recognition of religion is important to the survival of a religiously oriented country (as opposed to a socialist country where the state is put above God in importance).

That's one key point of the whole legalized marriage issue.  It could end up causing the government to step on the free exercise of religion by taking away tax benefits of churches that refuse to perform gay marriages.

I don't think you know your American law very well. The 14th amendment was made for a reason, because the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states prior to that (and some seem to think it still doesn't).



This is not the case in the US. A state is considered an independent political entitity. It does not have to answer to the federal government on most topics. It's only now that the feds have begun giving money to states that they've gotten serious leverage. An example is drinking laws. Prior to around 1988, each state set its own minimum drinking age, if any. The federal government, who was channelling funds for building highways to the staes, said if states wanted to continue getting that 'free' money, they had to set their minimum drinking age to 21. Everyone complied because, hey, it's free money. The federal government has continued to do this on a number of subjects. But ultimately, the state can give the federal government the finger. There are also a number of laws where the federal government has overstepped its bounds, but no one cared enough to challenge it. In short, state governments aren't any more a part of the federal executive branch than you are. They were, to the contrary, meant to be a balance of power agains tthem.

More local governments vary based on the state, etc. Some towns are incorporated, some are counties, some are public municipalities, etc. Based on that, that determines where they fall in regards to where they get their power.



It being a freedom of speech and religion issue, I think it very important the court deals with it. Maybe you don't, but I guard my freedoms fiercely.



I believe there are laws now saying you can't descriminate based on X or Y. I'm not aware of any religion which has attempted to limit people based on race, so I don't know if it came up. But for instance, I don't believe hair color is a protected trait (except as it relates to race). If I said blondes aren't allowed, and it was literally my town that I owned, I don't see why I couldn't exclude them.



What's difficult to understand about that?



That's slavery? Your comment is a little unclear.



Wrong in which way?

This nation was founded "under God,"

Really? Where does it say that? I can't recall that line appearing anywhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.

But monuments and recognition of religion is important to the survival of a religiously oriented country

Religions make plenty of money, they can afford to put up their own monuments.

(as opposed to a socialist country where the state is put above God in importance).

What are you talking about? Standard socialism acknowledges the separation of church and state, just the same as the United States.

It could end up causing the government to step on the free exercise of religion by taking away tax benefits of churches that refuse to perform gay marriages.

No, it couldn't, no more than the legalization of interracial marriage threatened the free exercise of religion.

Wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things that your law has to tell.



I know that, but frankly because some states were abusing their citizens the federal government had to step in. It went to such extent that peoples of the rest had to do something about it.



You mean secede? Haven't they tried that already?



My point is that it is a matter where intuition rather than precise law does better job of governing.



You never heard of white supremacist churches?



Because it's wrong???

And besides, how can anyone own a town?



How bill of rights is supposed to do anything to something which was created 77 years later.



Oh, come on. We both know that a number of US states were openly condoning slavery and later suppression of human rights of black people. Clearly somebody had to do something and the only one who could do anything was the federal government.



First and foremost in terms of censorship and then in terms of multiculturalism.

Religions make plenty of money, they can afford to put up their own monuments.

Of course, but the question I'm putting to you Falkus, is where to draw the line. If one cannot use cross as a part of a public memorial, what about angels? Or Michelangelo's Creation of Adam?

You are wrong.

The precise wording reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;...."  This, by extention, applies to all other jurisdictions as well, including cities and states.

By supporting a church, or religious ceremony, they are respecting an establishment of religion.  This goes beyond "Separation of Church and State".  This basically means no place can treat any religion differently than any other.  If the city supports one church, it has to support all of the equally in order to meet this clause.

Yes, that is correct. But the point is, the federal government is not the same as the state governments, who aren't the same as the local governments, hence the same rules don't always apply. Local governments can do things like tell you what color you can or can't paint your house, but that would seem to be an infringement on one's right to property if enacted at the state or federal level.



No, they can simply elect not to enact laws the federal government is pushing. There's nothing stopping any state, say Louisiana, from saying 'we will lower our drinking age to 12', as long as they're willing to take a cut to their income from federal sources.



I don't trust intuition when it comes to my rights, because intuition is not repeatable, and depends on the honesty of the judge.



As churches which enforced a rule of disallowing certain people entrance? Actually no. I'm curious how it turned out.



So? It's my property! Maybe you think it's wrong for me to burn piles of money or own an SUV. But it's my property. That means I can set whatever stupid, arbitrary rules I want. If you don't like my arbitrary rules, get off my property. On the flip side, you can set whatever stupid, arbitrary rules you want on your property. If I'm visiting your house and you tell me I must drink all liquids upside down or get out of your house, well, if I don't do what you ask, you can have me dragged out for trespassing.



The same way someone can own a house, but bigger.



I don't understand. The Bill of Rights represented the rights of individuals and the states when dealing with the federal government. The relationship between individuals and their states was dealt with by that state's respective constitution (all states have them).

It was determined that some states were not respecting the absolute rights the Bill of Rights recognized, and therefore the government decided it had to step in to fix this abuse of power.



Yes... But I'm not seeing the connection to the issue at hand. What does slavery have to do with religion?



Ah, agreed. But that's because the cross has a non-religious aspect to it as well. Can the government put up a crucifix at town square?

Sheesh, gotta say, until the very last couple years, it seemed less like a battle, and more like the city just repeatedly ignoring the courts.  Now it sort of seems like the courts ignoring the constitutions.  I have to say, this really does seem like a pretty cut-and-dry case of the state (and now federal government) favoring a religion.  What I would guess people who want the cross there actually object to is the law banning preference for religion, not correctness of the early rulings.  They seem to think the state should be able to favor a religion, but don't want to change the actual constitution to allow it.  Ironically, I bet many of the complain about "activist judges" in other situations. ;)


Actually, according to your link, the plaintiffs in the 2006 case are "the Jewish War Veterans, a Muslim, and several San Diego citizens."  Of course, even if it only were atheists complaining, would that matter?  Do atheists no count?  Do their rights not get considered?


Like I said, what you actually seem to object to is the idea that the state (or federal government) isn't allowed to show preference to a religion.  It's doesn't seem to be the case that you don't think this is actually a religious issue, but rather that you think it is a religious issue, and that the state should be allowed to show preference for a religion.  The correct course of action would seem to be changing the constitutions, rather than trying to argue that it's not actually a religious monument.


Heath, I've gotta ask:  what's your stance on gay marriage?  I haven't been able to figure it out from the posts you've made lately. ;)  Really mate, let's keep that discussion to its own thread, and not just allude to it with every single post in every single thread. ;)  If you think churches have a fundamental right to tax benefits, I'm happy to debate that in its own thread.

Except that your intuition doesn't seem to match up with mine.  Laws are there to solve cases where people disagree, like this one.  Both sides might feel it's completely obvious that they're right, as I'm sure both do in these cases.






Well, personally, I have no problem with censorship of the government.  The government isn't a person.  It's rights should be limited.  No one is arguing that you or I can't put up a cross monument on our property.  That would be censorship to be afraid of.  But limiting what messages the government can send, or what it can spend it's money on?  That doesn't bother me.

Also, no one is saying the government can't use crosses as symbols of reverence for the dead.  Federal cemeteries are full of crosses marking grave sites of soldiers (and full of plenty of other religious symbols as well).  The question is whether the government can use a cross (or a 10 commandment monument, or whatever) to promote one religion while not promoting other religions in the same way.  In the case Heath linked to, the cross didn't seem to be originally built as a war memorial, but rather as a religious symbol.  The war memorial was built well afterwards, and no one is trying to remove that aspect of the park.  In the case I linked to, the 10 commandments monument had nothing to do with reverence for the dead, it was just a promotion of a religion.

Sorry, but this is a hot topic that is current and it bleeds over into the other discussions and is germaine to this discussion.  So I'll bring it up whenever I see the connection.  (Maybe you don't live in California and don't realize that this topic is in every news broadcast every day right now.)

For example, the biggest issue with our church supporting Prop 8 was its potential to affect the free exercise of religion.  Otherwise, the church does not typically get involved in political issues.  Obviously, this is a separation of church and state issue that is current and a hot topic.

The right to tax benefits is itself a separation of church and state issue and belongs squarely in this thread.

Actually, I lived in San Diego, so I know a little more about the "real story" here.  The monument is viewed by most there as a memorial to veterans, not a particular religious support.  The fact that it displays a religious emblem is, I think, a ridiculous reason to remove it from public lands, particularly when it has been there for almost a hundred years and is practically a state monument of historical significance.

Most in the community, of all religions, don't really want to see it removed, so this is more like the courts getting in the way of the will of the people over something which is only marginally religiously oriented.


You need to read between the lines.  Note that the 2006 lawsuit (not the previous lawsuits) state this fact, AND it was the ACLU representing them.  Essentially, you have people of all religions saying "who cares?" and then the ACLU digging up some people of different religions and using them as proxies for the religions when in fact the vast, vast majority of people in those religions don't care.

And why does it matter?  Because the idea of separation of church and state is primarily to avoid the persecution of atheism, not the right of atheism to weed out all religion from our public forum.  So an atheist would have to prove that this somehow persecutes them, whereas a Muslim or Jew would have to show that their religion is being undercut by preference for another religion.  Thus you have the ACLU digging up religious people to fight the battle as of the 2006 lawsuit.


What?  There are 2 points:

1) This is a monument for veterans that's been there for almost a hundred years and is of historical significance.  For this reason, it should not be considered primarily a religious monument.

2) Even if it were a religious monument, our nation was founded on faith in God, a nation "under God," and similar notions.  You are misconstruing the argument.  The state is not preferring a religion by allowing the monument.  It would be different if the state were redirecting taxpayer funds to a purely religious cause, but honoring a religious way that was the foundation of our society is different from supporting a religion through official spokespeople or taxpayer funds.

I.e., our founders never meant for religion to be suppressed but to be celebrated, and were concerned with the chilling effect of supporting some religions over others.  This falls outside those concerns, as no one except the ACLU people seem to think it supports a religion.

In other words, there's no "wall of separation" for the principle of separation of church and state.  It's a very complicated separation, not a simple decision based on something just being religiously oriented.

Okay, fair enough, let's hear the argument then.  Why should church groups be tax exempt, if they don't agree to follow the laws of the land?

And why do you feel prop 8 affected your right to exercise your religion?  In what way does someone else's marriage mean you can't do whatever you like in your home, including following whatever religion you choose?  How does gay marriage limit your free exercise of religion?

Wait, it's been there almost 100 years, and is a memorial to veterans?  Which veterans is it a memorial to?  From your link it sounded like the memorial wasn't added until 1998, and is a memorial to veterans in the korean war.  I guess I have a hard time buying the argument that it wasn't originally intended as a symbol of christianity.


Does a majority wanting it there really matter if having it there violates the state constitution?  The reason that part was added to the constitution was to protect minority groups, so I think it's entirely appropriate for a group in the minority to appeal to the clause.



Again, do majorities matter in this case?  And, more to the point, again, why does it matter if its mostly atheists?  Aren't atheists subject to the same laws?  Don't they have the same rights?


Actually, the clause in the california constitution seems to pretty clearly be there to stop the government from promoting or favoring one religion.  I don't think it's merely to stop persecution.


Okay, and if there were just one, single religious person, should the constitution not apply?  Can a single person, who no one else agrees with not raise a case and win it?


According to your link, the memorial to veterans has been there only since 1998.  It was for many years referred to as an Easter Cross.  In 1954 the cross was dedicated to "our lord and savior Jesus Christ."  It sure sounds like a religious monument to me.  Also, no one, from what I can tell from your article, is trying to remove the memorial, just the cross which predates it.


This is just what I was saying in my post:  You seem to think it's okay for the government to have religious monuments because the nation is (in your view) a religious one.  But the CA constitution seems to say otherwise.  Honoring a religion, whether or not it was the foundation of society, is very much is an act in support of that religion, and thus is barred by the CA constitution.  Like I said, what you seem to disagree with is the CA constitution.


Exactly.  Religion is to be celebrated, but not by the government.  The chilling effect of supporting one religion is a very real thing.  Even if only one person feels it.


Does it matter if only the ACLU think it supports a religion?  Do people in the ACLU not have rights under the CA constitution?


I don't know, Heath.  The CA constitution is even clearer than the US constitution on this.


[emphasis added by Tycho]
To me, this seems like a pretty open-and-shut case (as it did to the judges the first 3 times it went to court, apparently), and the disagreement is more about what the constitution should allow than over what it does allow.


Also, Heath, what are your thoughts on the case I pointed out?  Do you think the town should allow the 7 aphorisms monument?

For example, the biggest issue with our church supporting Prop 8 was its potential to affect the free exercise of religion.

Why would any homosexual couple want to get married in a church that opposes their union in the first place?

Most in the community, of all religions, don't really want to see it removed, so this is more like the courts getting in the way of the will of the people

Isn't the whole point of the courts not to bow down to the will of the people in order to avoid the tyranny of the majority?

2) Even if it were a religious monument, our nation was founded on faith in God, a nation "under God," and similar notions

Under god does not appear anywhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. It appears only in the pledge of allegiance, and was, in fact, only added to the pledge in 1954, as part of the anti-communist fervor sweeping the nation.

The United States was not founded on the basis of any religion or religion in general. It was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment.

I.e., our founders never meant for religion to be suppressed but to be celebrated,

It's not the suppression of religion. It's just simply not supporting it.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:01, Thu 13 Nov 2008.

Probably for the same reason people who disagree with the Catholic Church would wear flamboyant clothes and go up to receive communion - to prove they can.

Probably for the same reason people who disagree with the Catholic Church would wear flamboyant clothes and go up to receive communion - to prove they can.

Assuming that the church does lose its license to conduct marriages for refusing to conduct homosexual marriages, so what (which is a rather big assumption, since I don't believe that it can actually happen under the laws of the united states)? It can still conduct the religious aspect of the marriage, and isn't that the important bit to Christians? Everything else is just paperwork.

Personally, I consider this whole line of argument irrelevant. After all, we legalized interracial marriage, and all these horrible things that would threaten religious freedom didn't happen back then, I don't see why that's going to change today.

And the Catholic church has the right to refuse them.  No one's forcing them to give communion to those excommunicated, and gay marriage isn't threatening hetero marriages.

Because, at least in the case of the Catholic Church, a marriage which is not conducted in a church, by a priest, is not considered to be fully valid. It's like God wasn't invited :) Plus of course the fact that many people would far prefer to get married in the same church their parents did, where their community is, rather than next to the line for driver's licenses.

They could still get the marriage ceremony in the church, which is my point. They'd just have to fill out the paperwork for the government elsewhere.

Yeah, I have to say this seems like a red herring.  The catholic church currently has the right to refuse non-catholic straight couples from getting married in their churches.  If non-catholic straight couples can't use the law to force catholic priests to marry them, I don't see how gay couples would be able to.

Here's some more fule for the fire: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200...e_us/obama_catholics

Yeah, not sure if that's a good move by that bishop.  Single-issue voters don't have any influence on anything other than that single issue.  Politicians will know whether they have that vote or not from the start, and can then ignore catholics for the rest of the campaign.  Their view on health care, the deficit, wars, poverty, AIDS, foreign policy, etc., will have no impact on their vote, so there's no need for politicians to consider the catholics views on such things.

Also, the bishop could end up driving people away from the catholic church.  His stance only really affects those who would otherwise vote for a pro-choice candidate, who clearly take a less hard-line view of church positions already.  If they feel the church is trying to force their vote, they may decide to change their church rather than change their vote.

Also, the bishop could be putting his diocese in danger of losing its tax exempt status, by becoming an overtly political body.  I'm not sure if the IRS is ready to start enforcing the non-political rules of tax exemption for churches (there are a number of churches who want them to, so that they can sue and try to get the rule overturned.  It's not clear to me how that would end up playing out if it happened), but in a few years they might be.

On the other hand, it does seem like the religions growing the fastest in the US these days are the ones that take a clear stand on very divisive issues.  People do seem to like having someone to be against.  So it could be that by demonizing the pro-choice side, the bishop could end up drawing people in.

What might happen if the trend continues?  What if evangelicals get involved?  If evangelical pastors start telling their church members that they'll go to hell if they vote for a catholic, with the bishops cry foul?  Could the reality of bishops withholding communion from people who vote for pro-choice candidates undermine the idea that catholic politicians won't be puppets of the church (which is what JFK had to convince voters of when he ran for president)?

And, since Heath hasn't had a chance to bring up gay marriage yet ;), what about the LDS church bankrolling the opposition to proposition 8 in CA?  Will (should?) people start treating Mormons differently because of this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/theater/13thea.html
A Mormon theatre artistic director recently resigned after artists started refusing to let their work be performed in his theatre because the director donated $1000 to the proposition 8 campaign.  I've read statements by people saying they're planning to go to Salt Lake city and protest the LDS church, and even some claiming they plan to boycott the entire state of Utah over it (how much time did they really spend in Utah to begin with, I have to wonder).

Is this the natural result of churches becoming overtly political?  I wonder if these churches will end up regretting linking themselves so tightly with secular issues that people start to view them as just another political faction.

I don't think the Bishop was trying to play politics, however. I suspect he's one of those rare people who refuses to 'compromise with the devil', even when it furthers his own goals in the end. And honestly, I'd expect the same of anyone who shared the Catholic belief in abortion. I mean, if there were a politician who shared all your beliefs in regards to civil rights, had a fantastic health plan that would cost the country almost nothing, and the perfect exit strategy, but also wanted to kill all old people, you would most likely vote against him based solely on the 'killing old people' issue, wouldn't you?



Which may not be a bad thing. I don't think the Church could, in good conscience, allow people to commit sins without their knowledge. After all, the RCC believes that mortal sins will keep us from God, and so the Bishop's warning is in fact a warning, not a command. Do you think bleach would sell better if it didn't have labels about not putting it in your eyes, drinking it or mixing with ammonia? Well perhaps, but I don't think that's a desirable state for us to be in.



I believe a church can take an official stance on a political issue, but not on a candidate.

I really don't mind people expressing opinions, even contrary opinions, or affecting politics, based on their moral beliefs. And I think churches have a responsibility to disseminate the facts of their moral beliefs to their adherents. On the flip side, those people need to be willing to accept the results of sticking to those moral beliefs.

Keep in mind, though, that what's a sin, in the Catholic view, is abortion.  What the bishop is calling a sin, though, is voting for a politician who is pro-choice.  That's an important distinction, I think.  It's one thing to tell the church members "you can't take communion if you have an abortion," it's another to say "you can't take communion if you vote for someone who has an abortion," and yet another to say "you can't take communion if you vote for someone who allows other people make up their own mind about abortion."  The bishop in this case isn't just saying abortion is wrong, but also that not forcing people to agree with you about it is wrong.


Oh, I agree to an extent (though, anyone who tells you that your vote is a sin is playing politics).  But I think by being unwilling to consider other issues, he may end up having no influence over them.  If catholics follow his lead on this, the catholic opinions on anything other than abortion cease to matter politically.

Also, it's not just that he doesn't want to compromise with the devil, but he doesn't want to compromise with people who compromise with the devil. ;)  It's a lot of degrees of separation here:  He's telling catholics what to do (1 degree of separation), on the issue of who they can vote for (2nd degree), based on what that person is willing to tell others they can or can't do (3rd degree).


And this is sort of why I think he might be making an error here.  Catholics by and large already agree with his position on abortion.  What his stance does is take other considerations off the table.  It forces people who already agree with him about abortion to not consider other issues, which I think could drive people away.


Yes (though, "killing all old people" is a poor analogy to legalizing abortion).  But that's my vote.  How the bishop votes is his business, he can be a one-issue voter if he likes.  He can even try to convince others that it's the only issue that matters.  When he starts coercing them, though, then it seems likely to backfire, in my eyes.


