Dear Conservative,
It is estimated that somewhere around 80 million people go to church in the United States every weekend. Add the number of practicing Jews and Muslims who go to temple and a mosque every weekend and the number of house of worship-goers increases significantly.
No matter what God you pray to or religion you follow, or even if you choose not to believe in a particular faith, your right to do so is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
In New York City, however, a Federal Appeals Court has ruled that the City is completely within its rights to ban religious non-profit organizations (churches) from renting public spaces on weekends!
Thanks to a panel of three unelected judges, potentially hundreds of churches in New York City are now “homeless” after being kicked out of the spaces they were renting. This is an abomination and it must be stopped!
The First Amendment begins with the following declaration:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
These two different clauses have been at the heart of the First Amendment debates since the very beginning. On the one hand, citizens have the right to worship as they please. However, courts have been known to slap down even the slightest hint of governmental preference to one particular religion.
Over time, the Freedom OF Religion has been transformed into the Freedom FROM Religion. People today expect to be able to go through life without being offended or forced to deal with differing viewpoints. The court system is full of frivolous lawsuits alleging serious mental and physical pain just because the plaintiff saw a cross on public property.
As is perfectly clear, there are two specific ‘clauses’ pertaining to religion in the First Amendment. There is the “Establishment Clause,” which prohibits the government from establishing a state-sponsored religion and there is a “Free Exercise Clause,” which states that the government cannot interfere with an individual’s free exercise of religious beliefs.
In Bronx Household v. Board of Education, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that pursuant to the Establishment Clause, the City of New York is allowed to deny requests from churches to rent public space like school auditoriums in the interest of preventing an appearance of religious preference.
The Founding Fathers never intended for the Bill of Rights to be used this way!
These New York Churches have done absolutely nothing wrong. For decades, they have rented the city’s public school auditoriums, gymnasiums and cafeterias for their weekend worship services. Since this takes place on the weekends when no children are around, there has never been a problem. These religious groups aren’t trying to proselytize the city’s children. All they want to do is to be able to rent space from the city so they can have their weekly services.
However, the city’s Department of Education policy now prohibits that. The policy allows religious and other community organizations to use classrooms and other facilities after-hours for their secular programs but it explicitly denies access to those groups seeking to use the space as a "house of worship."
The Appeals Court agreed with the city’s policy, arguing that permitting the church groups to worship on school grounds would create an appearance of state sponsorship, something that is prohibited in the Establishment Clause.
Yet when confronted with the fact that out of the 50 largest school districts, only New York City prevents worship on school grounds, the judges just shrugged it off!
Today, hundreds of churches and thousands of churchgoers have nowhere to pray and worship. This decision isn’t about upholding Constitutional rights; it is about attacking the faithful and limiting where they can worship!
Perhaps you are one of the millions of Americans returning from church today. Imagine if you were evicted from your space because the owner didn’t want to appear to favor one religion over another!
This should outrage every single American, both the religious and the agnostic. This decision says that it is perfectly fine for the government to discriminate against religious groups simply because of their faith.
You always hear the Left preaching that the country needs to be more “tolerant” of differing viewpoints. However, whenever they are the ones who need to be tolerant of Conservative or religious a group, all of a sudden tolerance goes right out the window.
What do you think would happen if instead of a church, the city was going to kick out a mosque? How many people do you think would be out protesting? Hundreds, if not thousands! The story would be plastered all over the news and you would probably have Barack Obama weigh in (as if his opinion on this actually means something).
But no, there are no Muslim or other minority religious groups for the media to rally behind. At the end of the day, this court case involved a Christian ministry, so there were no rallies, no protests, and the media didn’t even cover it!
Faith is under assault from the Judicial Branch and the Executive Branch, and Congress is too aloof to realize that they are letting this happen!
This shouldn’t be about one particular religion over another. Congress must protect the rights of all faiths to practice without government interference!
It is important to remember that the court didn’t force the City of New York to kick churches out of public spaces. The court simply said that as far as the law is concerned, the city can if it wants to.
There is the problem. We have politicians at the local, state, and federal levels who want to kick churches to the curb two weeks before Easter! We must force politicians at every level to honor the First Amendment as the founders intended it, not to look for unique ways to infringe on individual and religious groups’ rights!
Tell Congress that this court ruling is the final straw!
Sincerely,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily
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