In a school district located in Colorado, religious groups are authorized to distribute
literature on campuses, mostly to middle school and high school
students. This way, a Christian group regularly hands out Gideon
Bibles to students during school hours, on school premises. As a
response to this current state of things, the FFRF (Freedom From
Religion Foundation), the Satanic Temple (that I previously presented
in my first article) and a local association of atheists tried
to distribute their own religious literature to students. However,
the school district opposed their right to distribute their own
religious literature, and this resulted in a lawsuit conducted by the
FFRF against the school district, which the group won. Thus, the
school district now has to unable the distribution, which will
proceed today, on the 1st of April [time of writing]. It
is true that contrary to the first case I studied, in this one, the
political dimension is much more explicit. The FFRF describes itself as a lobby group which promotes political dialogue
independent of religion, that is to say the group defends a
separationist point of view on the First Amendment. In the case of
the Colorado school district, I do believe that the FFRF, the Satanic
Temple and the atheistic association gathered so to be a powerful
enough counterweight to Christian associations like Focus on the
Family later in Court: the Satanic Temple to represent religious
interests and the atheistic association more specifically to
represent local interests, and the FFRF as a way to have greater
means of action. As a matter of fact, this combination seemed to
work, for they won the lawsuit, for which the school district had to
pay fees of $90,000.
The comments made after the
lawsuit by a Focus on the Family representative, Candi Cushman,
illustrate why the fact the school district tried to block the
atheistic and Satanist literature to be distributed was an
infringement of the free exercise clause. First of all, she argues
that “common-sense standards of decency should apply to these
[books]”. I do see what she is trying to say, but terms like
“common-sense” and “decency” just do not have any place in
judiciary cases about religion, except of course when sexual content
or something that directly promotes and/or causes physical harm is in
question, but this is not the case here. The main problem with that
declaration is that it presupposes the idea that some religions are
to be considered as “good ones” by the government, and some
others as “bad ones”, or “evil ones”. Nonetheless, again,
this is just not in concordance with the First Amendment, regardless
of what kind of point of view – accommodationist or separationist –
you believe is the best: the government must be blind to the
components of religious beliefs, except of course, once again, if
those concretely physically harm anyone in any manner. The second
declaration made by Candi Cushman quoted in the article that I would
like to analyze is the following: “From the images displayed on
recent television reports on this story, it appears that some of the
materials may be disparaging of other religious viewpoints and even
lewd in their depictions.” This declaration is theoretically right:
it is true that atheism and Satanism are indeed religious beliefs
that by nature go against mainstream theistic religions. But the fact
that those beliefs appear as hateful is not enough on a legal level
to dismiss the free exercise right that comes with them. Some aspects
of mainstream religions do appear like signs of hatred to other
religions and/or to non-religious people, and still they are most of
the time tolerated by the law.
However, this case does go further on
religious freedom than the first one I approached. Candi Cushman
continues her comments on the case by saying that “[s]he
contends that the God’s Truth will ultimately win against Satan’s
lies.” That is to say she recognizes the right of the atheistic and
Satanist religious groups to distribute their literature, for she
believes on a spiritual level that the “truth” will prevail. From
a constitutional perspective, this is perfectly fine: this woman is
free to believe what she wants to, and the fight between atheism and
Satanism on the one side and Christianity on the other side is
actually also free to take place from a constitutional perspective,
as long as it stays out of the legal framework and that it is not up
to the government to designate a “victor”. This debate between
the various religious groups initiated by the atheistic and Satanist
associations actually created a new conversation among the school
district officials, for they now consider regulating the distribution
of literature to young students. They are
considering restricting certain contents that “promot[e] hostility
or violence, commercial purposes by advertising a product,
interfer[e] with the schools, promot[e] candidacy in an election or
[are] obscene or pornographic”. Of course, it is yet difficult to
know what will exactly be regulated, but I think this is a healthy
conversation to engage into, because it concerns young students. I do
believe that this is particularly beneficial to society that this
case did not end in the judiciary system choosing one side or the
other but rather granting the free exercise right to all, and that it pushed officials to think about what consequences certain
types of literature can have on young people. What is your stand on
the case? Do you think that the Court should have stopped the
distribution of the anti-religious literature?
Caroline, I am in complete agreement with you. The public school in Colorado was already allowing for some religions to distribute literature to their students. Thus, in order to respect the Establishment Clause, and not favor certain religions over others, all groups must be allowed to distribute literature. Although Satanists are arguably “disparaging to other religions” I think this could be said of all religions. Meaning, every religion clashes in one way or another. For example, Christianity is a monotheistic religion where there is only one God. Thus, does Hinduism “disparage” Christianity because it is a religion believing in many Gods? I highly doubt this to be the case. To that end, Satanists prioritize individuality and believe that oneself is the most important person, a God if you will. So, although religions will never agree with one another, how can the government, with the Establishment Clause in place, say which religious principles are valid? Furthermore, I think there is much validity in being exposed to viewpoints which are not commonplace and even possibly hurtful. The importance of being exposed to opinions we don't agree with is being able to articulate why we don’t agree with them. To strengthen an argument you must dedicate time in trying to understand the other perspective. Thus, to shelter students from this experience of being exposed to all religious literature is to hinder their ability to practice making opinions and being able to articulate them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both you Caroline, and Kaily. Because other religious groups could hand out their materials, when the school district tried to prevent the Satanist group from handing out their materials, they were clearly showing preference to more traditional American religions such as Christianity or Judaism. Because of this, since the school seemed to be preferring most religions over this Satanic religion, there was a clear establishment of religion in this school system, which since it is public is part of the government. In this case I agree that if the school chose to allow religious groups to distribute materials, all religious groups should have that same right, no matter if they are in the minority or majority. I do think that generally, religion should have no place in public schools generally because children are so easily influenced. I think that I was wrong for religious organizations to use the space of the public schools, during school hours, to advance their religious agendas and I think that in the future a movement should be made to disallow religious groups from handing out materials on school property during the school day.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with both of you. I don't think that religion has a place in schools and no religious materials should be allowed to be distributed. By opening up the school as an open forum for religious materials the school is violating the Establishment Clause by allowing religious messages to be publicly presented during the school day. However, like you've both said, the school already allowed the bibles to be distributed and makes no mention in their rules that religious materials are restricted, so in order to not form an establishment they must allow any other religious materials donated to be distributed until they change the policy and restrict religious materials being distributed at all. To allow the bibles and not allow the materials from the atheist group and The Satanic Temple would undoubtably constitute an establishment of religion by the school by only allowing the views of one group to be displayed. The religious message doesn't matter when dealing with neutrality and I agree that the argument cannot be made that TST's material can be restricted because it goes against Christianity since Christianity just as equally goes against the teachings of TST.
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