Again, though, his message is far stronger than "abortion is a sin."  Catholics are very aware of that stance by this point, I would imagine.  To go from there to "voting for a pro-choice candidate is a mortal sin," seems far stronger though.  By trying to force peoples votes, I think the church could drive them away, and thus end up having less influence over their own behavior (ie, what they themselves do, as opposed to what they vote to allow others to do).  For example, a person who might agree with the catholic church's stances, and try to follow them might decide the church has gone too far by trying to control people's votes, and thus leave the catholic church, and stop following its edicts.  Will many people do this?  I don't know, really. But apparently 54% of catholics votes for Obama.  When a church declares that more than half of its members aren't welcome anymore, that's gotta have some impact.


True, though at times it can be difficult to tell which is which.  In any given race, one could pick an issue that the candidates disagree on, and declare that an important issue, and say a vote for candidate X will land you in hell!  Which sort of is an easy end-around for the not supporting a candidate rule.


Yeah, I agree with you on this.  It's the last bit that's the tricky part, though.  I think a lot of religious groups want to disseminate their moral beliefs, but don't like to accept the results of doing so.  Heath being worried about churches losing tax exempt status for discriminating against gays could be an example.

I think your point of contention is based on whether voting for a pro-abortion candidate is a mortal sin. I'd have to double check, but I believe by Catholic doctrine, supporting the politics of abortion is considered a mortal sin. I could be wrong, but I do believe that is the case. It isn't that the bishop is making stuff up, he's sharing genuine Catholic doctrine. If that is the case, I think most of your arguments lose their strength, except for the one about the results of that stance.

Yes, the Catholic Church is suffering for its hardline stance on a number of issues, not just abortion, but contraceptives, female priests and probably a few other ones. Its losing a lot of members. Its also losing political and financial strength (a lot of people won't donate to Catholic charities in places like Africa because, even though the Catholic charities do a tremendous amount of work for very little administrative overhead, they refuse to teach about contraceptives). But I think the Church is willing to suffer that, and it's never become a serious conversation about whether they should change their policies in order to attract more members. The RCC would rather be right and ignored, then compromise and make good, sweeping changes.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.  But to me, it seems like you can vote for someone without agreeing with every one of their policies.  I voted for Obama, even though I don't agree with him on corn-based ethanol, for example.  I don't feel like voting for him has made me "pro-corn-based ethanol."  Catholics also consider it a mortal sin to be Muslim, yes (or any religion not Catholic, right)?  If the bishop declared that no one could take communion if they voted for anyone who favored policies that make being muslim legal, it would seem very strange to me.  Telling people they can't vote for someone who's not part of their religion would be bad enough.  Telling them they can't vote for someone who simply lets other people not be part of their religion seems to be taking it far too far.

The Catholic church also opposed the death penalty, if I'm not mistaken, but no bishops seems to be announcing that it's a mortal sin to vote for politicians who favor it (or even for those who think the decisions should be made at the state level rather than the federal).  Catholics seem willing to "compromise with the devil" on some issues, but not others.


Yes, but there's a difference between changing ones own policies, and trying to force people to force their views on others.  It's one thing to say "X is a sin, and people shouldn't do it," but saying "X is a sin, and anyone who disagrees is automatically the worst person ever, and you can't even look at them," would clearly be over the top.  The RCC can maintain a firm anti-abortion stance without telling their members how they have to vote.  Saying "this is the catholic point of view, please keep it in mind when you vote" seems reasonable, whereas "this is how you must vote to be catholic.  If you don't vote how we tell you, don't come back," seems likely to be counter-productive to their cause.

You might not agree with them, but in a way, you are permitting them. My previous example, equating abortion to killing old people, really is apt in that, in the eyes of the Church, they weigh about the same on the sin scale (if anything, killing old people might be considered a lesser sin). I think if a candidate ran on the 'lets kill old people' issue and I voted for him, you would have to recognize that, in a way, I am giving implicit support to that issue.

Now granted, if I'm giving implicit support to something like corn ethanol, it isn't much of a problem. It's hardly a sin to grow corn for ethanol. But I think we all agree killing old people is, with few exceptions, a morally wrong thing to do. Hence the difference. I suspect the bishop would have spoken out the same way against a candidate who was pushing a 'safe sex' campaign - that campaign is a mortal sin, and we as moral people cannot support that.



They believe anyone baptised in a Christian (i.e. in the name of the father, son and holy ghost, therefore excluding the LDS Church and most likely Unitarians) has a shot at heaven. Some Catholics believe all others will go to Hell, some don't. Would the Church speak out against a politician who supported making Islam legal in the US? I really don't know. There's a degree of finality and lack of choice to abortion that doesn't apply to choice of religions. If Bob is raised Muslim, he can still be baptised and saved. If Bob is aborted at 3 months, he cannot. So abortion has a certain poignancy that most other issues don't.



That is true. I wouldn't say they're 'compromising with the devil', but turning a blind eye to cultural leanings. I do think the RCC should take more of a stand against the death penalty. I suppose the big difference is, abortion affects millions, the death penalty only hundreds (at least until Crinkles makes it into office ;) ). I know also that in most states, the death penalty is outlawed, or basically never used. It could be that this is a bigger issue in states like Texas, but I'm just not aware of it. I really don't know. I could ask some people closer to the Church if you'd like :)



I think you're making it just a little over the top, although not by much.

The idea is, a mortal sin is an affront to God, and it is intentionally choosing to expel oneself from the community. It is also a mortal sin to take communion while you have a mortal sin on your soul. Yes, technically this means about 90% of all Catholics commit mortal sins every week (discounting the young ones, of course).  Lusting in your mind and, worse, masturbation, are both mortal sins. Yet we all know that, statistically, Catholics engage in such behavior just as often as just about everyone else. So you can be pretty sure that almost all of those people who don't go to confession every week (and yes, there are people who do that) probably shouldn't be lining up for communion and, really, most churches should just close up their doors.

Now, is your complaint that, given that, the Church should be more aggressive in dealing with other issues? Should the bishop make it clear that anyone who has greased the monkey rod since his last confession is not welcome to communion, although he should listen to the rest of the service and donate his standard 10%? Yeah, I think you'd have a point there (although there are reasons why that particular sin, probably the most common, but the least discussed, is brushed under the rug, and that has to do more with modesty than a drive to collect more money).



It is counter-productive. However, if the belief really is that voting for someone is implicitly supporting immoral behavior and therefore itself immoral, again, I think the RCC has a responsibility to tell people that and of its natural consequences, just like they have a responsibility to teach about other immoral behavior a person is likely to have to decide on.

Your examples sort of have got me to better understand why this seems a bit off to me.  Like you say, using contraception is a sin (and, arguably one that has the same affect as abortion), but pretty much every candidate in the US supports the right for people to use contraception, and the Catholic church doesn't tell people they can't vote for them.  As you say, masturbation is considered a sin by the RCC, but no bishops are telling Catholics they can't take communion if they vote for a politician who doesn't want to make masturbation illegal.

Basically, for most of these sins, the church is content to say "thou shalt not!" to its members, and leave it at that.  But on abortion, the church kicks up two levels.  Not just to "thou shalt not vote for one who does!" but to "thou shalt not vote for one who doesn't want to make it illegal to do so!"  It just seems like it goes too far beyond telling people what's right and wrong.  It's sort of like saying "you can't eat cake.  In fact, you can't even have friends that eat cake.  In fact, you can't even have friends who don't eat cake but think that other people should be allowed to if they want."  At what point does it stop?  "you can't vote for a politician who has voted for any bill written by another politician who has a family member who's seen someone who was pro-choice?"

I guess this seems like a) the RRC putting all their eggs into one basket by becoming a one-issue organization, and b) going too far beyond simply telling people what's right and wrong, and to the point of outlawing tolerance of those that disagree with you (a la Bush's "you're either with us or against us" idea, but more of a "you're either against them or against us!" version).

The Church has previously put its weight into the ring in regards to sex education. I don't know if it's every said voting for X is a mortal sin, but I do know they've fought hard to encourage more abstinence education, and less contraceptives education.

Since masturbation and choice of religions isn't really something we have available to vote on, I've never seen the Church go either way. I don't know what they would do if it did come up, honestly.

You liberals are circling the issue like cats around hot milk. It is plain and simple. Does the state has the right to use images of angels on public buildings or memorials? Yes or no? It's simple as that. Should Germany remove the Brandenburg Gate?

That is pure religious intolerance.

It depends on the purpose of the images of the angles, Tzuppy.  The government in the US does not have the right to promote a religion.  So if they put up angels to promote a religion, then no, they don't have the right to do that.  If they put up angels for some other reason, they yes, they can.  What Germany should or shouldn't do is somewhat irrelevant, as Germany isn't subject to the US constitution.

You might think the government should have the right to promote religion, but in the US, the simple fact is that it doesn't.  The constitution forbids the government from promoting one religion over others (or over the lack of religion).  You might think that's a silly rule, but it still is the rule.

For the most part I would agree with Tycho that if the angels were promoting religion tat they should not be allowed in the United States. However I feel as if angels might be a broad enough social symbol in most situations to be connected with things other than religion such as good will, hope, or protection. In germany they could argue those connections or alternately that it was tied to their history or a landmark.

Also has this: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/20.../UPI-98091226522641/ Been discusssed here? While it is being taken as a free speech issue it's clear that there are some state/religious issue in play here.

Yeah, that court case is what got this discussion going again.  Heath pointed out the San Diego case as a similar instance, and that ended up generating more discussion.  I am still keen to hear people's opinions on the 7 aphorisms monument, though?  Do people think the city should have to accept it?

That's where things get debatable.  Angelic figures might belong to a bundle of faiths, but the image of a guy with wings and a white robe is distinctly Christian.  The little winged cherub with a harp is also a European Christian innovation.

Even among Christians, there's no agreement as to what angels should look like.  If you check the bible, you'll see that nowhere does it say what angels look like; it just says they can take on human form.  So, even while the concept of a messenger of goodwill from heaven is pretty common, exactly what it looks like will inevitably promote one religion over another.

I wouldn't say choosing a given depiction necessarily promotes that religion.  Just because you use one religions depiction of an angel, it doesn't necessarily imply that you're saying that religion is correct, true, better, whatever.  As an extreme example, one could use a eruopean depiction of Jesus beating the crap out of the standard cherub-with-wings-and-harp-and-halo depiction, and it'd hardly be considered a promotion of european christianity.

I think it is the intent of the depiction that matters.  Angels in statues or paintings can, but don't necessarily have to be, promotions of christianity.  I don't think people view the Brandenburg gate as a monument to christianity.  I do think people view the cross in san diego that Heath brought up as a monument to christianity.  Similarly, the 10 commandments are depicted at the supreme court, in the context of historical examples of laws, and people don't consider this to be a promotion of christianity (well, there are some christian groups who try to use this as an argument against the idea of separation of church and state, but I would argue their case is very weak), but the monument of the 10 commandment placed in the park in utah that the supreme court heard about a few days ago does seem like a monument to christianity.

It's important to consider, I would argue, what message the government is sending with any monument or the like.  Is the message promoting a religion, or is it more of just a reference to one?

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. - First Amendment verbatim

Under the religious clause there are just two things covered in plain black and white English.

make no law respecting an establishment of religion
They cannot at any level covered by the document at the government level establish a state religion.

prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Or stop the legitimate free expression of a religion (barring clearly otherwise illegal areas as covered by Court case)

Now as a Libertarian its clear there is no explicite seperation of Church and State, no right to tax exemptions by any faith for its religious buildings and structures and in fact that the doctrine is contrary the will of the Founding Fathers.

So I would argue if faiths want full public access and the ability to speak as they wish they should then pay taxes to free that speech. My own small ministry pays taxes on the church although the homeless ministry with the soup kitchen and other services are tax exempt as a religious charity, the sanctuary and offices are not. But this frees me when a politician is offensive to me I can openly preach against him if I wished to or publically denounce any other party or issue, the laws that shackle my peers do not shackle me.

By paying fair taxes I gain free speech. I have every consideration this Seperation Clause interpretation ,which is openly in one other document the Soviet Unions Constitution, is not of the Creator. Its a dark and malicious doctrine that does nothing save stifle open political power of those of faith from acting as their conscience dictates.

So I would state there is none or at least there need not be this policy, all churches like mine have to do is pay taxes and not be tax-exempt. And the government should remain religion neutral itself so I would say any displays that could be deemed religious should stay off of public property. Period.

Well thats my position on this.

Isn't the libertarian standpoint that income tax shouldn't exist at all, and taxes should only be levied on imports or exports from overseas?

Additionally, no one claimed religious-based tax exemptions are a right, however they are a privilege and I can't see any support of them being contrary to the intent of the founding fathers.



I don't pay taxes to free my speech. It's free. That's part of the definition. I pay taxes in order to legally spend my income (which is a libertarian question all of its own).

The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State. 330 U.S. 1, 15-16.

- Justice Hugo Black

In this statement part of a Supreme Court case states the current interpretation of the First Amendment. I'm going to give my simple view of this in that its currently not be applied as its stated. The government by creating a special class the "tax-exempt church" is by its nature poisoning the First Amendment. They cannot levy a tax to support a church say that is clear but then where does it say they can decide to allow at any government level not collecting taxes on a church property making a profit. I treat a Baptist Church proper with its donations and maybe thrift and coffee clutch as being on par with a Dunkin' Donuts. If they have a homeless shelter or other legitimate non-profit there are clear exemptions for those used by secular charities all the time. There is no need for a special class of exemptions.

And like I said it also hurts free speech which violates the Freedom ot Expression by ministers ,who are influential community leaders, to speak out against any person or issue of government they wish that they find offensive. Say Mr. Smith is running for office and supports Pro-Choice policies why cannot I speak out and say not to vote for him rather vote for Mrs. Jones. Well I can my church is not tax-exempt but if I wasn't then the government takes away my First Amendment rights.

Justice Hugo a learned man clearly stated that the government cannot involve itself in religions or religious speech or religious actions but by exemptions of taxes they enforce an unconstitutional restriction on religion, as offensive to the Constitution as if they set up a state church.

An interesting point, Ms. Libertarian.  I would tend to agree, that tax breaks for religious organizations simply because they are religious does seem to run counter to the no establishment clause (though it's intent was in the spirit of the clause, I would argue--to keep the government from interfering with religion in anyway, even ways that it interferes with everyone else and encourage churches to stay out of politics).  And your point that religious groups should willingly give up the tax break in order to free themselves of the restrictions that come with it does sound good to me.

The trouble seems to be that the tax breaks have been around so long, that people no longer view them as a privilege, but rather as a right.  Katisara says that no one is claiming they're a right, but I would argue that we have seen people imply that it is a right in debates here.  For example, Heath has argued that people should oppose gay marriage because if it is allowed, religious groups who refuse to let their facilities be used for gay marriages might lose their tax exempt status.  While I disagree that that is likely to happen, the argument does seem to imply that the tax exempt status of religious groups opposed to gay marriage is more important than the legal benefits of marriage for gay people.  Ms. Libertarian's position seems to be that accepting the tax break in the first place puts the religious groups in a compromised position, since then taking certain actions might cause them to lose the tax break.  They're still free to take those actions, but since they already have the tax break, and don't want to lose it, they don't feel like they're free.  If they don't take the tax break in the first place, they've nothing to lose.

I suppose the counter argument is that a group that takes the tax break and then later gives it up when they want to take a certain action still comes out ahead of the group that never took it in the first place.

As a bit of a tangent, I read during the election of churches that were making political statements during services, with the intent that the IRS would remove their tax-exempt status.  The churches then planned to sue, figuring it would eventually end up in the supreme court, and the law would be changed to allow political actions in churches.  I haven't heard anymore on this since then, so I'm not sure if things have gone as these churches planned or not.  It would be interesting, though, if the courts ended up deciding something along the lines of what Ms. libertarian is saying--that tax exempt status for religious groups is counter to the non-establishment clause!

The argument for tax-exempt status is that there are certain areas a government cannot interfere - it cannot interfere with my right to free speech, my right to campaign, my right to religion and so on. "Interference" includes taxation. The government cannot tax my speaking or blogging - it would be unconstitutional. It cannot tax my attending a political rally. Similarly, it cannot tax my donating money to a church. The power to tax is the power to control, or to destroy, and it has been used for that purpose previously on other topics.

The honorable judge Black's interpretation is only that - an interpretation (which, by the by, ignores the actions of the man who he quotes - Jefferson spent public monies on founding churches and Christian missions). It is not law, and there is no law saying what he is quoted as saying.

Why can't it tax religious income, that is what donations are in my opinion unless they go to a Charity like a homeless shelter only, under a related non-profit standing. But why is taxing your donation by not allowing an exemption violating your rights the First Amendment is in plain English as a Libertarian there is nothing to debate. There is nothing in th wording that chains the faith or person of faith just restrictions on the government as it should be to not create a state Church or restrict the free practice of faith. (Although they can for a compelling reason do that using common sense like you can't yell fire if there is none in a crowded theater.)

Because if you allow the government to tax, you allow it to change the tax, and tax can serve as an incentive or decentive for behavior. The rule is that the government can do NOTHING to either ENCOURAGE or DISCOURAGE people from attending services. If the government decided to raise their taxes on religious donations to 20%, that would decentivize my donating to my church. Certainly if I'm part of a faith which requires a certain level of tithing, it would make me more inclined to leave that Church and find another which does not (since, paying before taxes makes it closer to 6-7% tithing, which is a substantial difference).

Now it is important to clarify, while donations are not counted in taxes, a preacher's income IS. So you are in fact incorrect, church 'income' IS taxed, and it is not the same as donations.

The government has also regularly used taxes to make things effectively impossible. The machine gun tax stamp is an example of this. While machine guns were perfectly legal to purchase or own, and the legislature was unable to infringe on this due to the Constitution, they decided to side-step the Constitution by exacting a $200 tax stamp on all transfers of certain classes of weapons. At the time, $200 was something like a year's income, so the vast majority of people found that their right to own certain classes of guns was basically made illegal - solely through the government's ability to tax.

I don't want the government to have the power over my Church, to twist its arm by interfering with my ability to support my religion. I am surprised that any libertarian would support giving the government MORE power, most especially over something as critical as religion, rather than fighting to reduce government power by releasing churches from the restriction on political speech (which of course is also a Constitutionally-guaranteed right).

Couldn't one argue, though, that tax exemptions for religious groups are encouraging them?  Wouldn't the religion-neutral route be to treat them the same, regardless of whether or not they're a religious group?

Also, I'm not sure you're quite right about the tax thing.  Yes, preachers pay taxes on their income, but I don't believe the church itself pays any taxes for any money it takes in.  Additionally, churches can often offer services without having to meet the same criteria as non-religious organizations.  Day-care is an example: opening up your own day-care service is quite difficult, lots of hoops to jump through, red tape, certifications, etc., but churches can open up a day care and hire anyone they want to work there.  No background checks, insurance, etc., required.  I believe churches also pay no property taxes.

I did a search for an article I read a while back, and found this instead:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html
A link to an articles from 1910 complaining about the tax exempt status of churches!  I guess things don't really change much! ;)

This is the actual link I had been looking for:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/churchstate.html
It's a series of articles on some of the issues caused by the state treating churches differently than secular ones.  There's actually quite a few articles, with lots of interesting points.

Are you suggesting there are non-religious churches out there who are feeling discriminated against?



It doesn't pay money on the donations themselves, but it does pay income for all of the workers, including the preacher. The money that goes to charity stays untaxed. You're correct that property tax is also waived, but money spent on many other things has to go through the standard tax hoops.

There is a clear attempt to separate between religious, non-profit and actual, personal income, which makes sense. We don't tax non-profit charities, because the government wants us to be charitable, and religious organizations do overlap here a lot. I believe that you DO pay for services rendered by a church, such as private school or private day car, which also makes sense, and the church has to pay taxes on its business ventures like that.

