Massachusetts proposals to force church disclosures

[Volokh, Eugene]

    My understanding is that the polling data on blacks' views about
using race as a factor in employment and educational decisions is quite
mixed.  Stuart Taylor, whom I've found to be a pretty honest user of
data, reports in a National Journal piece reprinted at
http://www.cir-usa.org/articles/182.html on quite a few polls that
suggest that most blacks oppose such use of race; I've also seen polls
that suggest the contrary.  It does seem pretty clear that many blacks
beyond Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly do not support using race as a
factor in employment and educational decisions ("affirmative action" is
a pretty broad term that can encompass many different policies, so the
results on that might be different).  How many seems to me something of
an unsettled question.
 
    Returning to the law of government and religion:  I take it that one
argument Catholic churches may use to oppose the law is based on Lukumi
Babalu -- the law is an attempt to go after Catholic churches, even
though it's facially neutral.  I'm skeptical about this argument, but I
wonder:  How relevant for purposes of the argument is it that many of
the legislators that support it are Catholic?  Are polls that try to
measure how many rank-and-file Catholics support this sort of law
relevant to the Lukumi inquiry?
 
    Eugene 

-----Original Message-----
From: religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Newsom Michael
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 2:55 PM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: RE: Massachusetts proposals to force church disclosures



I think that the only thing that one can say for sure is that Clarence
Thomas and Ward Connerly do not support affirmative action.  Polling
data and studies of the political views of African Americans tend to
show that the vast majority of black people in this country support
affirmative action.  One cannot assume that either of these two people
are in any sense representative of African American thought,
particularly when all of the available evidence points to the contrary.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Sanford Levinson [mailto:SLevinson at law.utexas.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 11:43 AM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: RE: Massachusetts proposals to force church disclosures

 

Vince Koven writes:

 

I suppose that depends on how you define "anti-Catholic," but the
proponents of this legislation (all Catholics, so far as I can tell) are
adopting the *political* stance of supporting the lay Catholics who have
been critical of church-closing decisions. More votes in the pews than
in the pulpits, I guess.
 

 

I think this raises a very interesting question going well beyond the
specific example.  Many people who have studied abortion note that women
are basically split on the issue, which makes it problematic to argue
that those of us who support reproductive choice (as I do) are
"pro-women" and those against are "anti."  Similarly, one of the things
that Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly have taught us is that
African-Americans do not necessarily support affirmative action and,
indeed, are willing to argue that it is functionally anti-Black to
support it.  I don't agree, but I'm not sure that I'm any longer willing
to say that opponents of affirmative action are "anti-African American."
If one accepts Catholic theology, then I suppose that the "pro-Catholic"
position is indeed the pulpit (and ultimately the Papacy) rather than
what the laity happen to profess, but that is obviously a tendentious
argument (for most of us).  With regard to almost all Protestant
denominations (or Judaism), there would certainly be no reason at all to
reject the laity in favor of ministers or rabbis.   

 

sandy

 

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