Privilege of Religion

In 2004, James Nixon, a 12 year old boy in Ohio, won the right in court to wear a T-shirt bearing the words 'Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are black and white!" The school told him not to wear the T-shirt--and the boy's parents sued the school. The parents might have had a conscionable case if they had based it on the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. But they didn't: indeed, they couldn't, because free speech is deemed not to include hate speech. But hate only has to prove it is religious, and it no longer counts as hate. So instead of freedom of speech, the Nixon's lawyers appealed to the constitutional right to freedom of religion. Their victorious lawsuit was supported by the Alliance Defense Fund of Arizona, whose business it it to press the legal battle for religious freedom."Jefferson's Wall of Separation between church and state crumbled under the weight of the evangelical right...religion for bigotry, hatred, and intolerance...sad...


Thomas Jefferson's Separation of Church and State point was "It was not the place of Congress or the Executive to do anything that might be misconstrued as the establishment of religion." Government should not approve or disapprove of religion. Government should not be influenced or in the business of religion. Religion should not be privileged like in the Supreme Court ruling in 2006 which stated that the Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal did not have to follow the laws of New Mexico against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. The Church believed that they can understand God only by drinking hoasca tea, which contains the illegal hallucinogenic drug dimethyltrytamine, and the Supreme Court supported hallucinating for God and breaking the existing law. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2005, that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution even in the minority of states where such specialized use is legalized. The cannabis users had proof of their medical claims while the Church only had to say they believe the drug helps them understand God and were never required to supply any proof. Illegal drug use for God, no problem; Illegal drug use to relieve pain and suffering under medical control, wrong!!! Where is the separation of church and state Jefferson wrote about? The Church should be subject to the same laws as everyone else. Why don’t Churches have to pay taxes too? All the money that passes through them…Churches should be taxed like the rest of us…James Madison added this about the separation of church and state: “And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together