In response to Donovan’s post disagreeing with my earlier post, I must admit that I am an existentialist, therefore the meaning of everything is constructed socially, by what we do with things and words and how we use them politically in our relationships with other people, etc. Perhaps I should have mentioned that earlier. That’s where I stand. This is why I conflate god with how god is used. In my life where god does not exist, the only interaction I have with it is through those people that bring god (unwantedly) into my life - those who use religion to enforce a particular world view. When I say political I use it is the sense that humans are the political animal, not in the whole left/right, democrat/republican, campaign promises sense. Every interaction we have with other subjects is a political action. This is how I think as an Anthropologist. My argument, is that god has no inherent nature. Nothing has anything inherent about it, only that which we give it. Yes, I deny Plato. Big deal. I like Sartre (though I refuse to pronounce his name in the hideous French accent) and Foucault much better.
My reading of the first amendment is pretty literal. Things can be good socially, and still unconstitutional, which means that in a greater sense they may not be good from all angles. The fact that the government sells land to a religious group in not the problem, the problem is that they do so at a discount. Is this discounted from what they would sell that land to anyone else - a private person, organization, or secular entity? If so, then it is wrong/unconstitutional. the classroom should remain empty during lunchtime because prayer should not be conducted on school grounds. If they need to pray, then maybe they should be excused from school grounds to go pray elsewhere (in fact I wouldn’t have minded being excused to go get some food different from the government-grade crap they serves in those horrendous plastic trays), in private, at a church or mosque, and be back in time for their next class. The only place for religion in school is in a religious studies or history class. Using facilities and persons paid for by a secular state for any religious purposes, while not overtly wrong in any overt sense, does a kind of subversive violence to the Constitution, and the disestablishment clause. Donovan doesn’t even need to ask the question of these two situations. No one may actually have a problem with the children using the school, but contrary to PC-backlash rhetoric, it’s not actually about offending people - it’s about upholding the constitution because while private prayer in public school may not be a sticking point, other situations will be and this one instance of prayer in school will be used to detract from the disestablishment clause which most would argue is a damn fine piece of the body politic.
I’ll always concede on the side of multi-valences in every matter dealing with humans, however, and I think Donovan’s first example of drug use and culture clash is certainly a more difficult issue. Very few things are just black-and-white. I can only think of maybe two. Most stories have more than just to sides - Native Americans smoking Peyote is comparable to Catholics receiving Communion wine. I have a problem with laws that blanket-outlaw victimless crimes, like drug use (or sex work). Drug use is socially irresponsible when taken to the extreme of addictions, but alcohol is a drug also and it is perfectly legal-indeed with just a few restrictions, alcohol has a whole culture built around and has found its way into almost all human cultures as a religious and recreational substance. Alcoholism is socially irresponsible as well, and empirically does more damage (in terms of abuse and drunk driving) than peyote, of this I have no doubt. In fact alcohol is the only drug to ever have a Constitutional Amendment written to outlaw it, then another to repeal that. So it becomes a matter of cultural relativism. Christians condone booze (or should seeing how Jesus did the whole water-to-wine trick), but for some extra-biblical reason find fault with peyote. It’s obvious that the Native American case should be considered thoughtfully on this matter. For this simple inconsistency if not for some healthy white guilt.
Scalia is a freakshow.
It is all for society to determine, but the first amendment is part of the rules of society, which we could change, but which I think is one of the most perfect parts of all the rules we humans ever invented.
This has been Andy D.