Eddie Tabash Responds

Earlier we had a discussion about Eddie Tabash's argument on the separation of church and state to be found here. There were some unanswered questions so I emailed Eddie and here is his response...

Bill Gnade is concerned that there is too much of a focus on the role played by right wing Christians in eroding church/state separation. There is no need to discuss liberal Christians, because they are not the problem. My speech is entitled the “Threat of the Religious Right to Our Modern Freedoms.” In this presentation, I speak of the need for nonbelievers to work with liberal believers to secure freedom of conscience for everyone. However, the threat to turn the United States into a theocracy is a real danger that emanates from the religious right. Focusing my criticism on the religious right does not entail any automatic condemnation of liberal Christians or religionists, in general, who agree on keeping God and government separate.

Bill Gnade is also concerned about absurdities that can flow from church/state separation. If properly applied, there would be no legal disabilities imposed on believers. Believers would only enjoy no greater rights than non believers, as it should be.

The writer, Jon, apparently does not comprehend the dangers of pure democracy, as opposed to a constitutional democracy. He also does not appreciate the role of the 9th Amendment in preserving for the people rights otherwise not given to the states. The states are defined as their collective law making authority. If they are not specifically empowered to encroach on a liberty interest, that interest must lie with individuals.

Jon is also not persuaded that the framers intended strict separation between church and state, that is, government neutrality in matters of religion. In my talk, I think I showed that this is what the Framers clearly intended. However, for a more developed historical analysis of why the Establishment Clause was designed to require government neutrality in matters of religion, please see my in depth article on the True Meaning of the Establishment Clause.

Jon seems to miss the importance of empowering individual liberty to stave off state oppression. The incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states, by way of the 14th Amendment, accomplishes this. If our most basic liberties can be crushed by government, if there is no right of privacy, then it does not matter that the oppressive arm of government emanates from the state house rather than Congress.

The Establishment Clause clearly prohibits government bodies from imposing religious-based laws on individuals. So, if a state can burst into the marital bedroom and stop the use of contraceptives, we have a form of state totalitarianism that is in violation of the liberty interests of the very limited government that conservatives keep harping about. Also the 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, along with the Establishment Clause, and the 9th Amendment, incorporated to local governments by the 14th Amendment, clearly justifies preventing a dictatorial majority from using the police power of the state to trample on minority rights.

So, yes, I do not favor, and I do not believe the Bill of Rights favors, unbridled democracy. I believe that the Constitution places limits on the degree to which majority sentiment can encroach upon minority rights.

If I wish to express my views in public as to why I believe there is no God, it wouldn’t matter if 100% of those hearing those views wanted the state to forcibly stop me from expressing those views. Such expression is protected. The state of Alabama, for instance, should not be permitted to prosecute me, even if 100% of those living in that state insisted that atheists should not have the same rights to speak in public as do religionists, and I publicly expressed my reasons for not believing in God at a public debate at the University of Alabama.

In his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, Scalia mentioned masturbation as among the “deviant” sexual activities that a state should be able to ban. America would become a tyranny if the cops could burst into someone’s bedroom and arrest that person for privately jerking off, regardless of what the majority of residents of the given state thought.

Eddie Tabash