http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/29/campaign_dispatch4a.html
   
HotWired
The Netizen

"Slow-Pitch Politics"
 Campaign Dispatch

by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
19-21 July 1996


   The House Republican leadership this week redoubled its efforts to
   pass a "religious freedom" constitutional amendment in hopes of
   boosting Bob Dole's flagging presidential campaign.
   
   This hasty legislative push is designed to placate the Christian
   Coalition's Ralph Reed. Reed has demanded a floor vote on the measure
   before the 2 August recess, in time to record the results in his
   group's voter guides. Those voter guides will then be distributed to
   100,000 churches this fall - churches with members who will no doubt
   vote for Dole come November.
   
   The latest version of the amendment measure, representing a compromise
   between two warring religious-right factions, is scheduled for a
   hearing next Tuesday. For months, Congress had intended to pass some
   sort of school-prayer amendment, but stalled when one sponsor,
   Representative Ernest Istook (R-Oklahoma), refused to agree to
   alternative legislation introduced by Representative Henry Hyde
   (R-Illinois).
   
   Hyde won the ensuing political staredown, and the latest language
   reads:
   
   "In order to secure the right of the people to acknowledge and serve
   God according to the dictates of conscience, neither the United States
   nor any State shall deny any person equal access to a benefit, or
   otherwise discriminate against any person, on account of religious
   belief, expression, or exercise. This amendment does not authorize
   government to coerce or inhibit religious belief, expression, or
   exercise."
   
   Daniel Katz, legislative counsel for the ACLU, says the measure will
   "turn current law on church-state relations on its head" by allowing
   churches to receive cash from the Feds for the first time.
   
   "If government had the ability to fund churches, with that would come
   government oversight, and religions would be competing for government
   funds. It would allow one person to impose their religous beliefs in a
   competing manner on another," Katz said.
   
   Katz notes that such mainstream religious groups as the Episcopal
   Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the American Jewish Congress
   oppose the suggested amendment, which is supported primarily by
   religious conservatives.
   
   On the other hand, Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at
   UCLA and founder of the "religionlaw" mailing list, welcomes the
   amendment.
   
   "In the past 25 to 30 years, the [US Supreme Court] has had an
   outrageous attitude towards private religious schools and private
   religious expression," Volokh said. "Five of the nine Supreme Court
   justices were willing to accept [in a 1995 case] that religious speech
   has less protection than political speech. That's a very bad thing."
   
   But even Volokh admitted the measure is poorly worded: "This is not a
   perfect amendment. It is vague."
   
   And there's the rub. If Congress is serious about mucking with the
   Constitution, they should at least do it the right way: by crafting
   bulletproof legislation and holding extensive hearings, not ramming
   changes through Congress to meet the Christian Coalition's publication
   deadlines.
   
   Worse yet, letting the religious right get away with this political
   maneuvering might set the stage for similar single-issue
   constitutional amendments in the future. If the Supreme Court knocks
   down the Communications Decency Act as unconstitutional, the "family
   values" groups could counterattack next year with an amendment
   designed to ban that old bugaboo, "online indecency."
   
   The final insult in all this, though, is that the Senate has
   absolutely no plans to vote on the amendment, no matter what happens
   to it in the House - essentially making the entire issue a political
   softball tossed to the religious right.
   
   Ah, yes, election-year politics - when fiddling with the Constitution
   is congressional summertime fun.

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