I will agree, the issue has to be approached very carefully. There are a lot of benefits we give to churches on the basis that we never want to allow the government the power to infringe on religion, but these perks are very nice, and other people have tried to abuse those laws. There are many businesses which claimed to be religions in order that they might get tax breaks, perform special services, etc. even though they aren't truly religions. I won't argue the system is perfect. But I WILL say that the basic premise, protecting churches from government power, is good.

An update on a topic we discussed here earlier:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02...ington/26scotus.html
The supreme court has ruled that a city in Utah doesn't need to accept monuments from other religions if accepts a 10 commandments monument.  The ruling seems to imply that governments are now viewed to have "freedom of speech" the same way citizens do, and that monuments in public parks fall under this.  The court seemed somewhat split over the issue of whether that meant governments can use that free speech to select only monuments from one religion without violating the establishment clause.

I was thinking about this and had felt compelled to post here again but make this a constitutional issue, since one must in the end respect the highest law of the land. Tycho I found made an interesting point in that could not taxing churches in fact break the principle we were talking about here.

Katisara argued taxation would unfairly impact a church but I read the First Amendment again and will post it here off Wikipedia verbatim for reference:

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.

Now what is it that is done when you do not tax a Church your giving them more money they would not otherwise have. Say for simple case $1000 a year for a church that can be used to promote religion which this doctrine demands not be done. You can buy boxes of tracts to hand out stamped with the churches information, buy advertising on-line, pay to have people preach on a streetcorner paying their gas or other promotional activities. Tax-exemption  flies right into establishment as the term is considered by modern uses by encouraging the practice of religion in ways banned under Separation of Church and State. Its the same as if the government gave the Church the $1000 in cash and told them use this any way you wish and that could be promotional efforts to spread their messages of faith.

It also harms free exercise and free speech in that by taking the status of tax-exemption they in fact cannot fully act as a moral engine for their faith. They cannot preach against political parties or candidates which in some cases restricts more conservative faiths who may oppose the values of one candidate over another. And oddly it doesn't if you tax a minister can freely promote any and all moral principles against any party. In an additional point it desn't keep people from exercise of faith paying a tax. This doesn't keep a person from reading any holy book, pray to any god or even have a ministry save it might be tempered from large to more modest churches. Which is not an issue their right is there the freedom without a compelling interest from the government meddling in ones faith. And this is a high standard as precedent dictates for example my own church I am iordained in the Universal Life Church is legal because the government can't meddle, Peyote can be used in native american relisgious practice, Amish have the right to educate their children and such cases.

It also violates the right to assemble as Churches are zoned as non-profit religious properties not businesses so communities might not like allowing to many holy places. Which would limit there meeting rights in public if they choose to do so although it might affect the size of the property, but that is not a concern. They can assemble that is the simple truth that property size and space may be affected is not really an issue the Roman Catholics could have holy places in homes if they had to.

As I see this matter paying taxes is necessary as property taxes are considered otherwise your favoring religious institutions and promoting religion.

People will likely argue about the reasonable issue of charitable uses of property, I have a simple solution to that. If said uses could on their own merits be tax-exempt say a homeless shelter then have a seperate organization set-up as a non-profit for that while taxing places of worship proper. It may be more work but that is not grounds for negating the obligations of government from assisting religious practice and the encouragement of faith. Just tax the little white church and not tax as a seperate entity the feeding kitchen for the homeless and not tax that. But a church holding mass for the faithful is not a charitable use its limited to those of that faith, and offers no overt benefit to the community at large.

http://www.latimes.com/feature...ep23,0,2226105.story

Here's an interesting Debate article on that very subject, in addition.

In reply to Ms. Libertarian (msg #81):

I don't feel that, by not taxing all churches, they are establishing a religion. Sure, churches benefit from this, but a large segment of the populace is made more productive by having a religion in their life. Religion's also compete against each other in a manner not unlike business, so they self-regulate to a certain degree.

Society benefits to a degree that might warrant keeping religion tax-free. That might require further investigation, but I'm certain that making religions non-profit and tax-free does not establish a religion.

I think it becomes a bit trickier, though, when "non-profit" aspects becomes less clear.  For example, secular non-profit organizations aren't supposed to engage in campaigning.  Thus, churches put their tax-exempt status at risk when pastors tell their congregations how to vote, as Ms. Libertarian mentions.

Similarly, what we normally think of as a "church" isn't the only thing that churches today include.  It's not just a building full of pews, an alter and a pulpit.  Some churches are installing movie theaters, day care centers, gyms, basketball courts, etc.  While these things may all be great for the congregants, are they really what we have in mind when we want churches to be tax exempt?  Is it really government interference if a church has to pay tax on their movie theater or athletic facilities?  When these projects not only get tax exempt status, but actually get government funding through ear-marks, one might even have less trust that things are working as they should.

Things like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10...ness/20religion.html
seem even less like what the 'church' status should be used for.  It's a program where members all send in their medical bills, the organization pays for them all, then asks all the members to pay the cost equally.  Quite an interesting plan actually, but it's essentially just health insurance.  Except that because it requires members to be christians, it doesn't have to follow the laws that secular insurance companies do, and is exempt from the same level of scrutiny by the IRS that even secular non-profit groups are subject to.

Should day care programs offered by a church follow the same regulations as secular day care centers (eg, background checks for employees, etc.)?  Should retirement villages for affluent church members be tax exempt simply because they only let people of one faith in?

I tend to agree with Ms. Libertarian, that the religion-neutral thing would be to treat them exactly the same as any other organization, regardless of whether they're religious or not.  This seemed to be the case that was made for the "faith-based programs" funding by the federal government.  It seems that consistency would require that if churches should be able to compete for federal funds like anyone else, then they should also have to pay the same kids of taxes, follow the same regulations.

Theoretically at least, you are prohibiting the free exercise of religion when you start taxing it.  This is what England was doing to churches.  This is why many churches have an incorporated entity like "The Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" that is a separate non-profit entity from the actual church.

In other words, it's more complicated when you look at all the workings of a church and its donations and programs.

Theoretically at least, you are prohibiting the free exercise of religion when you start taxing it.

Why? Is our right to free speech prohibited because we tax newspapers?

The difference is that people donate their money to the religion so the religion can practice its religion.

The newspaper can print its free speech regardless of commercial gain, and donations are not made for the sole purpose of being used for free speech.  They're being used to receive the speech.  Freedom of speech is about allowing the speech to go out, not to allowing everyone to access it.  Also, the newspaper is not a non-profit organization in many cases, although some probably are.

____

Interesting article about what's happening right now:

Thank God these things are put to a vote, where everybody has at least 1 stupid idea and everybody else thinks it's stupid enough not to vote for it, thus resulting in no stupid laws passed...unless they don't bother to read it or somebody slips in a clause.  But I still applaud the checks and balances that go into play when these sorts of bills make themselves known publicly.

Now, if it was "Year of Jefferson's Bible", that might...nah; vote me down, Congress, I wasn't thinking! :P

One can make this arguement differently one attack on this is directed at the churches for TAKING the tax-exemption since no church has to take it. I would refocus the blame on them for selling out to the government their duty as ministers.

Interesting point.  Although I think the practical realities are a bit different and more complicated oftentimes, particularly since most churches have charitable and other programs that are part of executing what they feel are their religious obligations.  For example, a church welfare program or assistance for people to find jobs, or even providing employment to archivists or priests or others.  There is a slight mingling where extricating the religious from the parochial is difficult.

The difference is that people donate their money to the religion so the religion can practice its religion.

What if a religion were to spend vast sums of the money donated on non-religious purposes? Should they lose their tax exempt status?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/us/14amish.html
What do people think of the issues raised in the above article?  Should groups like the amish be exempt from following laws like putting warning triangles on their vehicles or from sanitation requirements for their outhouses?  How far do (and should) religious exceptions go for laws?  If my religion forbids me from being sober, should I drunk-driving laws not apply to me?

I'm actually not sure where I stand on the specific examples raised in this article.  My inclination at first reading is to think religious exceptions that only put the religion in question at risk are fine, but once it starts putting other people at risk then it's gone too far.  Unsanitary outhouses seems sort of like their own business to me, but not being visible on a road they share with cars seems to put other drivers in danger too.  Thoughts?

I'd say that if religious freedom is there, then there is religious freedom. If you don't allow for religious freedom, then you don't allow for it.

It seems really simple to come up with a septic system that does not violate their freedom. It states in the article the Amish were willing to build their own septic tank.

I think the reasons to allow allow religious freedom if it involves the safety of others. For example, I don't think if your religion states guns should be carried at all times would be reasonable, just the same as drunk driving were part of another religion.

Yeah, that was sort of my gut reaction too.  If people are only harming themselves, well, I'd rather err on the side of freedom.  When they're putting other people in danger, then that seems different.  If the septic system were putting other people at a health risk it might be different (one of the people quoted in the article seemed to imply that was the case, but that seemed a bit hard for me to believe).

On the other hand, part of me also thinks that if the threat is only to the person doing it, and it's a small enough threat that we should allow a religious exception, shouldn't everyone be allowed an exception, religious or not?  Why create a system where some people are allowed more freedom than others simply because of their religion?

It's not more or less freedom, it's just a separation between the freedom taken away by government and the freedom taken away by religion.

In the eyes of the Separation of State, not having proper sanitation because "you don't feel like it", and being compelled to forsake "proper" sanitation out of your religious beliefs are different things.  One is a choice, the other is a result of one's choice of religion.

Clearly the amish don't consider it "proper" sanitation, though.  They do see it as a freedom not to state-imposed the wrong type of sanitation.  It's not that they want to use modern sanitation, but are simply barred by their religion, they don't actually want to use it.  I don't think the amish see their choice of religion as taking away their freedom.

It seems to come down to the issue of whether its okay to violate the law if you're compelled to do so by your religion ('okay,' in this sense, meaning from the point of view of the state).  On the one hand, if it doesn't hurt anyone else, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do as they please.  On the other, it seems a bit off that which laws you're required to follow should be determined by which religion you follow.  If it doesn't hurt anyone else, why should I have to follow a law that the amish don't?  Isn't that promoting their religion, in a way, by granting them extra rights that I don't have?

I guess in this case, I'm feeling like something more of a "rural" exception to the sanitation rule, rather than religious exception would be the proper solution.  It seems like it doesn't hurt anyone else to let the amish collect their poop however they like, so let'em do it how they want.  But not because they're amish, but rather because they live out in the country, where doing it that way isn't going to make their neighbors sick.  If the people on the next farm over want to do it that way too, let them as well, even if they're not amish.  If, though, it is a significant health threat to other people, then it doesn't seem like a any exception is in order, religious or otherwise.  Your religion shouldn't give you the right to do things that lead to me getting ill.

I agree with Tycho. In general, I don't think the government should be making laws at all if the effects of my not following them only impact me. This is beyond the question of religion. Rather than saying "all people must do X", it seems more sensible to say "all people have a legal right to be protected from X", and if someone is threatening me with X through their poor actions, then and only then it becomes a legal concern.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin...rt-Mojave-Cross.html

Another "cross on public land" case is before the supreme court.  In this one, a fairly small cross was built by veterans of WWI as a memorial, but it was built without permission on federal land (it's out in the middle of nowhere, so its not surprising they didn't think to get permission for it, in this case).  The cross has been replaced and kept-up by private citizens on a voluntary basis for quite some time now.

Some years back, a government employee working for the park where the cross is located, sued the government, asking them to remove the cross because it was a promotion of christianity.  He was catholic, and says he has no problem with religious symbols, but felt prompted to sue when a buddhist group was denied permission to set up their own memorial not far from the cross.

A series of court decisions have sided with the employee, and found that the cross was a violation of the separation of church and state.  The supreme court will the final says fairly soon, it seems.

What do people think?  I tend to agree with the previous court rulings: once the government starts denying other religious groups the right to put memorials in the area, it really does start to look like its favoring christianity.  The fact that its out in the middle of nowhere does seem to lessen the severity of the problem, but it doesn't change the fact that it is a violation of the first amendment.

Looking beyond the court case, perhaps solution for those who want to keep the memorial would be to take down the cross, and put in a non-religious memorial?  If the cross is really meant just as a memorial to the veterans, and not as a religious symbol, then changing it to something else shouldn't be a problem.

I was wondering why a cross? Wouldn't the American Flag be a better memorial to "fallen and living soldiers of the US" and not be at all religious in nature.

I would tend to agree, and I think that such an option hasn't been explored maybe shows that those who want to keep the cross there don't really feel that it's not religious, but rather they feel that it's okay that it's religious.

The constitution states that the govornment can't make any laws to either establish or prohibit the free act of worship.  I don't see the govornment doing either here.  If you have a cross as a memorial on state land, the state didn't put it there, nor did they mandate it to be there, nor did they prohibit anyone from putting up a statue of Buhda or a Ying-Yang symbol or any other religious symbol had the ones who built the memorial been of any of those persuasions.

I think we need to come back to what it mens to establish.  It's a totally different thing for the govornment to allow it's citizenry to put something on state land and something else for the govornment to require it.  That's what seperation of church and state was meant to do.

A cross is also a traditional sign for death (before it was a sign for Christianity, in fact). The flag not so much.

Actually, yes, they did.  That is what prompted the catholic park ranger who is suing to file the suit.  A buddhist group asked permission to put up a memorial near the site in question, and they were not granted permission to put up a memorial of their own.

Ahh... bugger!  Sorry, I didn't read the article, I was in a hurry.  I have now, and I would agree that if it was still state owned land, then people of other faiths should be allowed to put up stuff, but it really doesn't change my point about the difference between "establish" and "endorce".  The constitution protects us from the govornment saying, "This will be the religion of all the citizenry and if you want to live here, you will follow the tennents of this faith."  It does NOT however say anwhere that the govornment should have nothing to do with religion, nor does it say that the govornment can't endorce a religious idea.  Basically it says that you can practice whatever faith you choose, and that should extend to govornment officials as well.  It's the same thing with churches not being able to endorce candidtates.  That was never the intent of the first amendment.  It was to protect freedom of the practice of religion which should extend to all aspects of society.

You know, I think part of this problem is because our religious symbols have multiple meanings. The cross is a symbol for death as much as a gravestone, and angels are used by atheists and Christians alike for symbolism (and demons as well, of course!) A lot of these are now cultural traditions, with religious roots, and usually those religious roots are not Christian anyway.

In the same way that Asian folk might find Taoist symbols cultural rather than religious?

Precisely, or the use of orange as a sign of death (which is also worn by Buddhist monks).

I think the cross is pretty unambiguously meant as a christian symbol, though.  If it weren't, you wouldn't have christian groups saying this is an example of the "war on christianity."  You wouldn't have groups having easter services at this location if they didn't take this as a symbol of chistianity.  If I thought that this cross was put up without any intended christian connotations, I could see what you're saying, but in this case it's a bit hard for me to believe that they didn't mean it as a christian symbol.

But what symbol can you suggest to represent dignity in death? I can think of a lot of symbols to represent the finality of death, to make it depressing, but not many to show the redeeming aspect (at least very few with any cultural recognition here).

Here's one of the intentions of the first amendment.

Well, at least as Thomas Jefferson saw it.  Remember this is a letter not a legal document.

I'm curious as to what you think this letter actually says.  What is your interpretation of it?

Well Supreme Court Judges do use letters as evidence to what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the constitution <_<

It means exactly what it says.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:47, Fri 09 Oct 2009.

Why does it need to be a symbol that does that?  Why not, say, a statue of a soldier?  Perhaps an obelisk with a plaque stating what it represents?

To be honest, if I see a big cross on a hill, I instantly think christians put it there as a message about Jesus.  I don't think about soldiers, veterans, death, or anything else.  If their aim is to make people think about death or sacrifice in a non-religious context, I think the cross is a very poor choice.  It may be that there is no symbol that immediately evokes those kinds of thoughts from people, and if that's so, they'll need something unique to do it.

The obelisk is also, traditionally, a religious symbol. A statue of a soldier may be a little out of their budget.

I think your view is interesting because, if I see a small, stone cross on a hill, I immediately think of a grave-marker.

I don't think it has nearly the religious implications that a cross does, though, for the vast majority of americans.  I don't think most americans consider the washington monument, say, to be a religious monument, for example.


I bet the money could pretty easily be raised for one at this point.  Also, not being able to afford an appropriate memorial doesn't entitle one to put up an inappropriate one.


Hmm, interesting.  Different experiences, I suppose.  Hopefully you can, though, why many people would associate a cross with christianity?  Especially after a buddhist group is denied permission to put up a memorial nearby?

To me, it seems like if they don't intend the memorial to have any religious connotations, then there should be no problem with replacing the cross with something that doesn't have such connotations for most people.  I really don't think it's just some crazy fringe group that consider the cross to be a christian symbol.  (in fact, there's at least one christian group that seems to associate the particular cross in question with their religion, as they have easter sun-rise services there each year).  There are plenty of ways to honor the war dead without a cross, if a religious connotation isn't desired.  Why not make use of one of them?

An interesting concept. What if the people who pay their taxes towards schooling have a voice as to what is being taught. In other words, if the area is heavily influenced by christian or jews, then that school can have material that is christian or jewish material that is desired by the public that is paying for that schooling.

If you wanted to have or not have some specific material taught to your child, then you could pick and choose a school based on what is taught. Example, someone who wanted to have multiple religious teachings could go to a school where that is taught.

Since the tax dollars go where the students go, that means that the money your child would get from taxpayers anyway, can be used towards the education you would want for your child.

This money does come from the people, right? Why should there be no choice at all on what is offered when it is funded completely from the tax paying people?

An interesting concept. What if the people who pay their taxes towards schooling have a voice as to what is being taught. In other words, if the area is heavily influenced by christian or jews, then that school can have material that is christian or jewish material that is desired by the public that is paying for that schooling.

And anybody else in the region just doesn't count, and should have their constitutionally guaranteed rights eliminated?

This does seem like tyranny  by the majority.

What I find especially interesting is that a minority of the population pays a majority of the taxes. That would seem to imply that the few rich bankers and lawyers would get to decide what is taught (and not only what is taught, but what is taught to children other than their own, since their paying the lion's share of the school taxes isn't dependent on their having children in the system).

I'm not sure if I would trust the mind of my children to the thieves and bankers of my neighborhood any more than I'm already obligated to.

To solve both of your concerns, what if parents take their children out of public schools, the money still goes with them.

So if there are a bunch of people who want some specific education, they can group together and provide such schooling. Obviously there will be large groups who want various forms of schooling, and once known, it will provide opportunities for other of like mind to leave the public schooling, and get an education the parent prefers.


So now, the education is decided upon by the parents, using money that has been set aside for their children already.


Those who want to stay in the public schooling can do so.

Then why not have the public school not specifically affiliated with any belief system, et al., and have the parents who want to enroll their kids in a more affiliated school take their money and do that that way? Seems easier to make the default "no option selected" than do the reverse.

Actually, I'm saying there's an option. You can choose whatever style of schooling you want for your child.

If you want an education of your choosing, public or private, you choose. Send your kid to the school you want.

I know that most areas would have people who want some specific education, and then there's still the public option. Win, win.

While I utterly despise the entire concept of religious based education, there's nothing inherently illegal about it when its for private schools that have no state funding.

Religion and spirituality are a important personal choice. One that should be made by a rational thinking adult who has examined beliefs, faith and his own life, and is making his own choices. Not something that should be brainwashed into a kid by some stranger.

By all means, the ability for a place of learning, Private or Public, to continue thriving is inevitably the quality of human capital it can produce.  The basis for being able to continue functioning is funds from organizations and individually wealthy folks, as well as tuition from students you've attracted to your establishment of learning.

None of these sources will last long, Private or Public, if you aren't beefing up your tuitioners into highly productive members of society, since the future funding will come from organizations run by them, and tuition will come from their children. Neither will come if they weren't able to make a great living from their education. Even the Government pulls funding after a while if the school isn't meeting expectations.

