{"id":224,"date":"2005-04-23T09:54:45","date_gmt":"2005-04-23T09:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=224"},"modified":"2005-04-23T09:54:45","modified_gmt":"2005-04-23T09:54:45","slug":"separation_of_church_and_state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2005\/04\/23\/separation_of_church_and_state\/","title":{"rendered":"Separation of Church and State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again, I don’t have the time to fully explore the issue I’m about to raise. Sorry about that. Nevertheless, I still want to share with you an interesting quote that was recently referenced<\/a> by Andrew Sullivan, then picked up by the always excellent Josh Marshall<\/a> and now seems to be wending its way though the blogosphere. (I heard about it via Mark Evanier’s post on the subject<\/a>.) Seeing as I’m always one to hop on the bandwagon, I will now repeat the quote followed by Sullivan’s remarks:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.” — President John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn’t the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn’t [Senate Majority Leader] Bill Frist see President Kennedy as an enemy of “people of faith”? Just asking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I said, I don’t have time right now to say too much about this, except to note that I’m not at all comfortable with the increasing influence of certain modes of religious thinking in this country. It’s not that I have a problem with “people of faith.” (Living in Utah, I am surrounded by them and call many of them my friends.) It’s that I think the religious people who are making the most noise these days would likely have a problem with me<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I’m not talking about ordinary live-and-let-live church-going folks here. I’m talking about those who openly desire the reformation of this country as a religious state (specifically, a state founded upon their particular brand of Christianity, which from my perspective isn’t terribly Christian at all.). I’m talking those who think that everyone who doesn’t believe as they do are less moral than them, or worse, a threat to society. These are people who would impose their religion on everyone through acts of public policy. People who encourage random stupidity like pharmacists withholding prescribed contraceptives because they have moral objections as to how they’re used, as if that’s any of the pharmacist’s concerns. As if the purpose for that prescription is even within the pharmacist’s knowledge; I happen to know that some women take birth control pills for reasons other<\/i> than contraception, something that wouldn’t show up on a prescription. (An excellent op-ed in yesteday’s Trib<\/i><\/a> suggests a common sense solution to this prescription dilemma: pharmacists who have moral objections to how some medications are used should find another line of work, because it isn’t their place to judge their customers’ conduct or needs.)<\/p>\n

I don’t question for a moment the right of the Christian far-righters to think that the world is going to hell in a bucket, if that’s how they see things. I could even make a pretty compelling argument that their view is correct, although I wouldn’t point to the same evidence they use. But I’ve got a big problem with self-righteous, self-important, blue-nosed, killjoy prudes passing judgment on those around them and deciding it’s their purpose in life to put all those sinners in their place. Um, no, guys, that’s God’s job. Your job is to raise your families as you see fit, prepare for whatever you think is coming in this life or the next, teach your children the things you think they’re not getting from a secular public school system, and butt the hell out of everyone else’s business.<\/p>\n

OK, rant over and back to work…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, I don’t have the time to fully explore the issue I’m about to raise. Sorry about that. Nevertheless, I still want to share with you an interesting quote that was recently referenced by Andrew Sullivan, then picked up by the always excellent Josh Marshall and now seems to be wending its way though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}