The Gore Court

[Arthur D. Wolf]

Dear Folks,

        First, regarding the religion clauses of the First Amendment, one should
recall that it is the establishment of "religion" that is forbidden, not
the teaching of matters that could fairly be described as non-religious (or
secular).  Indeed I thought that was the whole point of the religion
clauses: to keep religion out of public institutions and to keep public
officials out of religious institutions. "Religious children" may be
subject to secular ideas in public schools, but their parents or guardians
may choose to send them to parochial schools, thus avoiding the secular
pollution of their minds.  Of course, their parents or guardians would also
have to cut off their supply of CDs, access to many TV programs and movies,
and access to the internet through computers, which, incidentally, the
Supreme Court held last term could be furnished to parochial schools with
public funds.  Perhaps the world is too much with us.

        Second, since Vermont now recognizes same-sex unions, we should keep a
close eye on this "experiment" to see if opposite-sex marriage will come to
an end.  Many years ago, I was researching the issue of children born out
of wedlock for a case then pending before my judge.  In the course of that
research, I came across an article by a well-known sociologist who was
describing the relationship between marriage and fornication, a matter
directly related to illegitimacy. Near the end of the piece, he made this
observation:  "Fornication will end when marriage becomes so perfect that
no one will commit fornication.  And marriage will end when fornication
becomes so perfect that no one will commit marriage."  If we view
"marriage" as a loving relationship between two people, whatever their
gender, I suspect that "traditional" marriage will be with us for a very
long time (pretermitting the question of how long fornication will be around).



                                Art Wolf
                                Western New England College







At 07:08 AM 10/31/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>I think the Court currently is balanced between left
>and right, and the next election will tip the balance
>one way or the other.
>
>If Gore is elected, the progress we have made toward a
>truly neutral EC will be halted and the clock will be
>turned back to a religiously-hostile, strict-
>separationist approach. Religious folks will, of
>course, be required to pay their full share of taxes,
>but they will not receive a fair share of benefits
>from the Welfare State (unless they are willing to set
>aside their religious beliefs and accept strictly
>*secular* education,strictly secular social services,
>etc.) Religious children will continue to be made a
>captive audience in the schools for all kinds of
>secular ideologies, but when it's their turn to speak
>in school they will be gagged lest they utter a prayer
>or religious perspective. Why is it a "captive
>audience" only when the speech is religious? If the
>audience is "captive," it's captive for secular
>perspectives no less than for religious perspectives,
>no?
>
>If Gore is elected, within 10 years same-sex marriage
>will be imposed on all 50 states by the Court. This is
>the *real* issue about the Court in this election,
>although nobody is talking about it. If Gore replaces,
>say, Rehnquist and O'Connor with two liberal
>activists, it's not only the end of democracy, it's
>the end of marriage.
>
>--Rick Duncan
>
>
>--- Richard Dougherty <doughr at ACAD.UDALLAS.EDU> wrote:
>> Perhaps some of you heard the Diane Rehm show this
>> morning, on the
>> potential effect of the election on the Court. I
>> think it was Stuart
>> Taylor who, in response to a question about whether
>> the Court was
>> liberal or conservative, replied that law professors
>> would say that the
>> Court is conservative, but the American people would
>> say it was liberal.
>> Do you think he is right about either or both
>> statements? More
>> interestingly (sorry), I guess I would like to hear
>> what people think is
>> the popular view of the Court; if the people do
>> think the Court is
>> liberal, why do they think so?
>> Richard Dougherty
>>
>
>
>=====
>Rick Duncan (conlawprof at yahoo.com)
>
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