RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY IS BOTH dEMOCRATIC AND DEMOCRATIC

:No, Sen. Santorum, Catholics aren't a protected class (Josh Marshall, 8/06/03, The Hill)

Religious believers argue that faith isn't simply a private matter. It underlies the values and beliefs we bring to the public square. And they're 100 percent right. But the shield that guards our private religious beliefs from any and every political scrutiny doesn't follow those beliefs out into the public arena. Once our religiously rooted beliefs cross the membrane from the private to the public, they become no different from any other political beliefs. People are free to disagree with us and oppose us on that basis. That's not bigotry. That's democracy.

How are the two mutually exclusive? There's nothing unusual about bigotry that's arrived at democratically. In fact, bigotry is fairly popular.

One strange thing here though is Mr. Marshall's contention that religious beliefs are to be treated just like any others in the political sphere. It seems from the plain text that Article VI of the U.S. Constitution does indeed forbid religious tests while it is silent about the kind of loyalty oaths that were used against communists during the Cold War.

At any rate, one suspects the Democrats won't be eager to embrace the argument that they do oppose religious believers for their beliefs and are well justified in doing so. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 6, 2003 6:24 PM