Why shouldn't the state provide funding for the children? Who do you think pays the state? I'm assuming that state funds come from the people who live in that state, right?

I'm saying that these decisions come from the parents. And you would have the choice of whatever type of schooling you like, including the very effective public schooling.

Several factors:

1. Government isn't allowed to endorse religion. This includes providing funding.

2. As above, people paying taxes to support your religious school may not share the religious beliefs, and thus the government isn't allowed to take their tax dollars to fund the teaching of other's personal beliefs.

3. Federal Law trumps State Law, so any changes that violate the 1st amendment can't be made.



I cannot at this moment see anything wrong with this, so I'll tentatively agree.

However, I would make this suggestion - that the parents have the choice of school, unless the child wishes to choose the public option they have the choice, assuming public shuttles (school bus) are available.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:44, Fri 12 Mar 2010.

Ok, then the solution for that is simply that people who do not use public schooling should get a tax rebate to the value of the education they are not using. Which in other words mean they still have access to the money that's set aside for their kids for their education.

The money comes from the people, which belong to the state. The state gets their money form the people.

This is an option I was considering adding in to the last post.  However I still see some problems however.

1. Should people who don't use the school not pay taxes, or just parents who have students enrolled in private schools?

I ask because the public school system, much like other public systems, relies on people who don't use them to contribute taxes to them in order that the people who have to use them can afford to use them, since it's generally their only option.

Public Parks, Public Libraries, Public Transportation, all of these are payed for, even by people who don't use them.

2. However, obviously, unlike other services (although, perhaps not), some people might find certain education against their beliefs.

Is taxing somebody to fund something which against their religion, or taxing somebody to fund something religious the actual problem?

3. Is offering a tax break to religious people an endorsement of religion? Creating a tax break is often seen as encouraging that behavior, and thus endorsing it.

4. Should non-religious, private schools be allowed this tax break?  If they aren't endorsing a religion, they would not only get the tax break, but also be open for government funding since they are following the government's rules.
---

I want to formulate an agreeable idea here, so these questions are meant to be as non-confrontational as can be.

Why shouldn't the state provide funding for the children? Who do you think pays the state? I'm assuming that state funds come from the people who live in that state, right?

Separation of church and state: The government cannot fund a religion.

Ok, then the solution for that is simply that people who do not use public schooling should get a tax rebate to the value of the education they are not using.

Why? I don't get a tax rebate for the maintenance of highways I don't drive on.

I'm saying that these decisions come from the parents.

And I don't respect that sort of decision. A child's mind is very malleable; they should be given the chance to grow up and choose their own beliefs.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:35, Fri 12 Mar 2010.

@Falkus

But you have to teach them something; at a certain age Children can no longer learn and understand language in the same way as they could being raised with it.

What if children are unable to grasp certain beliefs if they don't learn them at certain ages? (but on other side, maybe children are unable to let go of certain beliefs if they learn them at certain ages).

EDIT: Of course, most beliefs don't believe this, at least scripturally, or else nobody incapable of belief would go to <Insert the Bad Place here>.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:53, Fri 12 Mar 2010.

All I'm asking is the relocation of money that is already used for education. I really don't want to go about who should or shouldn't pay for schooling. I'm just pointing out that money set aside for education still be used for education. The money just follows the students.


I think you misunderstand. I pay taxes. I'm saying that I think it's a right that I have a say on how my taxes can be used. The money is there for education, and I would like to have a private education for my children. The money is there for their education, what is wrong with me wanting to spend money taken from me for education to be used for education?

Call it a tax break, or simply personal education spending. Regardless of what it is called, it's there already. It's paid for by people who are religious.

I think it's a double standard that people who are religious are having their taxes collected, but the money cannot be used for anything that has religious people? Is the government for the people, or are people for the government?

I think the response is yes. The money should go where the student is, public school, private school. Religious, non religious.

Call it an education rebate based on the student. Simply the money is set aside for education. The money is already there. The government gives money back to various religious and non religious causes all the time.

How does the government know which roads you travel on?

I can assure you, if you register a student for an education, that's where the money goes. So if it's public school, then it goes there for the student. If the student goes to a private school, then it goes there, where the student goes.

That's your right to believe that is true. Clearly, I feel that a parent has every right to instill their values.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:21, Fri 12 Mar 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-S7M0KZTsU

Here is the first part of a debate on this subject.

However, it is England, so there is no separation of church and state; people are required to pay tithes to the Church of England, regardless of their faith.

Various speakers for an against with differing faiths as well as without.

Call it an education rebate based on the student.

That sort of thing forces poor parents into a choice of spending the money on education, or other necessities of life at the cost of their kid's education.

How does the government know which roads you travel on?

My point is that you're not entitled to money for government services you don't use. I don't have a kid period, shouldn't I also get a huge cash sum each year for not using up education?

I can assure you, if you register a student for an education, that's where the money goes.

No, the money goes to the school and the teachers. If you register one more or one less child, they'll get the same funding as the year before. Only large shifts in student numbers or political maneuvering will cause a change in the funding. There's no pile of cash with a tag that says: Send to whatever school Trust sends his kids too.

That's your right to believe that is true. Clearly, I feel that a parent has every right to instill their values.

And what about a child's right to free belief?
This message was last edited by the player at 12:26, Fri 12 Mar 2010.

I've said it before - a voucher system does seem to be the most fair to everyone.

It isn't a blank check, which like Falkus pointed out, results in poor parents having to choose between food or education.

It permits parents at any spectrum to either go with the default public education option, or if that option is not appropriate (because the public school sucks, or because the parents feel it isn't meeting their special requirements, or for other reasons), they have the luxury of options to choose a different school. I can say in my area, none of the public schools can compare to the private religious schools, in scholastics or operational costs. Why should we force a person to send his kids to a public school where he will be exposed to drugs, teen pregnancy and a high drop-out rate, when there's a private school just down the road which has managed to control these factors? This is a genuine question, because in my area, this is what many people do. A large percentage of students at Catholic high schools are not Catholic, they just don't have any other option for a reasonable education.

While I think it's unfair to force parents and kids to choose between a bad high school, or a good high school espousing a religion you don't agree with, I think it is MORE unfair to force only one option on them.

Nevertheless, it would be highly unconstitutional for vouchers-government funding- to be used on private schools that have curriculum which public schools would get in trouble for.

I.E. even though you're a private school, it would be unconstitutional for the government to give the school funding if it teaches Creationism in class, and so the ability to use a voucher on such a school would be denied.

If the school wishes to teach Creationism, it must do so without government funding, and with the knowledge that any long-term future donations they receive won't be coming from competent biologists or doctors who used to attend their school.

Creationism is not necessarily religious. Really, I don't know if a voucher system would be considered unconstitutional, as long as it's paying for education, and not for religion. Religious schools perhaps can just bill the religion classes extra - then the government isn't paying for religion classes, only for secular classes.

(I'm also not sure how much the separation of church and state has been incorporated, if at all. Hence, it may not apply to the states, where most of your education money comes from.)

It may not be a religion onto its own, but it is completely steeped in religion and only emerges from those who believe in religion. It is a religious belief if you will.

A question for those proposing a voucher (or similar system):  would the private schools required to take anyone who wanted to attend (the way public schools are)?  Would religious classes/studies/observances/etc. be required, or just "on offer" for those who paid the extra supplement to their government voucher?  Could a religious school tell, say, an openly gay student they weren't welcome because being openly gay didn't fit with the beliefs of the religion?

I would say it does seem unconstitutional for the government to be paying religious schools.  That doesn't necessarily make it a bad idea, but it seems like it would (or at least should, if we're treating the constitution as something that needs to be followed) require an amendment to put in place.

Also, if you want to get inside the heads of those we are uncomfortable with this sort of things, a potentially useful exercise is to consider a different case with a similar argument:  federal money paying for abortions.  Would an argument of "it's money set aside for health care, so why not just give the person a voucher to purchase health care, and let them get whatever plan they want, even if it includes coverage for abortion?  They paid taxes, shouldn't they have some say where the money goes?"  This is part of the debate around health care right now, and it seems fairly analogous to me.  In each case, one side thinks people should get to make their own choices with the money the government is spending on them, and the other side thinks that if you take government money, the government gets to tell you what you can or can't spend it on.  Should the government tell you what kind of school to send your kid to?  Should the government tell you want kind of insurance to buy?  In either case, can the government make you an offer and say "this is what we're willing to give you, take it or leave it.  You're welcome to get something else on your own dime, but we'll only pay for this one here."

Another way to look at it, is not just does a parent have a say how their tax money is spent, but does everyone else?  Do I, as a tax payer, have a right to say what kind of schools I want my tax money to pay for?  If I do, whose right trumps whose in this?  Obviously a parent should decide where their parent goes, but if they're spending my tax money as well as their, do we get equal say in what the government pays for?  Can I say "I don't want any tax money going to religious schools!" just because I'm an atheist, the way that the pro-life movement has managed to say "I don't want any tax money paying for abortions!"?

My view on this is that we really don't have a right, per se, to say where our tax money is spent.  We get to vote for the people who control what's done with it, but the decision isn't actually ours to make.  We can influence it with our vote, but it's simply not the case (nor should it be, probably) that we get to decide all the details of anything that involves tax money.  Tax money isn't "ours" once we pay, anymore than the money I used to buy my meal in a restaraunt is "mine" after I hand it over.  I can't tell the folks that made me dinner what they can or can't spend the money I paid them on, and I can't tell the government what to do with the money I pay in taxes after I send it in.  I can vote for people who are going to spend it on things I agree with, but that's a different sort of decision.  So I'd say the government could do a voucher system (though it may take an amendment in the case of religious schools), but we shouldn't feel they're obligated to do so.  Whether it's a good idea or not, I'm not sure.  I can see costs and benefits each way.  I guess my main concern is that I'd rather not have the government paying for groups to win converts to their religion, and don't want to the government to pay for "christians only" (whatever religion-only) school/programs/whatever.

I think there would be standards for admission, such as minimum grades and behavioral record. They could also institue certain behavioral requirements, such as a uniform, a policy on appropriate language, perhaps even one regarding what sort of romantic relationships are permitted on school grounds.

However, there would be standards they could not discriminate on, such as race or religion.



There would have to be a line there. A class like "Christian studies" shouldn't be required for someone who isn't Christian. But a class on ethics I think would be alright (as long as it's based on the actual study of ethics, moral judgments, etc. and not just quoting scripture). Not going to school on certain holidays, such as the ascension, might be required. But requiring going to temple would not.



If he is having gay relationships on campus, I could see that being a grounds for administrative action. If he is flamboyantly gay going to either an all-male school, or a very conservative school, I could see the school saying "hey, this will be a serious problem, because this child is going to get beaten up" and look for an arbitrating body outside of the school to find a reasonable solution. I think banning a child because he is gay in his private life, but agrees to obey all the rules while at school couldn't work, and really, would be a bad idea from a general Christian standpoint anyway.



The separation of church and state, as it stands, isn't something from the Constitution. It's from a long line of post-Constitutional interpretation by the courts. Ergo, it wouldn't require an amendment. I don't believe it has been incorporated, so states could do as they please, and a law by Congress would be required for federal monies.



Is the abortion medically necessary? I question the wisdom of a health care plan that pays for procedures that are not medically necessary (as a note, my insurance doesn't pay anything for procedures not medically necessary, and generally, abortion falls under that category).

Technically, those "interpretations" were done by the people who wrote it long before the courts got to it, if you read any of the transcripts of public adress to the people by Jefferson and other founding fathers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelman_v._Simmons-Harris

But, nevertheless, Supreme Court ruling seems to indicate that school vouchers can be used for private, religious schools under certain conditions.

EDIT: The above is obviously against what I said previously, which is the point.  I was wrong, it seems that vouchers currently approach this in a constitutional way.

As for Creationism not being religious; it is a product of religious organizations, and is pushed entirely by them, as is "Darwinism". It is not specific to any one religion, but it cannot be entirely separated from it, and has given birth to several cult-sects such as "The First Church of Christ, Scientist".
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:24, Sun 14 Mar 2010.

I would think the concern here is that it makes the schools compete in a zero-sum competition, but lets the private schools make the rules.  Sort of like telling two people they're going to take a math test to see who's better at math, then saying "okay, there are 100 questions here. Person A, you pick the 50 that you'd like to answer, and person B, you answer the 50 that Person A doesn't choose."  Person A is at a large advantage in that example, because they can pick the easy question (or at least the ones they know the answer to).  Analogously, the public schools would end up with all the students the private schools didn't want (which presumably are the more difficult, and/or expensive schools).  For this to really work, I think it'd need to be the case that private schools worked under the same rules as the public schools.  In other words, private schools wouldn't be able to turn students away for any reason that a public school wasn't able to.


I think this would largely be okay.  I think the line we're looking for is that they should educate, not indoctrinate.  I think that should be true of both public and private schools, though in reality indoctrination occurs in each.


Fair enough, an amendment or a supreme court ruling, I guess.


Consider it either way, I guess.  My understanding (which could be flawed) is that right now, even medically necessary abortions can't be paid for with government funds under the current rules.  But for sake of discussion, its probably easier to consider those that aren't necessary.  The analogy would to ask "is private school education a necessity, or just preferable?"  If someone says "I question the wisdom of the government paying for any education that isn't strictly necessary," whose view should be used in this case?  Again, I'm not trying use this as a "see you're wrong!" argument, just trying to make it easier to see where the other side might be coming from.  I'm not necessarily trying to change anyone's mind, just trying to make it easier to see the other sides point of view.

Then perhaps the rules that the private schools are applying are precisely the sort of rules that the public schools should be applying as well. And that is exactly half the point.

Right now I have a choice between sending my kids to a nice private school which costs money (even though it has lower operating costs), but has a proven track record of higher grades, better diversity of classes, fewer behavioral problems, more kids going on to collect, etc., or a "free" public school (with higher operating costs) which has a track record of... not. Why should I have to make this choice? What "extra" am I paying for, that private schools supply but public schools don't? Your complaint sounds like "well, if we let parents send their kids only to good schools, the bad schools will die out". Good! That sounds like a good thing!



Is this somehow undesirable? Should we require that all schools accept the same number of bad students?

I will say that special ed kids are a special case. The public schools in  my area deal with it by requiring the kids go only to schools which can service those special needs. I don't think that is unfair - that's good stewardship of my money. If special ed kids need additional costs to educate, their voucher should also be larger. I think that's fair.

However, if the kid is just a gang-banger who disrespects students - let him get stuck in the ruddy school. I see no conceivable benefit from requiring my child and that child be stuck in the same school together. It cannot serve them both as they deserve.




I was thinking about this a bit more last night. Really, I think each issue should be considered on its own merits. While they have similarities, they are fundamentally different. If you took Falkus (as an example), and said "Falkus, are you for or against kids going to good private schools with a Christian background", I suspect Falkus would say he is definitely for kids getting the best education available, but against their being indoctrinated in Christianity, and we can come to a compromise from there (because they can be separated and dealt with as independent issues). There is a point where everyone, or nearly everyone, can be happy.

You can't do that with abortion. If you asked TitL "TitL, do you feel that women should be able to make their own health decisions, and get an abortion", he would probably say he feels women should be able to make their own health decisions, until it impacts someone else (the fetus), and therefore abortion isn't okay. If you could separate the fetus from the abortion, say with an artificial womb, I'm guessing that TitL could come to a compromise where everyone is (reasonably) happy. But that isn't an option right now. There is no compromise possible, and so necessarily, a large group of people will be very unhappy.

Would it be fair to hold up a compromise over an issue that we know is physically impossible to compromise over? I don't think so. It's poking ourselves in the eye.

I'm curious if you realize that private schools are a further tool of stratification and marginalization that is used to segregate the populous?

Any time you have a class of people who can afford better schooling you have a system that marginalizes the students as a result.

It would be best if every student had the same opportunity, and if there were people who wanted to put more money into the system for their kid, did so for all the kids.

That is true. I thought it interesting while visiting our local public school, every student in what would be my child's class was black. However, if you visit either of the two private schools in the area, it's very racially mixed, or even leaning towards white. It does beg the question.

That is precisely why the entire notion of stratified learning facilities that are based on wealth are absolutely horrible for society.


But, I could see there being different levels of schooling based on your child's learning curve. Faster learning children should have the opportunity to learn faster then those who learn slower, but it should never be based off of the income of the parents. For that is further class stratification in society that leads to all manner of trouble.

Still agree. Education is one of the single greatest determinants on future income. Ergo, we should do whatever possible to make sure every child gets the best child practical (within reason, of course. Taking kids from their parents to send them to a different school probably is not a good idea.)

Totally.

I actually think that education should always be free. And the process of education and learning should never end.

As it stands though, most people can only afford to do the amount of schooling they can afford comparing the amount of schooling needed and the money that can be made in teh said field after one is done the schooling.

Unfortunately, they can't, unless we give up on the idea that everyone has a right to an education.  Someone has to teach the kids the private schools turn away.  Public schools don't get the option to pick only "good" students.


Why should you have to pick between, say, cheap fast food, or more expensive healthy food?  Why should you have to pick between a cheap, small home and an expensive big one?  Its part of life, I guess.  Sometimes you have an option to pay more to get more.  Is it fair?  Perhaps not.  But it's hardly anything unusual.


Just the opposite, actually.  The bad schools can't die out, because they're necessary.  Again, someone has to teach the kids the private schools turn away.  By making it a zero-sum game, the public schools just get worse and worse and worse, but never actually go away.  It places the students who are in most need of improved schooling and makes harder and harder to educate them.

Also, bear in mind the economics of it all.  Imagine their are two schools, one public, one private.  Before we switch to a voucher system, the private school has 500 students, and so does the public school, and the private school charges $3000 a year to attend.  Then a voucher system is implemented.  Everyone wants to go to the private school, because its students are doing better.  So everyone applies there, but the school only has room for 600 students, say.  How does it pick which students to take?  It might take the most academically fit, leaving the public school with the bottom 40% of students, OR it might (because it is a private school afterall) take the 600 students whose parents are willing to pay $2500 to attend.  Now they're not only getting the money from the vouchers, they're getting tuition on top of it, so they're swimming in money.  Meanwhile, the public school has lost out on money because of the switch, and the group of kids that attend the private school hasn't changed much--the price has dropped a bit, but not a ton because it's set by the market, not by the cost of educating a student.  Things haven't changed all that much.  Which situation is better?  I don't really know, honestly.  In the former, it concentrates the worse students in the public schools, in the latter, it leads to very little change, and less money for the public schools.


Not the same number, that's not the issue.  But I think we would need to require that they have the same rules for accepting students.  Any student a public school would be required to accept would also have to be accepted by the private school--at the same price (ie, just the voucher). Otherwise you're not making the private schools compete with the public schools by the same rules.


And this I think is the heart of the issue.  You're thinking as a parent.  You care about what's good for your kid, and screw the other kids if they can't get ahead.  I'm thinking more from the perspective of a tax payer.  To me, whether your kid ends up in a good job or an even better job doesn't really matter much to me.  Middle class, upper middle class, meh, good for you, but it's not a big change to me.  Educating the gang-banger to the point where he quits being a gang-banger and gets a real job, though, that is a comparatively big impact on me and the rest of the community.  You're fine letting people "get stuck in the ruddy school," as long as your kid gets ahead, but I see that as being a problem with the system.  The voucher system fixes what you see as the problem (your kid gets to go to private school without you paying for it) but doesn't fix what I see as the problem (some kids getting little to no education) and in fact makes it even worse.


I guess the analogy failed, then.  What I was trying to say is that to some people, the government paying for a religious education is every bit as wrong as other people feel the government paying for abortion is.  To them, there is no compromise.  Note I'm not talking about abortion rights just now--those are already present in the country--but rather about government funding of abortion.  When people suggest a compromise like "okay, we'll only use the money we get from private, non-subsidised plans to pay for abortions" the other side says "no, that's just an accounting trick, we want nothing to do with it."  Again, I stress I'm not trying to change your mind about voucher systems with this, just trying to get you to understand the opposition to it a bit better.  If you think the other side will be okay compromising on their opposition, you're not seeing what I'm saying.  I'm trying to point out that for some, this is an issue on which there can be no compromise, just as for many government funding of abortion is an issue on which there can be no compromise.


