It’s been a rough season for civil rights in the United States. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), leaning heavily conservative and clearly Christian-biased, seems to be trampling on many of our most fundamental rights, including those long since established and settled issues meant to respect and honor the very basic tenets of American life.
SCOTUS has rocked the very foundations of our beliefs in constitutional privacy rights and understanding of separation of church and state. In doing so, they are also rocking the public’s ability to trust them to hand down rulings free of personal bias and outside influence.
They’ve overturned Roe v. Wade. They’ve endorsed using taxpayer money for students in religious schools. They’ve backed Christian prayer at public school functions. They’ve ruled to allow the flying of a Christian flag at Boston city hall.
While Roe v. Wade is largely considered a privacy rights issue, the latter three rulings pertain primarily to the establishment clause of the First Amendment, specifically the highlighted portion below:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Seemingly taking the stance that the secular approach historically favored in these situations discriminates against religion, the SCOTUS now leaves us in a strange juxtaposition whereupon the maintenance of separation of church and state as called for by our founding fathers has itself become a constitutional violation—in the eyes of today’s SCOTUS, at least.