THE SECULAR ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE

Using Religion as a Litmus Test (C. Boyden Gray, letter to Washington Post, 8/1/2003)

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Pryor, "Do you not understand that [your] statement . . . raises concerns of those who don't happen to be Christian, that you are asserting . . . a religious belief of your own, inconsistent with separation of church and state?" He also argued that "you have opened up a long series of questions related to the Establishment Clause. It is one thing to say that we have the freedom to practice. It is another thing to say that we condone by government action certain religious belief."

In later comments, Senator Durbin expressed his regrets that a prohibition of murder had been included in the Ten Commandments, thereby making it unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause for murder to be criminalized. Thankfully, the government's refusal to criminalize murder does not infringe upon the freedom of Jews and Christians to refrain from murder, and thus there is no contradiction between the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses. It is true that some non-Christians and non-Jews also think that murder should be prohibited; but they may be ignored, for the overwhelmingly important point is that we must not condone religious beliefs by government action, however meritorious those beliefs might be. Posted by Paul Jaminet at August 3, 2003 11:35 AM