Again, I'm not suggesting that we can't compromise on vouchers until we figure out abortion or anything like that.  Just trying to make you see that it's really a no compromise issue for some people.  Some people are as firmly against the government funding of religion as others are against government funding of abortion.  Finding a compromise for one could be as difficult as finding a compromise for the other, because in both cases the other side views it as a "never, ever, ever, under any circumstances" case.  Any compromise proposed will be viewed as an "accounting trick," as long as "their" tax money is being handed over to a religious institution they disagree with.  I'm not saying those people are right, or that we should give up because of it, I'm just trying to answer the questions like "why shouldn't we do it this way?" or "who could object to this solution?" that have been raised.  For some (and I'm not necessarily one of them), giving tax money to religious schools in a non-starter.

I think that the intention of the Vouchers was to make the public schools compete with each-other, not with the private schools. It was a sort of "Cap and Trade" solution to the stagnation of public education.

I'm leaning more towards the creation of Specialists Schools, as opposed to Private or Parochial Schools, after considering the current arguments being made.

I.E., things like Kinesthetic Schools, Spatial Schools, each with their curriculum designed towards different approaches to learning. This would probably include separate school(s) and curriculum for best teaching those with mental disabilities as well.

By applying the voucher system to Specialist Public Schools, the distribution of funding for various methods would appropriately match the makeup of the population's intellectual style.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:42, Mon 15 Mar 2010.

There's a difference between rules and acceptance standards. There is nothing stopping a public school from enacting a uniform policy.



Because you're a grown-up and you're responsible for earning your own keep. That isn't the same for children (which is why we have WIC).

Now this isn't saying that every child should have access to the school with IB AND AP, and also a horse corral. But if your school has more kids dropping out than staying in and the classes are about two grades below where they should be, well, I don't think the system is working, and we need a solution (and we've already tried giving them more money, giving them less money, shifting kids around, closing schools, opening more schools - let's let the people with a track record of success have a go).



So if we put all of the good, hard-working students in private schools, then all of the lazy, belligerent students stuck in public schools will now get worse care? Before their 'special needs' were met, and now they aren't? How does that work?




What I think you ignore is the current situation, which you need to keep for comparison. If we're looking at a real-world equivalent, the private school has the kids of mostly middle class or above families - most of the parents are college educated. Most of them are teaching their kids at home. Most of these kids score in the top 30% on standardized tests (not because they're smarter, but because they're encouraged to study). The expectation is, 70% of them will go to college. The private school also has the power (through contracts with the parents) to apply more stringent rules, to require certain behavior, and to apply appropriate punishments.

Meanwhile, the public school caters to those people who cannot afford private school, who do not care about the education their kids are getting, or who have other special needs the private school does not cater to. They generally get around 50% on standardized tests (because they're the average). Less than 40% will go to college (which is average). There's a high drop-out rate, and less family support for working at school. This, overall, is what the school caters to - hang in long enough to get a diploma, and get a job. The public school does not have the power to do things like punish a child - they can't get that in a contract, and so doing so would cause legal trouble. Problem kids are just left as problem kids, and they pull down the whole class. There are smart kids, but they're largely unchallenged - the work is way below their level. They can't be catered to, because the teachers are busy with problem kids, and the level of expectations is very low.

The public school was already a loser before the vouchers started - we can't change that, it's the nature of saying "whoever this kid is, we'll take him". However, individual kids were getting run over. Smart kids were not getting a chance to learn, because the public school did not have the resources necessary to teach them a special course AND deal with the problem kids.

This is a basic law of economics - it is almost always better to specialize. Whether your private school is specializing in smart, advanced kids, problem kids, kids with disabilities or whatever, by permitting them to specialize better without regards to income, you let those kids who fall in that demographic excel, AND you remove the pressure on the public school of having to cater to a wide, diverse demographic, and instead they can focus their energies just on those groups remaining. While the public school may rate differently (probably lower) in standardized scoring, that's because they lost the minority pulling them up. In theory, the individual kids remaining should each do at least a little better, or at least no worse, than they were doing before, and that is ultimately what we need to be striving for.




Again, I disagree. Would you require a school for the blind accept kids with sight? Of course not. Why?

Because schools that are permitted to specialize provide better services for their catered demographic - and their neighbors do better because they are freed up from having to dedicate resources to that expensive minority.

We need to encourage schools to specialize, when we have that luxury, not get upset at it. It is BETTER to have a school with smart kids, which can focus on their needs, and another school for slower kids, which can focus on their needs, whether either school is private or public.



I don't think you're going to be able to fix that by giving the public school more or less money, or more or less students. We've tried it. It starts at home. If you have an idea as to how vouchers can help (or hurt) turning kids growing up with heavy gang influences from following those influences into adulthood, I'm all ears. The only thing I can think of is boarding school (and those are generally private - and charge tuition - and thusly benefit from vouchers).





Right, but we can strip out the religious education from a school curriculum. And do note, I think most people aren't upset so much with government dollars paying for religious education (that's just adding insult to injury), it's having religious education at all. Again, ask Falkus, and I think that's what he'll echo. I don't think Falkus has ever said "I hate the idea of spending government funds on quality education for students!" I'm pretty sure that everyone can agree that educating our kids well is a good thing, and spending money on it is *probably* desirable, even if it comes from an unconventional source.

So while we can say here "fair enough, we can pull out the piece you object to", with the abortion issue, you can't remove the piece being objected to (abortion) and still pay for it with funds - public or private.

I suppose there may be some people who aren't so much pro-education, but pro-public schools. If you had a way to educate kids via another method, home-schooling, private schools, whatever, they'd complain that you're shutting down our public schools, and public schools themselves are inherently good. I don't think we could make those people happy, but I haven't met a lot of them (excepting public school teachers).



Even if it had a curriculum that was shown to have the religious aspects stripped out?

Sorry, I was talking about acceptance standards.


Okay, let's...but not if doing so makes the struggling schools struggle even more (by taking away the resources they have), but forces some kids to stay in the struggling schools, I think that's a potential problem.


Because with a voucher system, you don't just take the "good" kids away, you take a lot of money away too.  Right now public schools don't have money to pay for basic materials in many cases.  If you start taking money away from them, its only going to get worse and worse.


That seems to be where we disagree, then.  You seem to have a "we can't help the 'bad' kids, so we might as well help the 'good' kids with the money and not waste it on the 'bad' kids."  I tend to think its more important to get the struggling students back on the right track.  The 'good' students are going to do alright in most cases.  A change in school could help the struggling student far more.  But if it's not available because they're struggling, it's only making the disparity greater.


I guess I don't see how taking away much of the money for public schools is going to make the students that remain better off.


Depends, is there a voucher system in place?  If my kid would be better educated at the school for the blind than at the public school for some reason, shouldn't they be allowed to go, whether they're blind or not?  Isn't this the whole point of the voucher system.  You seem to be coming at it from a "which student is best for the school" point of view, when looking at the struggling students, whereas I'm looking at "which school is best for the student?"


Okay, but that's not necessarily what the voucher system sets up.  We don't get a "smart kids here, slow kids here" system, we get "our first choice here, and whoever we don't choose there," system. What you're calling "specialization" is just weeding out the difficult (ie, expensive) cases, but getting paid the same per student.  If every student is worth the same "voucher" then any voucher should be good at any school.  The students a school wants shouldn't have the same "voucher-worth" attached to them as the ones the schools want to keep out.  Some students are harder to teach, more difficult to deal with, etc.  They take more resources to educate.  Others are comparatively cheap and easy to educate.  Giving them all the same funding, and letting one school pick while the other takes what's left over leads to one school being underfunded and the other over funded.


Sure...as long as the boarding school has to take anyone who has a voucher.  That's more or less what I'm saying.


I would disagree on that.  I think most people think its fine to spend your own money to give your kids a religious education, but don't want to have to pay for it when you do.  Its the whole separation of church and state thing.  Your religion is your business, just don't make it mine by using my taxes to pay for it thing.


Yes, but some people (again, not saying I'm one of them) think paying for religious education with tax money is a no-go.  I guess you haven't met people like this, so the analogy isn't sticking.


Yes, because it'd still be the government handing a check to a religious institution.  Again, people object to the government paying for part of a health care plan, if that plan covers abortions.  They say "I don't care if the government only pays for the non-abortion part, I simply don't want tax money going to a plan that covers abortion."  Again, though, I guess if you've never met anyone who thinks the government funding religious institutions is wrong, the analogy won't work (and is perhaps why you're finding it hard to imagine why anyone would object to a voucher system).

In hopes of making things more concise, I guess I would summarize what I'm trying to say as:
1.  I would be open to the idea of a voucher system if it benefited all kids, rather than just helping those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom.  I'm somewhat skeptical that just taking the smart kids (and the money they bring in) out of the public schools would do that.

2.  I think it'd be important that non-religious options would be available if the schools are getting government funding.  The government shouldn't be paying for anyone to try to win coverts or indoctrinate kids.  If you want your kid to get a religious education, that should be on your own dime, not the governments.  schools receiving government funding shouldn't be able to make taking the religion classes a requirement of attendance, even if the parents are paying for the religion classes.

3.  Some people will be opposed to this simply because it involves the government handing over tax money to religious institution that are engaged in teaching religion classes and the like, EVEN if the government isn't technically paying for those religion classes.  For some, the government giving money to a religious school is simply a non-starter, similar to the way that for some the idea of the government giving money to an insurer that covers abortions (even if the government isn't technically paying for any abortions) is a non-starter.  In each case, there's no real room to compromise because it's simply a "never, ever is this allowed" view.  I'm not endorsing such a view, but only trying to help people get a feel of what it might like to be such a person (ie, I got the impression that some people couldn't see why anyone would object to a voucher system even with compromises in place, and was trying to give an analogy to a case where they might be more likely to agree with people who were unwilling to compromise in a case of government funding something they disagreed with).

Is our goal to save schools, or to educate kids? If it's to save schools, I agree, it's a bad plan. But if it's to educate kids, we need to start looking at specialization, and the best, most cost-effective way of specializing is using vouchers to offer more choices to the average citizen.



1) These schools generally have higher operating costs than private schools. If they cannot compete because they are being ineffectively managed, they need intense help, well beyond anything the voucher system has to do with anything.

2) Except their overhead drops as well. If they're educating 300 students instead of 600, they only need half as many teachers, blocks of paper, books, etc. And since some things, such as books, they already do have, they don't have to pay to renew lost stock - they suddenly have a surplus of supplies. They can shut off power to the school rooms they aren't using, since they don't need them all, or rent out the space, to at least cover the costs of maintenance (and probably make some additional profit). And best of all, again, the range of kids has decreased, letting them dedicate more attention on that narrower band.

3) Their annual budget isn't set by the number of kids they educate, their success rate, the wealth of the parents, or anything else. It's set by state and federal lawmakers. If they need more money, the lawmakers can make more money appear. Forgetting that is a logical fallacy. A school that's tremendously successful at $3k/student is perhaps more likely to face budget cuts than one that's failing at $4k/student, because government budgeting is completely alien to free market budgeting.

So no, if the voucher system reduces income to the schools, it isn't the fault of the parents or the vouchers, it's the fault of either a poorly worded law, or indifferent law-makers.




The bad kids are still getting money - just as much as the good kids (in fact, probably more, since it's unlikely the voucher would equal 100% of actual costs to educate a child). It's not as though the public schools are being paid less than the private ones - they are getting paid about the same, or more, per student. If they happen to have a small student population, well now they have to reorganize to operate just like all the other small schools in the world.




And throwing money at it isn't the solution. Parental involvement is. Please tell me how the voucher system is going to negatively impact bad parents not taking an interest in the work of bad students.



I don't see how the voucher system is going to reduce how much the public school has available to spend on each student.



The rules you're complaining about - private schools being able to reject kids - are in place, right now, for public schools. There are public schools that can reject kids based on disabilities, or yes, grades. And by all accounts, the result has been better, and cheaper. Why aren't you campaigning against that? If you're not upset with that, why are you upset with private schools providing that same service - for less?




If a difficult student is difficult because he has a condition which requires special care, then he should get additional dollars. That's how we work right now, and it makes sense.

If a difficult student is difficult because he is not doing his work, does not care about getting educated, is coming from a bad background, etc., I'm curious what you think throwing more dollars at it is going to accomplish. As long as he is in that situation, he will continue not to learn - and much of it is the choice of the student. This isn't Clockwork Orange where we can strap a student to a chair and force information or behaviors through his eyeballs. But meanwhile, that student is basically slowing down the entire class. You can't move faster than the slowest student.

If you separate that into two classes, it's like having the express and local lanes at the highway. The "local lane" class moves slowly for those kids who need it. The "express lane" can move quickly for those who might benefit. That doesn't mean that the local lane now costs more, or is educating worse - it was already educating poorly, either because it was catering only to the slowest speed, or because it was ignoring those slow students. Now everyone in that lane is gettign, more or less, the attention they need.

I still cannot possibly see how separating them is somehow increasing operational costs, or taking money away that was there before.





That's an assumption you're making, which I don't think anyone else has posited before.



You can't really force them to, but I can't see why a private boarding school for kids with behavioral problems would NOT accept vouchers.

However, the cost for operating a boarding school is significantly higher than day-schools. Vouchers would help, but the parent still has to care enough to look for a special school, then pay the additional costs.




Fine, the vouchers only go to a secular curriculum. The school has to keep transparent finances and perhaps is limited in who they can pay money to (so you know none of the voucher money is going on to pay for a church or something).



Then I guess it will just have to come to a vote, followed by a supreme court ruling :) The anti-abortion group has already had to accept unfavorable rulings on abortion, so it seems fair to let that knife cut both ways.

The latter, but not just "the good kids."  Like I said, if the system would benefit everyone, I could be in favor.  If it's a program that will benefit one group at the expense of another, then I'd be much less likely to favor it.

Reading through your other stuff, I think I may not be understanding what you mean by a voucher system.  I've been taking that to mean that if you take your kid out of public school, and put them in private school, the government hands you a piece of paper that says something to the effect of "We will pay the school bearing this voucher $X, which we take out of the public school funding because this child is no longer using public education."  It sounds like you're meaning something at least slightly different than that.  Perhaps if you make your proposed version explicit I'll be in favor of it?


What I've been saying from the get-go, though, is that under a voucher system, the private schools should have to follow the same acceptance rules that public schools do.  If you're saying that's already the case, then great, no problem.


Think of it this way.  You and me agree to cater a conference for some people.  We want to be efficient, so we both agree to handle half of the events.  I say "Okay, lets try this, we each pay for the events we handle out of our own pockets, then split the payment at the end.  We're each doing half the work, so it'll work out even.  I'll pick my half, and you can have the other half.  Lets see...I'll take this coffee break, this other coffee break, and this other coffee break.  That leaves you with...breakfast, lunch, and the formal dinner at the end of it all.  Sound fair?"  I'm going to come out way ahead in that deal, because I get paid the same as you, even though you're spending much more money than I am.  We're both doing "half" the events, but those events are equal.  The problem isn't separating it into two groups, that's fine.  It's letting one "side" do all the picking, and the other side just getting whats left over.  Its the asymetry that's problematic, not the idea of specialization or dividing tasks.


Which would probably be fine for me...but then I think it's also entirely reasonable to let people use any health care subsidy they get to purchase an insurance plan that includes abortion coverage, so long as the company keeps transparent finances and doesn't use any of the government money to pay for abortions (that cost being covered by money from people not on government subsidies).  I'm open to compromise, I'm just trying to get you to see how the people who aren't open to compromise feel.


This is sort of my point.  As long as you feel its okay to have a vote and a supreme court decision in each case, then cool, you're seeing what I'm saying.  If, on the other hand, you think that people unwilling to compromise in one case are being unreasonable, and those unwilling to compromise in the other case are just sticking to their guns, then the analogy hasn't really sunk in.

That's more or less what it is, but the cost X does not necessarily have to be the entire amount the public school is receiving. If the public school gets $4k/kid, the voucher may only be $3k.



Hurrah, so we're agreed.

(I had forgotten about it initially, but then I did remember, for instance my child right now had to fill in an application to get into his current public school. Several of my friends went into TAG schools - Talented and Gifted - which are segregated from the normal public schools. I'm not aware of any single sex schools, but I hope that wouldn't be a point of serious contention.)



But this assumes that kids in group A cost significantly more than kids in group B. From what I've seen, it costs more to educate kids who are genuinely curious and trying to learn, because then you want to bring in better teachers, schedule field trips, get computers, et al., than it is to "educate" kids who are genuinely not interested in learning. If we go in on the assumption that one school is full of kids with disciplinary problems, discipline and the low-level stuff is going to be your focus. Having a college-level professor to teach your high school students physics is a wasteful expense.

and as an edited addendum: if it reverses, and the problem kids all get accepted to private schools and the public schools are left with a shrunk budget and only smart kids, it's *STILL* a win, because like I posited before, the class can only move as fast as the slowest student. Even without computers and field trips, once the slowest students are removed, the entire class can be taught at a higher level.





I can't see that program being much of an issue (from the abortion standpoint). The insurance policy would be an issue, and they'd get flak for that, but that the government makes money available that you can spend on say Aetna, on the special Aetna government voucher plan which is their only one that doesn't cover abortions, seems like a 'win'.



I do think the latter :P However, not so much that I've started plotting the overthrow of the government to get my way. I may not think it's the best way, but it's the one being forced on us all, so I have no choice but to defer to it (and I expect others to do so as well).
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:58, Wed 17 Mar 2010.

I think it's mostly coming down to a disagreement not over principle (at least not with me, like I said, for others it will be, and there's not much hope of changing their minds), but over whether we think it will achieve the goals.  In other words, I'd be willing to accept a system like you're proposing (ie, with check to make sure the government isn't paying for the religious part) if it worked...but I remain skeptical that it will work the way you seem to think it will.  I'm sure it will benefit some students, but I'm not convinced that it won't hurt others in the process.

I'm also somewhat concerned that if the government makes $3000 vouchers available, the private schools will just up the tuition by $3000 dollars.  Since the actual out-of-pocket cost to parents remains the same, the school could keep pretty much the same students by doing that, and get a big check from the government (which would come out of the public school funding...which still has the same students in this scenario).

But, as I say, it doesn't seem so much to be an ideological difference we have on this, just a difference of expectations of what the result would be.

I'm just saying, I want to be able to send my kids to a school which will give them super powers and x-ray vision, and I'd like the government to pay for it. Is that too much to ask?  ;P





That is an interesting question. I'll have to consider that one - although caps on either spending limits (i.e. - you can't buy cars and horses if you're accepting government vouchers) and tuition increase limits could help alleviate that a tiny bit. Combining that with 'the amount kids get in their voucher isn't the same that they actually cost to educate', and at least we can reduce that jump in costs.

No, no, you have it all backwards!  Your kids have to have the x-ray vision and super powers first, then they get to go to the special school! ;)  I saw it a movie, so its gotta be true!

