Religious freedom sometimes opens legal minefields

defending the First Amendment against the Christian right ...

... because if Jews don't speak out, they'll think we don't mind

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Religious freedom sometimes opens legal minefields

By Adam Behsudi, Asheville Citizen-Times (Asheville, North Carolina), March 13, 2006

ASHEVILLE — It’s the first right guaranteed in the First Amendment — 11 words that prevent the government from limiting the freedom of religion.

The First Amendment guarantees that Congress shall make no law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”

According to the 2005 State of the First Amendment survey by the First Amendment Center, 65 percent of Americans are satisfied with how the religious freedom clause is being upheld by the government.

However, the rights guaranteed in the Constitution are hardly black and white.

In Western North Carolina and many other parts of the country, the display of the Ten Commandments in public places has tested the separation of church and state.

It has also created new wariness from minority religious groups who say the majority religion of Christianity has increasingly made its way into government in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

First Amendment lawyer Frank Goldsmith, who practices law out of Marion, said that throughout American history, courts have interpreted the establishment clause as a direct statement for the separation of Church and State.

He said founding fathers James Madison and Thomas Jefferson specifically outlined the concept of separating religion from government.

“It’s not some new creation of a liberal activist court,” Goldsmith said.

“It’s pretty solidly established that there is separation of church and state in America.”

The Rev. Robert Drake, chairman of the Community Council for Biblical Values and pastor at Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church in Asheville, recognizes a separation between church and state.

But Drake said there is no separation between a religious person and government.

“You can’t keep a person’s faith, his life motive, his whole moral spiritual direction. … You can’t keep that limited to one of the institutions,” he said. “One’s faith is one’s life.”

Drake said it is important to recognize religion in the public realm and prevent government from becoming “the definition of all things.”

“I myself think the government is making a terrible mistake when (it) tries to cut itself off from its own religious heritage,” he said.

Erwin Chemerensky, a law professor at Duke University who helped argue the 2005 Supreme Court case that involved the Ten Commandments being displayed on the grounds of the Texas statehouse in Austin, said the public display of religion is increasingly being called into question.

“I think that the religious right is becoming much more aggressive in trying to have religion be part of government,” he said. “As a result there are more cases challenging what they’re doing.”

But Chemerensky said that displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings and on public land is not always unconstitutional.

The court struck down the Texas case against the display because it had been in place for years without controversy and was one among other symbols.

However, a similar Supreme Court case against two displays in Kentucky was upheld because the court said the installation was blatantly religious.

A 1995 Haywood County lawsuit sought to remove a display of the Ten Commandments in what was then the county courthouse.

Plaintiff Richard Suhre said the display of the Commandments on the wall influenced a jury during a legal dispute with a neighbor over a barking dog.

But when Suhre died in 1999 so did the case, on which the county spent $170,000 and five years to keep the display in the courtroom, where it remains.

Seventy percent of Americans surveyed by the First Amendment Center last year said they supported the power of government officials to post the Ten Commandments in government buildings.

But there are some area religious groups that feel alienated by public displays of religion.

“If you belong to a minority religion in the United States you are slapped in the face constantly,” said Byron Ballard, a Wiccan priestess and co-founder of the Coalition of Earth Religions.

“Why do we feel like we still have to give a nod to the dominant religion in the country?” she said. “If a Baptist church does an outdoor Easter sunrise service, they don’t need a phalanx of police.”

She said outdoor Wiccan gatherings always have protesters but she has never felt that government limits the practice of her religion.

Darrell Lunsford, an atheist who started a group called WNC Atheists, said he has seen increased visibility of religion in public life.

“Since 9/11 the increased display of religion made a lot of atheists feel uncomfortable,” he said. “Anytime that one group is kind of given status above others, you feel left out.”

Some members of Asheville’s mainstream religions other than Christianity have mixed reactions when religion and government intersect.

Howard Jaslow, the president of the Beth HaTephila Jewish congregation, said he supports a separation between religion and government.

“I like to keep a complete separation of church and State,” he said. “Once you start going a certain way you start getting restrictions on one community over another community.”

Some members of the Islamic community in Asheville say they haven’t felt direct persecution from the government on the freedom to practice their faith. Even public displays of Christianity like the Ten Commandments have not been considered particularly offensive.

But for Khalid Bashir, a local doctor and Muslim, national and international events have made it difficult in other ways for area Muslims.

“The image of the Muslim has deteriorated,” he said.

Violent protests that have occurred in Muslim countries against caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were printed in a Danish newspaper have not helped, said Bashir.

“Insulting someone’s religion is not freedom of religion,” he said.

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