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2008-02-16 17:29:03
Turquoise
O Canada
+1,596|6834|North Carolina

Bertster7 wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

State and local governments can technically be as religious as they want to be.
Can they?

That's a disgrace loophole allowing for all sorts of officially sanctioned religious nonsense that is totally against the spirit of the whole notion of separating church and state (when I say state I mean it in it's proper sense, nation states).
You wanna hear something really scary?  Separation of church and state isn't even an explicit part of our Constitution.  It is an ideological understanding that our Founding Fathers had, but they never wrote it into the Constitution.  This is why the Religious Right pushes for many religious infusions into government.  It happens more on local and state levels because of their distance from Constitutional jurisdiction.

Granted, even the U.K. has an official church, so you guys technically have a religious government if you think about it.
2008-02-16 17:31:44
Morpheus
This shit still going?
+508|6428|The Mitten
meh, I'm against being politically correct for one reason:
people can't do it right.
The only thing to get termed in a PC manner is what gets bitched at- for example, black people are "African-American", but I'm still "White". No. Fuck you then call me European-American.
"Valentines Day" is "Friendship Day", so let's call MLK day "Cultural Awareness day"... no, better yet, let's merger the two and call it "World Love Day"...


fucking people.....
EE (hats
2008-02-16 17:39:04
Bertster7
Confused Pothead
+1,101|7010|SE London

Turquoise wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

State and local governments can technically be as religious as they want to be.
Can they?

That's a disgrace loophole allowing for all sorts of officially sanctioned religious nonsense that is totally against the spirit of the whole notion of separating church and state (when I say state I mean it in it's proper sense, nation states).
You wanna hear something really scary?  Separation of church and state isn't even an explicit part of our Constitution.  It is an ideological understanding that our Founding Fathers had, but they never wrote it into the Constitution.  This is why the Religious Right pushes for many religious infusions into government.  It happens more on local and state levels because of their distance from Constitutional jurisdiction.

Granted, even the U.K. has an official church, so you guys technically have a religious government if you think about it.
Nope. Our system is nothing like that. It's the official church because the queen is the head of it, though really it's the archbishop of canterbury. Government is totally out of the whole religion loop.

We don't do god here. Certainly not in any official capacity (unless connected to the royals and they are NOT connected to government in any meaningful way).
2008-02-16 17:41:11
Turquoise
O Canada
+1,596|6834|North Carolina
Why not drop the monarchy then?  It's just empty tradition, right?  Granted, we need to drop our Electoral College.

Still, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the laws don't really matter.  Most governments are born out of some sort of religion.  What matters is that the people running government have the sense to keep the interpretation of laws secular.
2008-02-16 17:49:00
Bertster7
Confused Pothead
+1,101|7010|SE London

Turquoise wrote:

Why not drop the monarchy then?  It's just empty tradition, right?  Granted, we need to drop our Electoral College.

Still, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the laws don't really matter.  Most governments are born out of some sort of religion.  What matters is that the people running government have the sense to keep the interpretation of laws secular.
Money is one, very good, reason not to. The royals don't cost much to maintain, despite what some people would have you believe, especially compared to the amount of revenue they generate for the country - mostly due to tourism.

Another, more important, reason is that most people here quite like the monarchy. It gives us meaningless people to roll out at ceremonies and stuff, while anyone important is busy. Good national figurehead too.

God is entirely absent from British (and for the most part all European) government. It's baffling (and to an extent a point of international ridicule) why in the US this seems not to be the case.
2008-02-16 17:55:01
Turquoise
O Canada
+1,596|6834|North Carolina
You could see America as the ideological bridge between Europe and the Third World, in terms of religion, ethnicity, and wealth disparity.

A lot of our religiousness would seem to be influenced by the various ethnic groups that immigrated here who tended to be made up of religious people.  In addition to this, we never had to go through the existentialist suffering of 2 World Wars in short succession.  I'd imagine America would be a far less religious place if either of those wars were fought on our own soil.

That kind of death and destruction is enough for anyone to question the existence of a god.
2008-02-16 18:06:05
topthrill05
Member
+125|7007|Rochester NY USA
Isn't the US constitution the supreme law of the land? Therefore making state constitutions essentially meaningless when it conflicts with the US constitution?

I am not totally clear on this one, if someone could clarify this that would be great.
2008-02-16 18:12:55
Turquoise
O Canada
+1,596|6834|North Carolina

topthrill05 wrote:

Isn't the US constitution the supreme law of the land? Therefore making state constitutions essentially meaningless when it conflicts with the US constitution?

I am not totally clear on this one, if someone could clarify this that would be great.
The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law on certain matters, but there are other affairs left to states.  There are also things that the feds can't do that the states can.

Assuming that you are referring to the discussion concerning separation of church and state, the federal government generally does not pass laws that have a religious basis, but many states have.   There are quite a few counties in the Southeast that have banned or continue to ban the sale of alcohol.  Because these laws have a religious basis, they would be very unlikely to be passed at the federal level (after the disaster that Prohibition turned out to be), but they are still allowed on local and state levels.

Still, there are plenty of religious laws at the state and local levels that are on the books, but they are generally rarely enforced (like a few statewide bans on sodomy that still exist).

 

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