Second things first:
> With respect to secularisma nd the framer's views, you
> are dead wrong. Many of the framers were Deists. That
> did not mean that they thought we should all be
> Deists. Theyw ere, before they were Deists,
> Enlightenment liberals. They thought that we should
> not have an established religion. including Deism. How
> do I know this? Because they wrote it into the
> fundamental law in the First amendment, which
> prohibitsa the establishment of religion.
But--and this is the rejoinder I get when I say things like that--that Deism was based on the Judeo-Xtian tradition and therefore this country is, in some way, a product of that tradition. At that point, I say, OK, perhaps it *was*, but *what should it be now?* and then the conversation degenerates into a discussion of personal beliefs.
It's impossible to quantify such things, but to me it feels as if the argument that the First Amendment builds an unbreechable wall between church and state doesn't carry the weight it used to. In particular, the 1st Amendment doesn't seem a guarantee of irreligion. Remember Joe Lieberman's "Freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion" quip from the 2K election? I wish I could forget it.
> The Declaration (which contains the language about the
> Creator) has no legal force. The Constitution does not
> refer to a divine being. The views of the framers --
> Jefferson was not one -- are only one possible source
> of constitutional interpretation. Far more important
> are (a) the text of the document, (b) the text of the
> court cases, especially the Supreme Court cases,
> interpreting the document, and (c) policy arguments
> based on the likely good and bad results of proposed
> interpretations. I would say that in a contest where
> the text, the case law, and the policy argument
> pointed one way, and the intent of the framers,
> insofar as determinable, pointed the other, the issue
> would come out against the intent.
And I hope the text/case history/policy hermeneutic continues to prevail among members of the professional law community. Speaking personally, I figure the original intent interpretive method *shouldn't* prevail, because the original intent referred to those institutions and social forces that existed at that time. (That argument generates a lot of black stares among people who agree with me.)
BUT we're not all members of the professional law community, and the notion that law or policy contrary to anything other than the original intent of the Contitution--mindless veneration--is evil and un-American has currency, and it's linked to the notion that the USA at its founding was, in some sense, an Xtian country. And so we have Judge Moore and the Alabama situation.
Different day, same question: What is to be done?
Curtiss