Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Fri Oct 07, 2022 6:31 pm
MG 2.0 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 06, 2022 11:50 pm
Where does religious freedom come in? What does religious freedom really mean if it doesn’t apply to schools that have certain religious ideals that they live by?
Should they be persecuted for that? If the government and/or NCAA prohibits participation of religious institutions isn’t that a form of religious persecution?
Just how important is the Free Exercise Clause?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/free_exercise_clause
Does it apply in the instance that you are concerned with?
Regards,
MG
One thing we know is that the Constitution's guarantee of the free exercise of religion is not absolute -- this is true of all rights guaranteed by the Constitution. So, it's a question of line drawing. Start at the core -- the government can't throw you in jail for being a member of the LDS church or for worshipping in your meeting house. You may take that for granted, but it's a pretty big deal. Go back to the original colonies and look at the persecution of some religious sects by others that controlled the government. Look at other countries around the world where certain sects are outlawed and actively persecuted.
An important part of that freedom is also the ability to exclude. Mormons get to set the boundaries on who gets to be a part of their religion. Per the Supreme Court, the government can't get involved in defining who gets to belong to the church, who gets to run the church, who gets to hold the priesthood, etc. This freedom is also not trivial. And, unlike other entities, groups of religious folks are free to discriminate on any basis they choose: race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Government regulation of churches, under current law, can happen only if the regulations are generally applicable and are not targeted specifically at religion. So, Native religions cannot legally use marijuana or peyote as part of their religious ceremonies because of drug laws that apply to everyone and are not targeted at natives.
But beyond that core, the notion of what should constitute the "free exercise of religion" becomes debatable. Why should we consider running a school the exercise of religion? Why should we consider the owning of a hospital the free exercise of religion? Why should we consider owning a for-profit business the free exercise of religion?
Once religion moves away from its core of being able to worship your God of choice without interference from the government, the right of free exercise runs smack into other rights of other people. In the case of the NCAA, we're talking about the right of free association, another right guaranteed by the first amendment. As an association, the NCAA has the right to determine who can be a member and who cannot. And it has ever right to say, if you don't treat your students according to the rules we set, you can't be a member. Just as the LDS church can decide its own rules for how it will treat gay or non-binary folks, other organizations get to decide how to treat organizations they believe discriminate against gay or non-binary folks. People are free to be intolerant in their free exercise of religion, but that doesn't require other people to be tolerant of that intolerance.
You can cry persecution all you want. If you want to play that card, the LDS church persecutes gay and non-binary folks. The free exercise clause doesn't shield religions folks from criticism or force other folks to associate with them.
My concern lies with the opening sentence of the opening post of this thread:
Will religious universities continue to be permitted to set their own behavioral standards for students (and, for that matter, for faculty and administrators) if those standards conflict with Western society’s rising orthodoxy on gender and sexuality?
That opens a can of worms. Who is going to be the final arbitrator of whether or not "rising orthodoxy" may be in error and/or rejected by many?
Is it going to be might makes right and so religious institutions will be persecuted because they're not towing along with that societal orthodoxy?
That seems like a dangerous game. Winners and losers.
There should not be societal pressures (especially when we can see that those pressures may be a result of small but organized factions of leftists let's say) that inhibit full exercise of the rights covered under the Free Exercise Clause.
Special interests, woke or not, should not have the power to determine how freedom of religion is exercised and/or be penalized for that belief.
The first clause, in short, merely declares that the national government must tolerate all religious beliefs--short of such fanatic beliefs.
https://www.heritage.org/the-constituti ... d-religion
And who is going to define "fanatic"?
Regards,
MG