I would have to say that inevitably all existing private schools *would* raise their tuition by $3000- or more liekly in this economy $2500 or some other lesser ammount to avoid losing students.
The real point is not that we can get all kids into existing private schools, even if we could manage it that would wind up with the private schools being overcrowded and filled with students that don't want to be there and plagued with all teh same problems teh publci schools have now.
The real point to a voucher solution is that after the vouchers are issued if I believe that i have a system where I can instruct children at a cost of $2500 a student and can get teh financial backing to start a new school based on this program I can then take students out of teh public schools based on these vouchers paying me for their eductaion if I can convince tehir parents that teh education I offer is better than what is offered in public schools.
Better of course now becoems defined by teh parents rather than the governemnt, aside from whatever minimum requirements are put on the vouchers. Also because teh parents choose to take their children there and I am not being run by the government I have options not available to public schools. For example perhaps I decide that my school will focus on technical trade training and I will save on maintenance costs by having uperclassmen do the repair and maintenance on the school. In a public school this would raise an outcry. If the parents are convinced it is a good idea and will help their kids prepare for the future (and I don't have OSHA or related issues) then it's all good. Sure my technical preperation school is lacking in the arts and music, but that's what these parents want.
And of course countless otehr concepts for specialization, cost saving and other related concepts exist.
The probalem which I don't think has been forseen or addressed is what happens when someone wants to start a school whose objectives run contrary to the public welfare. If Al Queida starts sponsering a US Madrasa in the midst of all these new schools, or a criminal organization decides they want a school where tehir kids can elarn some skills the government or reputable institutions would never teach them- like off shore accounting, legal instruction in dealing with criminal courts, what can legally be said in certain questionable circumstances, making sure bribes cannot be prosecuted...
and if yous top and think about case 2 a lot of those lessons can even be presented as very legitimate civics classes.
Though technically those schools could be started now, it is the potential rush of new schools coming into existance if teh vouchers were to be passed in a single stroke that poses teh threat of them escaping notice, not the vouchers themselves.

School vouchers are unconstitutional in Milwaukee, WI their vouchers are privately funded so that is fine but the government cannot do that. I would move for a tax credit for children K-12 if the child is in private school for what the government would have paid for that child to go to a public school. Since the government then would not be obligated for it.

Note this is a nuance the government can control taxes so if they opt to give a credit it should be legal since it would match the states contribution.

Federal versus state in terms of policy and funding. If the federal government issued vouchers who exactly would the state go after- the federal government for issueing them the schools for cashing them in or the parents for using them? I don't think the state constitution can restrict the federal government from giving away money.

Firstly, private schools can expand. It may take them time, but it's certainly possible.

Secondly, I think you assume (I may be misreading) that private schools operate primarily on profit-motive. This is true in some cases, but not all. Many private schools make less than public schools, just about however you cut it. They might increase prices a little bit to make up for the fact that, previously, they've barely been paying their teachers a living wage. But many schools will not seriously increase their tuition.

Otherwise though, I agree with your post.

Of course, working on the profit motive isn't about making more; it's making more than it costs to run.

Since private schools generally cannot rely on direct government funding like government schools, they are on the profit motive, in that they are motivated to at least break even if they wish to stay in the business that they're in.

Of course, Public Schools have a similar form of this motive (profit is a concept of value completely independent of any given economic system), but because they are mandated as necessary by the government, they have a special leverage that eliminates the normal innate automation of maintaining competence of its services that the private sector has.

I saw this today, and thought I'd run it by people here to see what they thought:

http://voices.washingtonpost.c...ons-in-church-r.html

The summary is that a public school was holding graduation ceremonies in a church, some people didn't like that, and now a judge has rule that it's unconstitutional.

When I started reading it, my thoughts were along the lines of "a church is just a building, if its being used for a secular purpose, that's not establishing a religion."  From the sounds of things, they were covering up some (though not all) of the religious symbols to make it less of a religious setting.  The article doesn't say, but I'm assuming the ceremonies themselves were secular.

But near the end, an odd point jumped out at me:


Why would a religious group get involved in this, if it were simply the case of a church building being used for a secular purpose?  This part made me think that at least some people pushing for the ceremony to be held in the church didn't just view this as a secular use of a building that happens to be used for religious ceremonies most of the time.  I'm okay with the idea of the school not having any particular bias against church buildings (so long as the ceremony itself is secular), but I certainly don't think it should have a bias in favor of religious buildings, which is what the Family Institute of Connecticut seems to be encouraging.

What do people think?  Am I misinterpreting the lobbying group? (they could just be after the schools money, I suppose)  Does their view even really matter at the end of the day (ie, does it matter if they view it as a religious building, and what to push for more religion in schools, if the school itself just sees the church as a building)?

Do they pay for use of the building? If the church is needing funds because it's attendance/donations are low and is being propped up by state usage that could be an issue. Now if use of teh building is donated by the church then I don't see an issue.
regarding teh schools and profit motive- teh school wouldn't have to have a profit motive to behave as described- but if they want a high student to teacher ratio for example, then they may need to raise their tuition to avoid being swamped by new students. In any case whether it is through expansion or new scools it would be in the long term not teh short term that the market would adapt.

I find it ironic that on some things (health insurance) there are people fighting to keep the government out because "the private sector can't compete with the government" while in other like education tehre are people fighting to keep the private sector out because they don't want the government to have to compete...

Education is not the states obligation that is the PARENTS obligation and the state can opt to help. I would keep this voucherthing easy shut down public schools and that portion of property taxescollected use for a tax break per child from age six to eighteen to provide for the education of the child paid for by the parents. Then its fine its the parents money and not a voucher therefore Constitutional.

As for Health Care I love the new law and am glad they passed it I have no issues with the new government involvement.

In a system where the people have control over the Government, it is in the Government's best interests to keep the people educated.

I believe that education is not only a right, it is the most powerful asset we have; it brings high-income jobs and businesses into the country, it increases the quality of life, and it reduces waste.

I want the system that allows everybody to be educated, not just those with money, because those who are educated make more money, while those who aren't, don't.  And that's the formula for a spiral.

I'm not arguing for the current system - I've been through High School, and attending College these past years has certainly confirmed my attitude that the Public School System is in desperate need of a overhaul.

I also dislike the fact that certain school boards (read: Texas) are currently the staging point for political ideology wars.

But I think a pure market system would deprive too many people of something everybody should have.  Education is too important, too enriching, and determines the state of our economy too strongly for it to depend on a person's financial situation, because their financial situation depends on their education.

Yeah, apparently they were paying to use the church.  Part of the judge's decision was apparently based on the fact that there were 'comparable' non-religious venues available in the area charging significantly less than the church was charging.


I don't know that anyone wants to keep the private sector out of education, I think they just don't want taxes paying for private businesses, or perhaps more to the point, are worried that tax money is going to be taken away from the public schools to fund private schools.  I for one am fine with public schools competing with private schools if they're both following the same rules.  If private schools are 'competing' by rejecting students that public schools aren't allowed to reject, and taking money from the public schools because they end up with a more successful student body, I don't see that as a meaningful competition.  If they can get a better result because they're more efficient or better trained or whatever, that's great.  If they get a better result because they're avoiding the most difficult part of the job by playing by a different set of rules, that's not so great (or at least not something that the public schools should lose money over).

I disagree here.  While I do think the parent's have an obligation, I also think the government has an obligation as well.  Not all parents are equal.  A child shouldn't be punished for having slacker parents (or poor parents, or uneducated parents, or parents with extremists ideas, or whatever).  Every child should have the opportunity of a decent education, regardless of what their parents are like.


Constitutional, perhaps, but not very effective and educating the population.

[edited to correct an error in quote attribution--apologies to both Rubyslippers and Silveroak]
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:39, Wed 02 June 2010.

I didn't say that, you were quoting someone else...
However I have no problem with the private schools rejecting students that public schools would be required to take because public schools can alos put those students in whatever facility they feel is appropriate. yes when we think about private schools we tend to think elit and expensive but there are private special needs schools as well- I don't think having a niche market should be reason for exclusion. What i think would be a problem is trying to use *both* market forces *and* outcome based judgement criteria as basis for school management. If vouchers are used private schools should be judged on the basis of who is willing to pay (with vouchers or cash) to send their kids there.
I also don't think the cash value of the vouchers have to be equal to the total amount of money allocated to education/number of children., vouchers for say 80% should be more than sufficient and tehn anyone who removes themselves from public education with vouchers leaves more money behind to be spent on the kids who stay. Eventually it will reach a ballanced point.

Ack!  Sorry about that...fixed now.


Yeah, I can agree with that.


I'm not entirely sure I follow, could you expand on that a bit?  Are you saying something along the lines of 'correcting' the apparent performance based on who they're working with, so as to be able to compare with other schools (sort of like a handicapping score system), or something like the schools that attract the best 'buyers' are rated the best?  Or perhaps something different from either of those?  I think I could get on board with the first option, if there were a workable way of doing so.


There may be something to that, but I think there's still problems with a voucher system.  If a private school is close to capacity at the moment, and you introduce a voucher system, it doesn't suddenly mean everyone gets to go to private school...there's the same number of desks there, same number of teachers, etc.  The school has to have some way of selecting who gets in.  Maybe they only take the top students--which does nothing for those kids in the middle or bottom who need it most.  Or maybe they just raise the price of tuition by the same amount as the voucher is worth, so that those already in the program go on paying the same amount for the same service, but now the public school is out a bunch of money for those kids, and the private school makes a nice windfall.

I'm saying don't rate the private schools, and public school ratings should be used for internal evaluation only, not for comparison with private schools. If the decision mkaing capability is put in the hands of the parents then why do you need a secondary rating system to anaylse the performance of the private schools?


And yes in the short term a voucher system will mean a windfall for private schools, which in turn provides incentive for new private schools to open up to take advantage of this windfall, or for existing ones to expand. It won't take more than a couple of years for the private sector to catch up.

The only restrictions that I could see putting in place is that 1) no publicly funded school could provide education from a religious perspective (comparitive religion is fine, catchism- you self fund) and 2) minimum size per grade, (10 students?) and a minimum number of grades- probably 4. That prevents home schooled families from declaring themselves a school to grab public fundning. There might even be special allowances on grade size, especially durring the first year or two (we have 12 3rd graders but only 7 first grade...)

Okay, that makes sense now, and I think I agree.


I'd guess to see if the tax money was being put to good use.  To take it to an extreme, what would stop me from opening up 'Tycho's Scam School for kids of Parents who need a bit of Extra Cash,' in which you enroll your kid in my school, had me the voucher (which I cash in to get money from the government), and hand you back half the voucher amount.  I can enroll as many kids as required, because I'm not doing any teaching...in fact, I'm doing anything but splitting the voucher money with parents who'd rather have the cash than get their kids an education.  Is it feasible?  Probably not in such a comically obvious way, but if I lived in an area full of parents of dubious morals, would the government have any grounds for shutting me down?  It seems there needs to be some sort of qualification system at very least to make sure the private schools are living up to their end of the bargain.  I agree with not comparing them directly to public schools which aren't competing on the same playing field, but I think we should have some criteria by which to say "wait, this isn't a good use of tax money anymore" if they're not delivering.


But is there a reason to expect the new schools to serve the kids going to them any better?  Making it profitable to open a school isn't the same as making it profitable to open up a good school.  There seems to be an assumption that a private school will always be better than any public school, and I don't think that assumption holds.


Definitely agree on that point.


Out of curiosity, why exclude home schooling from the voucher system?  I can see the problem with parents trying to cash in on the money by pretending to be a home school (see example above), but if they're actually doing a decent job of home schooling their kid, is there a reason they shouldn't be in voucher system too?

Yes there should probably be a no kickbacks rule as well. As to home schooling the point is to keep people from paying themselves to teach their kids. If we want to add child welfare that can be debated and added on it's own merits, and some kind of seperate voucher system for home teaching supplies would certainly be fine, but if we are handing parents cash for their kids we need to be honest enough to call it straight up welfare instead of hiding it as education expenses.

I didn't read the whole conversation, but it should be worth noting that much homeschooling now is done with a third party company that caters to homeschooling.  For example, it's like a co-op where your child might go to a class to learn math or something else.  So homeschooling is evolving into much more than just having your kids learn at home.  How these coordinating non-profit companies fit into the system is an interesting subject.

Depends on who is doing teh homeschooling and what services they go with as well.

Its not difficult make educating a child at the same level of legal duty as housing, feeding, clothing and tending to the childs other needs. Don't do anything meaningful at a minimal standard its child neglect and the Courts and government can intervene. And if they do to a minimal level that defined already in legal case law under Wisconsin vs. Yoder the child must be literate in English and not be a burden on the government as an adult as in be employable. That is not a hard bar have the child learn a trade or passthe GED should suffice.

What makes you think the free market if fueled by the money currently spent on public education would not create options? We could have all kinds of new options homeschooling, unschooling, chipping in to hire a teacher from several families, private schools, new internet school options and the like.

Education from a constitutional standpoint is very interesting- it certainly was not a power granted to teh government under the constitution but on the other hand it was within teh first congress that it was recognized that an educated electorate was necessary to the maintenance of a democracy and so universal education was required and public education funded.

Because the free market is very good at somethings, and not very good at others.  It would (and does, even without public funding) create very nice options for the wealthy.  Its great at find solutions when they're profitable, but there's not really any motivation to find solutions for the expensive people.


Which may work well for some people, but it would worsen the public school system (by taking away its already limited funding), leaving those for whom all the new, profitable, options weren't appropriate even worse off.

Here's the main difference between a free market approach and a government approach.  The government approach wants to educate kids.  That's its goal, provide an education.  A free markets approach wants to make money, that's it's goal.  If providing an education makes money, they'll do that, but if they can make more money by doing the same job of half the kids, they'll let the other half go uneducated.

Imagine this scenario:  one private school, one public school.  There's a voucher system so the private school can get state funds for the students it takes in, in addition to whatever it wants to charge on top of that.  The private school decide it'll take the top 10% of students from the public school, and charge some fee just a bit bigger than what the voucher pays.  They offer the exact same education as the public school.  But it looks like they're doing way, way better because they've got only the top students, and the public school has lost its top students.  The private school then spends a bunch of money on ad campaign to let everyone know how much better it is, "just look at how much better our students do!" they say.  Now everyone wants to send their kid to the private school, so there's a big demand.  Now the private school can up the fee (which, again, is on top of the voucher) even further.  And remember, it's giving the exact same education as the public school.  That's the kind of thing that is a good idea the free market, because it leads to profit, but it doesn't make anyone better educated.  That's why the idea that free market is always the answer to everything isn't correct.  The free market is a great tool for many tasks, but it's not the only tool, and it's not always the best tool.  Some things that are profitable aren't net beneficial.  Marketing is a good idea in a free market, but it doesn't improve the product.  Limiting your service to just cheap/profitable customers is a good idea in free market, but it doesn't help everyone.

On the other hand teh private school has reduced teh workload of the public school- sure it ahs teh top students but now teh teachers that are there can focus more on teh students which remain, possibly giving them a better education than they would have recieved otherwise.

Though realistically in my experience the problem with public schools is in the opposite direction, because tehy ahve no choice in who they can have in schol the class is paced according to teh worst student. When we tried to have my first daughter in public school she finished kindergarden not even knowing all her letters because one student in her class came from a troubled familly situation and spent 60%-80% of the class time distracting the teachers and slowing down the class.

By contrast my second daughter went to private school and would walk arround the house with a speak and spell telling us she was busy because 'I have to learn more words to get into kindergarden'

But I digress, it seems to me that if the issue is 'it's taking money from teh public schools' then teh answer is to find a formula of *how much* money should be in teh voucher since it is a matter of economics not principles. Also there might be a counter-intuitive aspect to this as well. I know that locally (Kansas) a lot of people want to cut the education budget because of what they percieve as poor performance (and some very real horror stories about how much some public school teachers don't do there job- I know one for example who never even read her students papers before assigning them a grade- and I actually know this person, and they established to the point they canot be fired without some accusation bordering on criminal). If some portion of the money were to go to vouchers for private schools the political situation could shift and education as a whole might be able to be better funded. So if the per student resources for public schools go up as a part of the voucher program how can that hurt the students who remain in public schools?

If it actually leads to better results for everyone, then I could be all for it.  If it only leads to better results for some at the expense of others, then I wouldn't.  That's really the issue, as I see it.  I fully expect a voucher system to benefit some people, I'm just unconvinced that any system I've seen proposed so far would do so without making things worse for some others.  I'm not convinced by the "if you take all the top students away, kids at the bottom will be better served too" argument.  I'm also unconvinced that a voucher system will actually make private school equally affordable for everyone, since I would expect private schools to just up their fees and reap a huge windfall at the expense of public schools.

Like we have said elsewhere, if you create a voucher system teh pprivate schools will exapnd. And it will take some fine tuning to make sure that the remaining public school students will be better served, depedning on how much money goes into vouchers and how much is 'untouchable'
As to nobody getting hurt I can tell you right away that isn't the case- public school teachers will get hurt- especially ones like my example above who aren't doing their jobs but have played teh internal politics of a broken system effectively enough to avoid responsibility. Not all teh students who leave will be from teh top- niche schools will come into being or be better funded for the students at teh bottom as well, but if teh public schools loose 60% of tehir students and 40% of their funding then you can certainly bet that some of the teachers will be leaving too. The good ones will be able to find work in private schools, others will not.
And it is the impression of  agreat many peopl, including many of the better teachers, that the real opposition to the voucher program is being driven by these 'barnacle' teachers who are affraid of losing their income.

Actually, you'll find that a lot of teachers won't leave the public school system. Why?

1) Public schools are run by county (or in some cases city) government.
1a) This means a steady guaranteed paycheck.
1b) This means access to insurance (of varying qualities, yes, but insurance).
1c) Some few public schools provide access to materials and equipment that an individual teacher simply cannot afford.
1d) Even without a union (and the teachers unions are not ubiquitous across the country) your job is fairly safe as government jobs are full of red-tape.

2) Many private schools are harder on teachers in several ways.
2a) Your job is rarely secure. Politics, religion, who you know and what they provide are just as heavily influential, if not more so, in many private schools who have to rely on not only student tuition but donations and gifts in order to meet their bills. Make the wrong person mad and your job just might be forfeit.
2b) Lack of insurance. You are essentially an independent contractor and have to provide your own access to health care.
2c) Equipment and supplies are a mixed bag. Many schools are going to give you their own curriculum. You might not agree with it, but you've got to use it. You might not get much in the way of technology and supplies.
2d) Teacher pay in many private schools is less than that in public schools - especially for teachers with higher degrees or years of experience.


At least these were all the cases when I was a public school teacher 7-8 years ago. I too disliked the politics and failures of the public school system. Several parents and teachers at private schools in the area convinced me to look into the various private schools to compare. So, I did. I looked at private schools across several states and regions. By and large, pay was less, few offered insurance, almost none offered any variability of curriculum.

2c is also an issue in public schools, and 1a and 1d are to most people exactly the problem. 1b and 1c will vary depending on the private school in questin- all teh ones I have seen provide health insurance *and* supplies.

as to 2a from what I have seen politics and personal behavior is more of an issue in public schools than private. 2d I have to agree with but every private school I have seen has been able to recruit high quality teachers from the public schools who are willing to work for less for a better work environemnt.

Like I say, if I see a system that tells me how its going to keep the public school system from suffering, I could get on board.  Just saying it's possible with fine tuning, though, isn't enough for me.

Rehnquist'As to nobody getting hurt I can tell you right away that isn't the case- public school teachers will get hurt- especially ones like my example above who aren't doing their jobs but have played teh internal politics of a broken system effectively enough to avoid responsibility. Not all teh students who leave will be from teh top- niche schools will come into being or be better funded for the students at teh bottom as well, but if teh public schools loose 60% of tehir students and 40% of their funding then you can certainly bet that some of the teachers will be leaving too. The good ones will be able to find work in private schools, others will not.
And it is the impression of  agreat many peopl, including many of the better teachers, that the real opposition to the voucher program is being driven by these 'barnacle' teachers who are affraid of losing their income.</quote>
If it would be better for all students (again, not just good for some at the expense of others), but teachers suffered, that'd be fine by me, though I think it'd be very difficult to improve the situation while making it worse for most teachers.  The places that seem to do well with education seem to treat teachers much better than we do (part of the reason we have as many bad teachers in our current system as we do is because its a low-paying, low prestige job, and schools are frequently forced to "take what they can get" because the best potential teachers go into higher-paying, better respected jobs).  I'm fine with getting rid of teachers (good ones or bad ones) IF it will lead to a net benefit for the students, but I'm not convinced that inability to fire teachers is currently the biggest problem facing public schools.  In fact, I think the difficulty of attracting good teachers is a far bigger problem, which might be made worse if firing teachers is made the focus of reform.


