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Sat 27 Nov, 2010 11:24 am
I was just reading about the various attempts to grant statehood to New Mexico and how up until 1910 a primary issue blocking such statehood by Congress was the objections to full citizenship for New Mexico's Hispanic, Roman Catholic and Spanish-speaking majority. Arizona was deemed to be more Anglo, Protestant and English-speaking.
Anyway, this got me wondering if the issue of a large Roman Catholic population effected other territories quest for statehood. All of which lead me to the idea/question that priest and/or others of religious standing are granted immunity from testimony in criminal trials on the basis of "religious confidence" an how that squares with separation of church and state?
I'm reading a biography of Georgia O'Keefe who, after visiting NM for the first time starting painting crucifixes because they were so much a part of NM.
@plainoldme,
Yeah good old Georgia, she maintains a store-front office just south of the plaza in Santa Fe where is serves as Tourism Director, tickets to get into her office start at $1,000 and are available at the Chamber of Commerce as well as the Santa Fe Opera House.
Your thread caused me to wonder how it is Utah got in before the year 1900. It took fifty years from the first try, until the vote favored statehood. At first, it was all about Mormons and polygamy in particular. In the end, the hold-up was the Mormon tendency to vote in a block. Once this was understood, the Mormon's own political party was disbanded. Statehood followed in due course.
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