Supreme Speciousness
As I've mentioned before, I love reading
Dahlia Lithwick's legal
commentaries over on Slate. But often reading her pieces
depresses me: Assuming she's reproducing their arguments
accurately, I'm amazed at how poorly Supreme Court Justices
reason. To be fair, it's mainly Scalia that comes across as
logic-impaired. I don't know if that's because he talks more than
the others, says more stupid things, or because Lithwick singles him
out. Whatever the case, I'm dumbfounded that arguments like this
pass as "reasoning" in the highest court in the land :
Scalia argues that if the state can constitutionally
discriminate against all religious study, it could constitutionally
discriminate only against, say, Jewish studies.
Uh, no. If the state can constitutionally discriminate against
all religious study, it does not follow that the state could then
constitutionally discriminate against one particular form of religious
study. In the first case, all religions are being treated
equally--they're
all prohibited from receiving government
funding. In the second case, one particular religion is singled
out.
As for the larger issue in this case--
Do government policies that
ostensibly honor the constitutional requirement of not establishing
religion (by refusing to fund it with taxpayers' money) evince an
unconstitutional hostility toward religious free expression?, as
Lithwick puts it--I don't see how denying government funding impinges
upon religious free expression.
The
Constitution only states that "Congress shall make no
law...prohibiting the free exercise" of religion; it says nothing about
providing tax monies to make it easier for believers to practice their
religion(s). There's a difference between not supporting
something and restricting it: Just because I don't donate to a
cause doesn't mean I want to restrict it, or even that I disagree with
it. If states did provide funding for religious programs, they
would then run afoul of the other horn of Church-State
separation: "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion." People should be free to express
their religious beliefs, but they can't expect the government to
subsidize their faith.