And this is sort of what I'm worried about.  Taking a teacher away from the public school and putting them in a private school doesn't make them into a better teacher, it's just moving what's there from the public sector to the private sector.  What's the benefit of having more private schools, if the teachers at the public school end up moving to the private schools for the jobs?  If private schools are just taking the best aspects of the public schools, they aren't really adding anything.  If they can attract people who wouldn't teach in public schools, that's something different that might be worth paying for.  But just taking the top teachers that would otherwise be in the public school system doesn't seem to give us anything new/better to justify taking money away from the public schools.

So in short they do better but don't fix anything?
Part of the problem is that public schools are not allowed to trully deal with problems. A private school can reject problem students and problem teachers, as well as problem administrators. All three tend to accumulate in public schools. If money comes with a problem student then some private school will be able to find an solution.
As to drawing good teachers away from public schools that is not teh only resource for teachers for private school (unless of course the laws make it so by putting in place limitations on who can teach and where they can be trained the same way they have for public schools).
And as to finding a ballance in which all students benefit i cannot posta  specific plan because a) I am not that iniotimately familiar with teh workings f teh public school system b) even if I were the odds of getting it perfect on the first try are astronomical, and c) I strongly suspect the best model will vary state by state if not district by district.

My suggestion would be start low since that is the least disruptive approach, say give 10% of the cost of educating a student out in vouchers for students who attend private schools, and attach an increase in education funding to teh bill at teh same time. See how that changes the number of kids going to public school over the next 3 years, then increase to 15% per student, see what the impact is, and while the numbers of student attending public versus private schools are being observed also watch how the quality changes in public schools. After that data is collected a better plan foreward can be devised.

If by "better" we mean "have the better students" then yes, that's what I'm concerned about.


I agree, to a degree with the first statement, but think the second isn't an example of "fixing" the problem--it's just passing the problem on to someone else.  Which, again, is my concern.  It doesn't mean they're more effective, it just means they're working on an easier problem.


This doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, so long as it's made clear up front that if overall performance doesn't improve (ie, everyone does better, rather than some at the expense of others) then the private schools stop getting public money.  I think it would need to stressed that the goal is not a successful voucher program, but a successful education program, that may or may not end up having vouchers in it. If we approach it as a "whats the best way to run a voucher program" question, we could still end up with something worse than we started with--but better than all other voucher systems tried.

I would say that as long as teh public schools do better then we have to asume that anyone going to the private school is also doing better, since they ahve chosen that option over public schooling.

Another point here- you say you don't think taking the top students and educating tehm is fixing anything, but if the top 10% in ability are recieving a bottom 10% education in public school then private school does fix the problem that they are not being educated up to their potential. Which is what happens with most private schools today- at least here in Kansas. I've seen cases on the East coast where that was not true- the private schools were boarding schools for children who were apparently in some way incovenient to tehir parents and the public school students had a better chance of college admission than the private school.

I could accept that.


Public schools can (and do, at least the ones I went to) separate classes (eg, "advanced maths" or "honors english" etc.), and that's fine by me (so long as everyone still gets taught up to their potential).  If the public school can't do this because of lack of resources, then we get to the problem that taking money away from the public school and giving it to the private schools only makes things worse at the public school.

They may seperate classes in high school but I have yet to see one which seperates at the lower school level, even though at that point any teacher can point out which students are problem students that are holding back the rest of the class.

Ahh... but if you are also taking away *students*, then it should not make things worse.  It is merely shifting the resource from one pipeline to another.

What is really going on is this:  A school system gets X dollars per student.  If they loose 1 student and 3/4 X dollars to a private school, they actually have MORE dollars per student left.  It should be a good thing.

BUT a Bureaucrat looks at the GROSS numbers and says "Oh, I have less money, and money is power and status, this is bad!" and the Teachers' Union says "Oh, they will employ fewer of us here, and more of us there where we don't have the same level of political power, this is bad!"

But that assumes every student costs the same amount to teach, and that all costs the school has to pay are in proportion to the number of students, both of which aren't valid assumptions.  Some students costs more to educate than others, and there is overhead that schools have to deal with that isn't linked to any one student (maintenance, etc.).

Like I said, if someone shows me a system where everyone benefits, rather than just some people benefiting at the expense of others, I could get behind it.  But just saying "it should" be better for everyone, based on questionable assumptions isn't enough.

Part of the problem for me, is that even though people in favor of the voucher system are often willing to say "it should" get better at the public school, in pretty much every case what they actually want is to get their own kid out of the public school and into a private school.  I don't really get the sense that any of them actually care all that much about what happens in the public school in the end, so long as their kid gets into the private school they think is better.  Some people even are explicit about it, and say it will let the private schools drive the public schools out of business.  If the public schools were actually going to benefit from the voucher system, I'd expect the public schools to favor the plan, and for people in favor of the system to be more inclined to keep their kids in the public schools.  I haven't gotten the impression that either is the case.

If *every* student winds up in private school because that is their choice then that would presumedly mean the private schools are doing a better job of it.

And no the per studnet cost is not directly proportional- on the other hand at some point it rectifies back to that situation. If the school district has 5 middle schools and loses 40% of their students they only need to keep 3 middle schools open...

But again there is something of a lack of hard data which is why I suggest a slow start of 10% teh per student cost being put into vouchers and document the effects, step up to 15% in a few years and go from there.

Saw this
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201...front-of-courthouse/
in the news today, and thought people here might have some thoughts on it.  Apparently an atheist group put up a display of a skeleton in a santa suit, hanging on a cross on a courthouse lawn.  The city apparently allows any group to put up a display on the lawn during the holidays.  Predictably, some people were offended, and apparently someone knocked the skeleton down.

What do you guys think?  Should it be allowed?  Should it be prevented?  Do provocative displays meant to challenge views/beliefs deserve equal treatment with more traditional ones?  Is a skeleton in a santa suit on a cross more disturbing than a traditional crucifix?

My take on it is that the group that put it up were likely trying to be provocative, and get a reaction.  Those who got angry about it gave them just what they were hoping for--a public forum to debate free speech and religion on public ground.  Hopefully someday when someone does that, the rest of us will just say "weird", shrug, and carry on with our business...at which point it won't be necessary for people to put up such a display anyway.  I think the group should have a right to put up such a display (or, the same right as any other group to put on up, at least), but is being unnecessarily confrontational in doing so, and probably no advancing their cause any.  What do you guys think?

Whether bad taste and insensitive and incendiary behaviors should be tolerated in civil society is a different topic from the legal considerations.

I wonder if when 90% of the country's population has been acclimated to trolls since second grade, if this will be less of an issue.

Beyond that ... it's part of free speech, I guess. It's rude, but people everywhere are rude.

True.  What's your thoughts on both of those?  (ie, what should be tolerated by civil society (and what would "not tolerated" entail?), and what is/should be legal?)

It's kind of like the gay marriage issue: it's a hybrid.

On one level, you have what society tolerates and promotes on a moral level.  On a second level, you have what logical reasons exist for promoting or prohibiting a behavior, such as potential harm to others or society (or potential good).

My personal opinion is that for public displays, people should be allowed to express their religious views to a certain level, and the government should tolerate (not exclude) religious expressions.  However, when those expressions directly result in hate-speech, intolerance, or other inferential negativity to another group's religious beliefs, they should not be tolerated.

So a minora or a Christmas tree should be tolerated, as should a symbol of Buddhism or other religion (to the extent they are not distracting or so overwhelming that they appear to make the state appear to support the religion).  However, those hateful expressions like the skeleton santa cross the line because they are intolerant in and of themselves.
----
Where you see this come up more often is in the workplace.  Should a public worker be allowed to display a small manger scene at her desk, for example?  The problem is when it gives the impression that the state is taking upon itself the promotion of a religion.

I should add that there are many cases on this subject, and it tends to come down to a case by case basis a lot of times.  I haven't looked at the cases in awhile.

But the end result is that there tends to be a "better safe than sorry" attitude in the private workforce (leading to banning everything), and I think the same is true of the public workforce, but I'd have to check.

Here's something handed down from the White House regarding federal workers, though it is a bit old now:

http://clinton2.nara.gov/WH/Ne...l/19970819-3275.html

Part of it states:

This message was last edited by the GM at 20:07, Tue 06 Dec 2011.

The general idea here sounds pretty reasonable to me, though I guess a trouble is who decides what's hateful or negative?  If the people who put up the skeleton did it to say that they think the religious message of christmas is dying because of a commercialization of the holiday, but other people interpretted it as an attack on christianity, who's views of the display determine whether it crosses the line or not?

Also, would "thou shalt have no other gods before me" qualify as "inferential negativity to another group's religious beliefs?"  It is, pretty literally, a anti-other-religions, but most christians probably don't feel it should be considered offensive or intolerant, I'd guess.  When "your religion is wrong and mine is right" is part of a religious display, is it different from just saying "your religion is wrong" as part of a non-religious display?

I guess another angle to look at is whether is "okay" (in a moral sense, more than a legal one) for people to tear down/deface/etc. displays they find hateful/offensive/disrespectful/etc.?  Was the person who knocked over the display overreacting to it, or showing a legitimate reaction to something they found insulting?  I'd tend to lean towards the former, if for no other reason than accepting it could lead to widespread vandalism of all the displays.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:26, Tue 06 Dec 2011.

I don't think it's as hard as you're making it sound.  Demonstrating one's own cultural beliefs is in most cases fairly distinctive from trying to tear down or attack someone else's.  It also sort of boils down to the moral majority issue, which is the first of the two issues I mentioned.

In reply to Heath (msg #203):

Perhaps, I certainly can't claim that I never overthink things.  But if it were really all that simple, would we have so many disagreements/lawsuits/arguments/etc. about the topic?  I'd agree that in most cases, we tend to get a pretty quick "this side is right" feeling, but I sort of don't find that kind of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" answer very satisfying.  If I can't really express why one side is right or wrong, in a way that doesn't lead to results that seem wrong when I apply the same idea in other cases, I sort of feel like I haven't really fully understood the issue.

I think it comes down to the fact that we're trying to balance two different goals, which can't always both be met fully at the same time:  we want to maximize freedom of speech, and minimize the amount of hateful/offensive/hurtful/etc. messages that a person has to endure.  I can accept that in balancing acts, there may not be a good, clear rule of where one goal trumps the other, but I'd at least like to see a good guideline.

Your idea that it's okay to express your own beliefs, but not okay to attack another's seems like a decent starting place, but I'm not sure it covers everything.  And there are definitely cases where people would object to it being applied.  The first commandment is an example of attacking/rejecting the beliefs of others, rather than expressing your own beliefs, but I think there are many christians who would be offended if someone suggested that made it inappropriate for a public display.  However, if you put a sign up that said "Allah is above all other gods!" many of those same christians would be quite upset.

There's also the issue of whether it's the intended message that matters, or the interpreted message.  And if the latter, who gets to interpret it?

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by the moral majority issue.  Can you elaborate on that a bit?  Is it just a "majority rules" idea?  The problem there seems to be that it could lead to minorities not getting the same level of free speech as the majority.

My experience with the law is that the vast majority of cases is about getting to the point of proving that your natural feeling about what is right or wrong is actually right.  It just takes a lot of mumbo jumbo to get there.

It's messy primarily because people are trite and emotional beings who can sometimes be overly argumentative and litigious.

There's a saying about philosophy (that I hope I don't mangle) that goes something like this:

Unlike science, Philosophy doesn't teach you anything you didn't already know; it just shows you why what you already know is true.

The law is generally just a branch of philosophy mixed in with imperfect human legislation.

This sort of sounds like a "no real point in discussing it, it's just opinion at the end of the day" sort of position.  Is that how you meant it to be taken?

I'd disagree that it's "primarily" messy because people are trite, or overly litigious.  I'd argue that there's a fundamental conflict between our desire to have free speech, and out desire that people not have their very deeply held beliefs (like religion) offended.  We can't have both maximized at the same time, so have to invoke some manner of balancing the two.  And how we do so isn't an obvious or easy thing to solve, I'd say.  Whether anyone besides me finds that interesting or worth discussing, I don't know! ;)

I do see Tycho's point. For instance, just the other day I was on the bus and I saw the American Humanist Society had put up an advert saying 'Don't believe in god? Join the club!' with smiling people. Even though that is precisely what defines an atheist, I found it upsetting and it struck me as a destructive message. Was I right in feeling offended? Am I right to be offended by the advert saying "There is no god, now live your life"? Is that message more or less offensive than saying "There is a god, read the bible"? I couldn't say (because I'm quite biased), but I can't think of a reason why it would be.

It may sound cynical, but being in this business for many years (and as you may know, my specialty is employment law), that's been my experience.  I'm not saying that's what it should be, or even what the law "holds," but that's typically what I see it boiling down to.

For example, one case we had about 10 years ago was an African-American lady who wore a strange and strong smelling lotion in the workplace.  A worker complained that she had sensitivity to particulates, and other workers complained that it was overpowering.  The African-American lady sued for racial discrimination and harassment.

So yes, I'm cynical, but this is how the vast majority of cases I handle come to be.  Who is right in that case?  Were the comments racially motivated?  It's hard to tell exactly, but the case started because this overly sensitive woman cried foul rather than work it out or simply change her lotion.

That's interesting.  The "there is no god, so now live your life" one I can definitely see why some people would be offended (it's claiming a belief as a fact which directly contradicts others' beliefs).  But the "don't believe in god?" one I wouldn't have guessed would have offended people.  What about it bothered you, if you don't mind me asking?

As to the comparative offensiveness of a "there is a god" and a "there is no god" sign, I think that mainly comes down to what we believe (we're offended by the one that tells us we're wrong, but don't see the one that tells us we're right as offensive), but also due to the fact that we're much more used to seeing pro-christian messages, so they lack the shock value of the atheist message (which, I'd imagine, is part of what the atheist groups are trying to highlight by putting up their ads, though I'm not sure they'll be very successful with it).  Something you see day in, day out loses much of it's punch, even if it would have been pretty offensive the first time you see it.  So there's sort of a one-is-new-the-other-is-standard bias in cases like that that makes it more difficult to compare them on even footing.

In reply to Tycho (msg #209):

It felt more exclusive. Like, imagine there's a club for people with red hats. "Anyone with a red hat can join". Alright, maybe I feel a little excluded, but I can understand people wanting to be with other people with similar shades of hat.

The bus sign struck me as more of a "everyone is welcome! Except people with red hats. You guys can't come." Everyone, huh? Hobo Joe? Sauron? But not me, because my hat is red :( It feels like I'm being picked on. It's like the difference between 'gentlemen's club' and 'no girls allowed'.

Well, every religious belief, by definition, directly contradicts the beliefs of all other religions (even if you're a universalist Sufi since your belief in all religions contradicts the one-true-religion-ness claimed by all other religions), as well as atheism.  If you believe Christ is the only passage to salvation, then Islam, Buddhism, Scientology and Hinduism are wrong.  And it's not as if devout believers in Christianity or Islam or any other religion don't claim their beliefs as fact just as easily and surely as the atheists who made that sign did.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:15, Fri 09 Dec 2011.

In reply to habsin4 (msg #211):

Yes, I'd largely agree that most religious beliefs contradict the beliefs held by other religions.  But my thinking is that certain religious statements don't necessarily have to target the beliefs of others and point out they're wrong.  "God is great!" tacitly implies that other religions are wrong, but "non-christian religions are a load of crap!" does so explicitly.  I could imagine that making a bit of a difference.  "Come to our Mosque!" seems fairly inoffensive (to me at least), even if the implication is that Islam is the best religion and other religions are false.  On the other hand "Don't go to their church!" would probably seem pretty offensive to the people's who's church is referred to, even if the same messages was perhaps implied by the "Come to our mosque!"

I think atheist who want to promote atheism/humanism/whatever have a bit of a PR problem, in that atheism is defined in the negative, which makes simple statements about the belief (or lack thereof) come off a bit more aggressive.  "There is a God!" can come off as not specifically targeted at atheists a bit more than "there is no god!" can avoid sounding like it's tearing down theist beliefs, even though the information content is about equal and opposite in each case.  It's perhaps a bit similar to how "vote for Bob!" sounds positive and friendly, whereas "don't vote for Joe!" sounds negative, even though in a two-person race between Joe and Bob, they more or less mean the same thing.  Another example might be the difference between "I think I'm right!" and "I think you're wrong!"  I think because of the way language and beliefs/concepts have developed through time, atheism is sort of forced into an "anti" position, which makes messaging a bit trickier for them.

It's not about contradictions; it's about attacking other religions.

In reply to katisara (msg #210):

Hmm, interesting.  If it had said "atheist?  Join the club!" do you think that might have gone over better with you?  That'd be closer to the "Gentlemen's club" than the "no girls allowed," I guess.

But whatever the case, I guess at least it gives some perspective on how easy it is to cause offense, even when not intending to do so.  I know it rubs me the wrong way a bit when politicians talking about welcoming people of "all religions," as it sort of implies that people without a religion aren't welcome.  Fortunately I usually find plenty of other stuff to be offended about when politicians speak, so I don't dwell on that bit! ;) Another example that always surprises me is when people get offended if you wish them "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas."

To get us back to the original topic, how much being offended should we expect to have to tolerate in this kind of stuff?  If even well-intended messages can cause offense, it doesn't seem like we have any real hope of completely avoiding offense, but is there some reasonable level we can expect people not go go over?  There is, after all, a fairly broad spectrum of how offensive a message can be.  Or do we just go to the other extreme and not try to limit offensiveness at all?  If you sign up in time, should you be allowed to burn a cross on the court-house lawn, or does that level of offensiveness warrant a restriction?  My gut tells me there should be some types of messages that a courthouse shouldn't allow the public to express on the government's land, but I'm not sure how to make a rule on it that isn't open to abuse on one side or the other, which makes my head question my gut reaction.

Probably, although I agree with your earlier post that atheists have a PR problem. Frankly, either way you phrase it, it sounds empty. I go to Church to worship God and pray for miracles. I go to Atheism Club to ... talk about no God? I don't know. There needs to be some constructive selling done there.



I definitely lean towards freedom over comfort, so I'd tend to say 'if you're following the rules, it should be legal'. However, that's different from what is polite. In cases like putting up displays on the courthouse lawn, perhaps it should require the individual register under his name and address. He can do it, but at the cost of social capital.

In reply to Tycho (msg #212):

Okay, that makes sense.  Personally, I feel that the depiction of atheism as a lack of something is where the PR problem lies.  Atheism, to me as an atheist, is simply the belief that science more successfully explains the world than religion.

I wonder, would this insult you as much?

(Won't link to it, because I'm not sure what the rules are given that it has some bad words, but look up Jon Safran Vs. God - Atheist door knockers.  It's on Youtube.)

I also agree with katisara's point to some extent.  The atheists now tend to call themselves "freethinkers."  This moniker implies that those who are religious don't think for themselves.  This is one area where they are deliberately pushing the limits.

An openness to having any and every idea challenged by the scientific process is a key part of most atheistic beliefs and is not a part of most religious beliefs.

For example, in many Christian traditions it is simply not okay to challenge the idea that Jesus actually physically rose from the dead.

There is zero wiggle room there.

Whereas someone who might call themselves a freethinker is free to change their mind on that issue depending on the evidence.

So while some might be offended by it I don't see how it's actually untrue. True in all cases of all religions in every area?  No.  But to much more of a degree in religious setups than in skeptic circles for sure.

Yeah, I have to admit, I don't know what the "club" in the sign was really meant to be about. I'd guess it was mainly intended to be a "you're not alone" message, though I there are "humanist clubs" about these days.  Haven't really been interested in going to any of their meetings for largely the reason you raise--what goes on there, besides people agreeing that there's no god?  That said, I have been to some talks here during the edinburgh festival that they've put on that were pretty  good (one about the psychology of the paranormal was particularly good), so maybe it'd be more interesting than I give it credit for.


