Well, TW, in the interest of fairness, i did go back to read what you'd written--and remain confident that i've understood what you wrote. Your attempt at a corollary fails, in my estimation, because you seem to think that there is some manner in which a religious organization could claim that participation in the dogma of their faith would be a requisite qualification for hiring someone to dispense federally funded aid. You make the case that the woman who had had the sex-change operation was dismissed because he was now no longer a woman (although the story seems preposterous to me--i can't imagine why a woman only, and not a man, would be required as a counselor, nor why a judge would uphold such claim--i am arguing from a basis of that being a reasonable decision, however), and therefore no longer suitable. There is no case in which a person would be unsuitable based upon their religious convictions,
when employed to dispense aid under a federally funded program-which is the point which i was making, and which you apparently did not understand. The example you gave is not, therefore, "spot on" at all-it does not relate. If one can make the case that the individual concerned in your example was dismissed as lacking a necessary qualification, you can only make that correlative by stating that sharing the dogma of a religious organization dispensing federally funded aid is a necessary qualification. In such a case, the question naturally arises as to why such a qualification is necessary, unless there were a religiously dogmatic aspect to the manner in which the aid is dispensed. Such a case would be a clear violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment. The no establishment cause grows out of the Test Act, a hoary old part of the "unwritten" English constitution, now null, which required any candidate for or holder of public office (including all offices, civil and military) to have taken Anglican communion within a specified period of time, and to adjure all other religious belief. The following is from "spartacus.schoolnet" which is based in the UK:
Quote:The Corporation Act of 1661 excluded from membership of town corporations all those who were not prepared to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The Test Act passed in 1673 imposed the same test upon holders of civil or military office. Roman Catholics, Protestant Dissenters and followers of the Jewish faith were therefore excluded from public office.
Religious groups including Unitarians, Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive Methodists and the Society of Friends campaigned for a change in the law. In 1828 both the Corporation and Test Acts were repealed by Parliament. Roman Catholics were prevented from holding public office until the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Jewish emancipation took longer and was not fully achieved until 1890.
Your statement on the origin of this clause is, to my knowledge, without foundation. Those who wrote the constitution had provided no bill of rights, and it was only the assurance that one would be provided, once a government under the new constitution had been established which convinced a sufficient number of Americans to favor ratification. Augustus Muhlenburg, the first Speaker of the House, made this the first order of business of the First Congress. The following is from "Thomas"-the Library of Congress site for legislative documents and history:
Quote:
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States therefore proposed to the state legislatures 12 amendments to the Constitution that met arguments most frequently advanced against it. The first two proposed amendments, which concerned the number of constituents for each Representative and the compensation of Congressmen, were not ratified. Articles 3 to 12, however, ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, constitute the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights.
(The first proposed amendment, setting at 50,000 the number of citizens to be represented by a single member of Congress will likely never be ratified. The second proposed amendment was ratified May 7, 1992, and reads: "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened;" - and a salutary law it is, indeed.)
The legislators who produced the bill of rights were either lawyers, or were advised by lawyers in their deliberations-as has always been the case in our nation. Early in the history of the Long Parliament (1640-1649), one member described this whole issue as "the vexed question of religion." The English became embroiled in two successive civil wars as a result, and the Puritans (excluding those who favored presbyterianism) eventually triumphed, with a good deal of aid on the battlefield from Dissenters (non-Anglican, non-Puritan Protestants). During the Army Debates in 1648 and 1649, Agitators, as they called themselves, demanded a written constitution, including a bill of rights. Cromwell and company suckered them into meeting in several small groups, to facilitate discussion, and then locked them up when they arrived for the meetings. After Cromwell's death in 1658, his son Richard failed to fill his shoes, and in the power vacuum left in England, George Monck marched south from Coldstream in Scotland with the last remaining military force in England. He eventually agreed to the restoration of the monarchy, in the person of Charles II. When Charles II died in 1685, he was succeeded by his brother James II, who was correctly suspected on planning a "re-introduction" of Catholicism into England. In 1688, many affluent members of Parliament, and their cronies not in office, began to organize a rebellion. They called upon William of Orange, the leader of the United Provinces (Holland), son of James' sister Mary, and husband of James' daughter Mary, to come and take the throne. James called for the army to assemble at Salisbury, but the officers began to dessert one by one. When John Churchill (one day to become the first Duke of Marlborough) "changed his coat," James knew the game was lost, and fled to France. This event is known to history as the "Glorious Revolution," and the Test Act was imposed in it's full vigor.
America had been settled with many who had fled England to avoid the imposition of religious penalties, and who had enjoyed both freedom of religious expression in the new world, and participation in government. John Winthrop, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is an important example, and he, like so many others crucial in our nation's early history, was a lawyer, who had previously been appointed to the Court of Wards and Liveries. Although he was dead at the time of the "Glorious Revolution," his legacy lived on in the government of Massachusetts, and the much more widespread franchise enjoyed in the colonies than was the case in England. The Test Act, and property qualifications made Parliament an old boys club, and Americans of that age, and the age of our revolution, understood this only too well. The "no establishment" clause of the first amendment specifically intends to remove all taint of religion from government, contrary to the characterization which you have given.
