ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 30, 1996 TAG: 9607300077
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on Aug. 2 on the editorial page
see Goodlatte editorial for clarification.
REP. BOB Goodlatte, for reasons we can't understand, wants to tinker with the Constitution by adding a school-prayer amendment. Now he says he's "willing to consider" a statute instead, if that would reverse a claimed erosion in freedom of religious expression.
We hope Goodlatte is backing away, however slowly, from his support for this kind of mischief whether constitutional or statutory. He ought to back away entirely. For all the talk of restoring traditional morality and religious rights, what's really involved here isn't faith. It's politics, and of a cynical sort at that.
Particularly telling is the impetus for a recent surge of interest in the issue, including hearings before the Judiciary Committee on which Goodlatte serves. Speaker Newt Gingrich reportedly has been pressing for a vote on a "religious equality" amendment before the November elections because the Christian Coalition plans to distribute 45 million voter guides nationwide. They want the guide to include Congress members' votes on an amendment.
The point, in short, isn't to ratify the thing. (It wouldn't get past the Senate in any event.) The point is to use the school-prayer issue to divide Americans, mobilize evangelical voters, and campaign against the presumably un-Christian Democrats.
So what's Goodlatte doing in the middle of this? One amendment proposal, offered by House Majority Leader Dick Armey, prompted the Roanoke Republican to suggest this week that a vote should be put off until its language is better understood. Goodlatte says he was concerned about fears that the amendment could compel government funding of religious organizations. He says he's interested only in protecting religious expression.
That is reassuring. But the amendment language that Goodlatte himself co-sponsored says: "Neither the United States nor any State shall deny benefits to or otherwise discriminate against any private person or group on account of religious expression, belief, or identity: nor should the prohibition on laws respecting an establishment of religion be construed to require such discrimination."
Which sounds like the government couldn't deny "benefits" to religious schools, for example, that it provides to non-religious schools. The Baptist Joint Committee certainly reads it that way, condemning it as a meddlesome "religious subsidy amendment" allowing the use of tax money to support churches and church schools.
As for freedom of religious expression in public schools, Goodlatte says he wants to "allow voluntary prayer, as long as it was initiated by students." Well, guess what: It already is allowed.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Education issued informational guidelines on religious activities permitted in public schools under current court rulings. They remind that students can pray anytime they want, either individually or in informal prayer groups, as long as they don't cause a disruption. They can carry Bibles in school. They can distribute religious literature. They can proselytize.
What isn't permitted, because of the constitutional prohibition against establishment of religion, is prayer in school organized by government authorities.
Goodlatte says a statute might be preferable to a constitutional amendment because it could be lengthier and more specific. But, of course, if legislation permitted what the courts don't, it would be overturned.
If some school officials don't understand what is allowed, the answer is to educate them, not mess with the Constitution. GOP leaders who would anoint Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed the arbiters of our freedoms should be ashamed. And Goodlatte should put behind him this insult to the Bill of Rights.
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