Hmm, that actually sounds like a pretty good approach.  Though, in some cases people aren't really afraid to let people know about their particular hatred.  I definitely agree about erring on the side of freedom.  But is there any limit on that that doesn't lead to potential abuse?  Is there anyway we can make burning crosses or swastikas against the rules without making it possible for the local government to ban political speech they disagree with?

Perhaps another way to put it:  is the first amendment a means to an end, or and end unto itself?  Is free speech simply good because it's free, or do we want free speech because it provides some benefit and/or that limiting it would cause some manner of harm?  Do we protect swastika's and hate speech because the right to express them is valuable in and of itself, or because preventing that kind of speech would also make it possible to limit other types of speech which we feel is valuable?  I'm not entirely sure where I stand on that.  Is the question "why is free speech good?" really meaningful?  Is it simply valuable by definition (ie, we value it because we value it--it doesn't need any further justification), or is there some other value that it provides.  If the former, then yeah, let any form of speech be protected and don't stop people from putting swastika's on the courthouse lawn.  If the latter, it might be in theory possible to put reasonable limits on free speech, when the speech isn't providing the value that makes it worth protecting.  The sticky part there, of course, is who gets to decide if it has that value or not, and is there any way to do so that wouldn't be abused?  Not really sure...and seem to be just rambling while I try to get my own thoughts together!  Sorry! :)

Yeah, I think if the word and concept had a different derivation, perhaps something like "materialist" or "naturalist" it'd do better, but those words have already been used for other meanings.



Links to that kind of thing are fine, just put a "warning, may contain strong language" next to the link.  And I don't find the the video offensive (but I'm an atheist, so that's probably not a surprise), but it sure seemed like plenty of the people in the video were offended by what the guy had done.  And, to be honest, it seemed like that was his goal.  I think that kind of thing tends not to change minds very well.  It's amusing to people who already agree with you, but it just pushes people who disagree with you away, I'd say.  I think he should definitely be free to do it, but I don't think he's helping his cause any.  Now, trying to sell atheism or a religion to the pair of Mormons who come to your door, that's entirely fair game in my opinion--and far more likely to change a mind (though still extremely unlikely), since they're already interested in discussing religion.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:15, Fri 09 Dec 2011.

Hmm, I would guess that they're more focusing on their own style of thinking rather than trying to put others down (though I'm sure there are some who do it to put others down--always some in every group).  Out of curiosity, is there any other word for atheists that you can think of that would be a positive definition (rather than indicating what it doesn't believe in) that wouldn't be off-putting?  I see "secular humanist" quite a bit these days, though I can't claim to know what the definition of "humanism" really is.

It's hard for me to define others by what they believe; I just hope it's a sufficient description to have meaning.  "Secular humanist" is vague and could apply to theists too.  Douglas Adams used to call himself proudly a "radical atheist" so no one would have any questions that he really doesn't believe.

But in the end, why have a label for something you don't believe in?  I don't call myself the "Santa Unbeliever" or "unatheist."  Atheist works just fine to say you're outside the scope of believers, and it doesn't cloud the waters.  Secular humanist or whatever may be a philosophical description but is not a religious one.

Well, then isn't proselytizing of all kinds offensive?  If someone goes door to door and says "believe in my god" isn't that being intrusive also?  If the sign on the bus said "Doesn't science and evolution explain the world better?" or some variant of that, would it be offensive?  Was it the atheism of the message or the presentation chosen that katisara found offensive?

You mischaracterize proselytizing (at least as I've always seen it done).

Proselytizing is equated to going around trying to share the lottery with everyone.  Most, unfortunately, don't want those millions of dollars (i.e., eternal life) that are being shared, or don't believe the money is real (i.e., the religion isn't right).

But proselytizing is not about telling people they are wrong and have to believe or they're going to hell.  That would be offensive...unless, of course, they were right.  :)

Instead, it's about sharing a message of joy and happiness and a path to follow to get one those rewards.  So, yes, it is different.

Doulos (msg 218):
What we're looking at here is the underlying subtext.  Yes, they certainly are "freethinkers" so long as that definition does not include anything not explainable by modern science...or in other ways.  The moniker is true, but its implication is that others are not, which is negative.  They could call themselves "scientific freethinkers" or "evidence seekers" or a number of things, but the term just "freethinkers" has a negative implication because it labels everyone else as "not freethinkers."

And yes, there are some areas of religion where there is no wiggle room, depending on the religion, the person's personal interpretation of the doctrine, and other issues; but the same is true of those who place their faith in science alone.  Their minds are simply bounded by other fences.

EDIT: Imagine that a religion called itself "the good guys" or "the people going to heaven" or "God's favorite."  These are closer to the offensive (if only slightly so) nature of "freethinker."
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:53, Fri 09 Dec 2011.

Who says sharing the message of secular humanism isn't about sharing a message of joy and happiness?

Not only would it not insult me, I'd consider myself part of that group! And that's part of the problem, I guess. If you were to say 'this group is about people who believe science is the best explanation of the observable world', I'd say 'yeah, that's right,' and I'd be happy to join. If you said, 'we are humanists, and we work together to define a stable moral code and philosophy based on rationalism,' I'd agree again and be happy to join. There's nothing about science or rationalism which exclude religion.

I'd be a little leery of 'free-thinker', because it implies 'gullible'. I've met a lot of 'free-thinkers' who will believe whatever you tell them (and funny enough, most of them are religious). Skeptic's Society seems a bit more appropriate, but again, you can be a skeptic and a Christian (or whatever). It's only where you say 'NO GOD-LOVERS ALLOWED!' that it becomes truly 'atheist' as well as exclusive.

And I guess that's also part of the issue. Does 'atheism' need to be exclusive? Humanist sounds good, because it's giving me a positive - humans; human issues, human experience, human limitations. But again, is it truly atheist? I didn't think so (at least, until I saw that sign on the bus).

I think that's just it.  Atheist is a label for something people don't believe in.  It's negative by nature, like "santa claus unbeliever."  Something that better expressed what they do believe might avoid some of the issues that are cropping up here.  Actually, the "evidence seeker" suggestion you gave in another post actually struck me as really good.  I think that's the best one I've seen so far.  Sort of like "skeptic" but without as much of a negative angle.  :)

It certainly does seem so to the people in that video, so ideally, they would reconsider their support for door-to-door proselytizing if they found it offensive when they were on the other side of it (and if they supported it in the first place--may be most of the people in the video slammed their doors on mormons too).  If the stunt worked to get them to change their views, great!  But I'm guessing it's more likely will just have a more negative view of atheists now, and feel like they've been victims of the "war on religion" that so many people think is going on.  If humans were rational creatures, stunts like this that show contradictions between our beliefs and actions would be effective.  But we're not all that rational in most cases, so it can actually do just the opposite.  In the vast majority of cases, people only change their minds when the person urging them to do so is someone they already trust and view as "on their side."  When people we disagree with show us evidence that we're wrong, most of the time it only reinforces our views ("if that guy thinks I'm wrong, then I must be right!").  It's not that I don't see and agree with the guy's point in the video, it's that I don't think people who don't already share his views are likely to see it.


Good question.  I'd say the "better" part probably sets it self up for causing offense, but a simple "Science and evolution explain the world!" might work better (though, evolution/creationism is a hot-button issue, so if you go down that route, some people are going to be offended no matter how you phrase it).

In the video the guy did try to do the "sharing the good word" schtick too.  He was definitely trying to doing it as close to what the mormons do while giving it an atheist spin as he could (which could have been part of what put people off, since it could easily have been viewed as mocking the mormon missionary style).  People still seemed offended, and I don't think it was the delivery that caused it.  I figure there's three reasons why people would be offended (we only saw clips of them, so not really possible to say which was most common):

1.  they're offended by anyone who comes knocking on their door to sell an -ism to them, whether mormon, atheist, or encyclopedia salesman.
2.  they're offended by someone suggesting they try atheism, found atheism distasteful, etc. If so, AND they were mormon, this would be somewhat ironic, but except for the guy who said he was a bishop (and who wasn't one of the more offended-looking people in the video), we can only speculate that people were in that situation.
3.  they might not have minded atheists coming up to their door to talk about atheism, but were offended that they did so in a way that poked fun at mormon missionaries.

Or "latter day saints" or "saved" or "God's chosen people?"  ;)

In reply to katisara (msg #227):

I prefer humanist, too.  Although 'humanism' as I understand it has generally implied a belief that the temporal human life we lead on Earth is all there is, so you are better served by focusing on your current life and ignoring the belief in the afterlife.  So, it has an element of negating the beliefs of others embedded right in it.  Of course, it could be interpreted by individuals in ways.  And an argument could be made that religious people have often been at the forefront of movements that value basic humanity in people.

Now, if you really believe what I wrote in my second sentence, that there is no afterlife and striving to meet some earthly goal whose only payoff comes in the afterlife is a waste of time, would it be offensive to proselytize that message?  I mean, Heath said proselytizing is about spreading joy, right?  Well, if you believe that true joy is only found by focusing on earthly rewards and you do your best to convince your fellow humans that you're right, aren't you just trying to 'save their souls' or 'spread the good word,' so to speak?

I wouldn't have any issue with someone saying "heaven isn't real, so we need to focus on what we have right now". Heaven shouldn't be the focus of Christianity anyway, and it's not an attack on the important bit of God, plus it's tied into your philosophy -- focus on right now.

Well, "latter day saints" is an aspiration only, not a declaration, and I think when that name came about, it was a much less politically correct world.  Same with the other two.

Those are "grandfathered" in, shall we say.  In other words, due to longlasting use over many, many years, everyone knows the context and colloquial meaning.  But if you took them totally out of context and historical record, then you might have a point.

I don't really get offended myself by freethinker or any of the other terms.  I'm just pointing out the inferences and contextualization that could easily be applied to such terms when they are introduced.  It's kind of like democrats saying they are "progressive" when, in my mind, they are "regressive," but that's all political rhetoric; same with Republicans saying they are "conservative" but have to couch that in "what kind of conservative?" words.  All semantics.

In reply to Heath (msg #234):

I don't find any of them offensive, I just found it a bit funny that the three "imagine if..." examples you gave were very similar to existing cases. :)

Your point about them being "grandfathered in" is probably spot on.  If "freethinker" had been the term for atheists for the last hundred years, no one would be offended by (well, except people who find atheism offensive in general, I guess).  That was part of what I was getting with the issue of the PR problem I mentioned.

In reply to Tycho (msg #235):

Well, now, Richard Dawkins uses the term 'bright' as in "Hi, I'm a bright." Is that better?

In reply to habsin4 (msg #236):

Heh, Dawkins is a very clever biologist, but inoffensive he most certainly isn't!  I loved The Selfish Gene, and think everyone should read it at some point, but Dawkins is pretty pompous and arrogant at the best of times.  Using "bright" as the term for atheists will go over worse than "freethinker" by a long shot, if you ask me.  ;)

Not to mention that it's not a very good descriptor. There are plenty of stupid atheists.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:17, Sat 10 Dec 2011.

Speaking of offensive atheists: R.I.P. Hitchens.  He may been a huge jerk, but you can't accuse him of lacking wit, integrity or energy.

I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up recently.

The Obama administration is now going to require all hospitals, including religious ones, to offer abortions. This applies to all hospitals which provide services to the general public, so a Catholic hospital can avoid it if they limit services to only Catholics. Hospitals have one year to comply (which, conveniently, puts the comply date after elections). A quick survey of my local area shows that about half of the hospitals in my area are religious, predominantly Catholic.

The RCC responded by publishing a public letter, and sending it out to be read in churches, saying they will not comply with the law. This may be a case of the Church encouraging civil disobedience.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-50...ma-letter-in-church/

Thoughts?

Unless I missed something, I didn't see abortion anywhere in those stories.  But, yes, it is an attack on religious rights.  If there was going to be an attack on religious rights, this would be the one I would okay with.

They require the offering of chemical abortion pills and morning after pills. The Church can't comply because it would be a violation of their ethics. In their view, assisting someone with an abortion is identical to murder. And to be clear, this isn't denying abortion; they can still go down the street to the clinic if they want. But it's denying doctors the right to not participate in acts they find morally offensive.

Shouldn't that be a personal moral choice if the woman or couple decide to follow the teaching of the faith or not with the consultation with their cleric. In fact most American Catholic women use birth control now from the latest statistics but oppose abortion seems to me a sensible approach.

I agree. But doesn't the cleric also get a moral choice, about whether to be part of that process or not? If someone came to you and said "I'm tired of my children, and I'd like you to kill them for me," you too now have a moral choice (and a moral obligation to act correctly), even if it's someone else who is "choosing".

I said consult not listen to in the end its between the party and their diety figure, if any is worshipped. I have a simple solution if they don't want to follow the law don't take any government funding not medicare, medicaid, health insureance they don't approve of and so forth. Then they can do what they want to.

No, they can't. If they accept members of the general public, they MUST offer these medical procedures that they believe to be sinful. And that's an issue to me. Just like I don't think anyone here would dream of forcing a woman to have an abortion if she didn't want one, I can't imagine forcing a doctor to conduct one.

This is a very different issue from denying a person an abortion. I've heard of doctors saying, "this procedure is available, but I find it morally unconsciousable, and I personally can't proceed. However, I will put you in contact with some people who can complete this for you." The medical procedure is still completed and no one does anything they find morally wrong.

In the past, religious hospitals could get around these requirements by simply providing the person a referral to a place where the person could have the procedure done.  From my understanding, under Obama's new law, there is no exception like this and the religious hospitals will be forced to provide the procedure regardless of their moral objections.

In reply to katisara (msg #240):

I think there may be a communication issue here (or maybe I've simply missed some part of the news being over here in the UK rather than the states).  I didn't see anything in your link about Obama requiring hospitals to perform abortions (there was something about that being the law in MA, put in place when Romney was governor).  Rather, the change mentioned (and the one I've seen in the news) is that religious businesses (not churches, but the businesses/charities/etc. beyond the church that are subject to normal hiring laws such as no religious discrimination) will have to offer the same type of health insurance that all other employers have to, which includes covering birth control.  That's significantly different from forcing hospitals to perform abortions, so if you have something indicating that's what's being done please post it.

On the issue of having to cover birth control, I'm of slightly mixed mind.  My first reaction is "sheesh, if we just had single payer, the government could cover birth control and this would be a non-issue," but that's not really in the cards in the US, unfortunately.  My next thought is, "do I really care if catholic hospitals don't offer insurance plans that cover birth control to their employees?  Not really, why not just let it go?"  Then I think, "where does the limit on religions not being subject to the same laws as everyone else get set?  What if I'm 'morally opposed' to not stabbing people in the face?  Do I get an exception to laws that stop me from doing so?  What if I form a cult that requires members to stab people in the face to get into heaven?  Does my religious freedom mean I'm allowed to do it?  Surely not.  This isn't an anti-catholic law; it's a blanket law that applies to everyone, and catholics don't like it.  No one is being forced to take birth control against their will, no one is being forced to have abortions.  It's only saying that employers don't get to make health decisions for their employees, even on moral grounds."  So I've got a number of different positions bouncing around in my head, and I'm not sure where I stand on it yet.  On the one hand I don't like the government forcing groups to do anything they don't want to.  On the other, I don't like the idea that "I'm religious!" is an excuse for not having to follow the laws that everyone else does.  There's also the issue that catholic hospitals can decide to not provide insurance, and accept the penalties for that (I'm assuming it'd be some financial penalty like a fine or a tax, rather than anyone spending time in jail over it).  Finally, I think if instead of catholics it were muslims objecting to some requirement in the law on religious grounds, the reaction to it would be very, very different.  Doesn't really change whether it's right or not, but it gets in my craw a bit that some of the same people arguing that it's constitutional to ban mosques in a town, are the ones complaining that Catholic businesses (again, not churches) will have to buy the same health insurance plans that all other businesses do.  And, I suppose, as a final issue weighing in is the fact that I find the catholic church's opposition to birth control to be irrational and counter-productive, since access to birth control correlates strongly negatively with abortions (ie, abortions rates are highest in areas where women have least access to birth control).

In reply to Heath (msg #247):

Heath, can you gives us a link on this?  I've been hearing a lot about the birth control covered by health insurance issue, this is the first I've heard of the having to provide abortions issue.  I would have guessed that the latter would make more waves than the former.

I heard it on the news.  No link to that, I'm afraid.  The issue being discussed was that this exception for religious hospitals disappears under Obama's new law, which then forces them to perform the abortions or provide birth control regardless of their religious prohibitions.

For me, I'm for birth control and against abortion, but I would never in a million years require or expect a Catholic hospital to provide birth control if that is contrary to its religious tenets, and I certainly would not threaten them with withdrawal of their funding (i.e., putting them out of business for sticking to their moral principles).  This is wrong in every sense of the word.

We see here a clash of separation of church and state (where some people want to eradicate religion altogether) and freedom of religion (where there had been exceptions to allow for moral objections).  The argument that somehow the state is supporting a religion in violation of the constitution by allowing the hospital to have exceptions for its own moral imperatives is a sad commentary on our overly secularized society.

Hmm, I'm still a bit skeptical here.  All I'm reading is that hospitals (again, not churches) are going to have to provide the same kind of insurance that any other employer does.  They don't have to provide abortions.  At least not from anything I've seen so far.

Also, churches, and purely religious organizations will still have the religious exceptions, but groups that are not purely religious (ie, have to follow the same hiring laws as everyone else) won't be.  So already Catholic churches are not allowed to require the doctors that work there be Catholic.  Do people feel that is an infringement on religious rights?

I may have been mixing up two stories in my head. Sorry about that.

Here's what the insurance issue is:  It forces "religious employers to pay for insurance coverage that includes birth control and drugs that may cause abortions."

So the insurance issue appears to be is forcing Catholic-run employers (including, for example, Catholic colleges) to use insurance that provides objectionable services, such as abortion and birth control, rather than letting them choose insurance companies (i.e., fund with their money) that fit with their moral convictions.

It is based on a regulation issued by Obama regarding Obamacare.  Because it is an election year, Obama has granted an extra 12 months for the religious institutions to comply so as to avoid the controversy, but it's now come to the forefront.

What will happen from here, most likely, is a challenge to Obamacare based on constitutional right to freedom of religion.

And this story is similar to what I was talking about regarding Catholic hospitals:

http://www.religiondispatches....unch_a_new_campaign/

That particular story is an opinion piece opposing the Catholic position; it's all I found in a quick search.

The two stories are somewhat related, but there are two distinct issues: 1) the insurance provision, and 2) the hospital provision of services.

The law includes "morning after" pills, which qualifies it as a chemical abortion.

I think my stance on this should be pretty predictable. I don't think anyone should be forced to engage in, or directly support, something they find morally repugnant. That's completely different from saying people should be allowed to stab other people in the face. If I think blood transfusions are wrong, I should be allowed to not get one, and if you want one, I should not be required to give you one. And I don't think this is specific to any particular religion, or even religions in general.

If I'm not mistaken, though (and it's quite possible I am, I'm not fully up on this issue, I admit), that it's not stopping them from shopping around, but rather requiring that all insurance plans cover these things?  It's not that there are to be plans that they'd like to get, but can't because of the rule, but rather that all plans have to cover these things, so there will be no plans that they're completely happy with, no?  It's not picking specifically on catholics, it's just making them play by the same rules as everyone else, no?  It's a lack of an exception, rather than a rule made specifically for them, right?

Also, I'm still curious as the question in my previous post:  Is it an imposition on religious hospitals that they cannot discriminate based on religion when hiring employees?  Already they might be forced to hire a qualified atheist, or even a satanist, even if they found such views morally objectionable.  Is this something that infringes unduly on religious freedom?