It appears that the people who determine what is worth fretting about, have decided that pigheaded or not, a President, sort of like a King, can do no wrong, at least in the sense that he is allowed to veto legislation based because he "will not allow" legislation that crosses a moral line he has drawn but, assuming that the country he serves is not per se immoral, is not one drawn by the majority of the country. This is not to say that a President is bound by a majority vote; he most assuredly is not. That is what his veto is all about, to protect against unwise legislation despite a majority view to the contrary, and certainly to protect against the tyranny of a majority.

But drawing moral lines for his fellow countrymen is not one of the President's powers. Indeed, even in their constitutional role as "Defender of the Faith," and head of the Church of England, actual authority over the church no longer resides in the English monarch, which the current President apparently believes to be equivalent, but rather in the General Synod.)

The President's assertion that this country was "founded on the principle that all human life is sacred" has little or no historical basis and, in any event, its relevance to this issue depends on the quite debatable proposition that the embryos to be used as a source of cells for research constitute the "human life" considered to be "sacred." Under the law of the state in which I live, New York, a "person" whose death can constitute a homicide is "a human being who has been born and is alive, although our murder statutes have also been amended to cover the deaths of "an unborn child with which a female has been pregnant for more than twenty-four weeks." The death of an embryo is not, therefore, a "sacred human life" and does not constitute a crime. The President's personal opinion, which he is surely entitled to, cannot alter that law.

Since the question of when life begins has no definitive answer, its resolution depends on a person's beliefs, influenced in many cases, by religious doctrine. Assuming, as is reasonable and fair, that the President's belief that an embryo constitutes life, is his sincere belief, it is likely that this belief has been formed by his devotion to faith which he has repeatedly spoken about. Our Constitution does not, however, permit him to impose those religious beliefs on those of us who have differing ones, notwithstanding the view of the Texas Republican party, of which the President is presumably a member, which has stated as part of its platform for several years that "America is a Christian nation [and w]e pledge to exert our influence toward a return to the original intent of the First Amendment to dispel the myth of the separation of church and state."

So there you have it, really. The President's party believes this country is a "Christian nation" and he is not only permitted to but mandated to veto legislation which does not conform with his religious views so to "dispel the myth" that church and state are to be separate. The first and only Catholic to become President had a different view:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute...I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials...That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe, a great office that must be neither humbled by making it the instrument of any religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding it -- its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office....I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so...Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

But if the time should ever come -- and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible -- when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do likewise."

This is, of course, from Senator John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech before Greater Houston Ministerial Association when the fact of his Catholicism was considered a serious obstacle to his election as President.

To resolve the difference of presidential opinions (other than the obvious factor of which one was publicly acknowledged and which requires reference to an obscure political platform, but is otherwise not openly conceded), we turn again (see the entry about United States "District Attorneys") to the Honorable Robert Jackson, a United States Attorney General and the chief prosecutor at Nuremburg, but also a Justice of the Supreme Court, which is where he wrote a relatively brief explanation of what was meant by the First Amendment's bar against the establishment of a state religion:

"[I]t is not inappropriate briefly to review the background and environment of the period in which that constitutional language was fashioned and adopted.
A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support and attend government favored churches. The centuries immediately before and contemporaneous with the colonization of America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife, and persecutions, generated in large part by established sects determined to [330 U.S. 1, 9] maintain their absolute political and religious supremacy. With the power of government supporting them, at various times and places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from time to time persecuted Jews. In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place, men and women had been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed. Among the offenses for which these punishments had been inflicted were such things as speaking disrespectfully of the views of ministers of government-established churches, nonattendance at those churches, expressions of non-belief in their doctrines, and failure to pay taxes and tithes to support them.

These practices of the old world were transplanted to and began to thrive in the soil of the new America. The very charters granted by the English Crown to the individuals and companies designated to make the laws which would control the destinies of the colonials authorized these individuals and companies to erect religious establishments which all, whether believers or non-believers, would be required to support and attend. An exercise of this authority was accompanied by a repetition of many of the old world practices and persecutions. Catholics found themselves hounded and proscribed because of their faith; Quakers who followed their conscience went to jail; Baptists were peculiarly obnoxious to certain dominant Protestant sects; men and women of varied faiths who happened to be in a minority in a particular locality were persecuted because they steadfastly persisted in worshipping God only as their own consciences dictated. And all of these dissenters were compelled to pay tithes and taxes8 to support government-sponsored churches whose ministers preached inflammatory sermons designed to strengthen and consolidate the established faith by generating a burning hatred against dissenters. These practices became so commonplace as to shock the freedom-loving colonials into a feeling of abhorrence. The imposition of taxes to pay ministers' salaries and to build and maintain churches and church property aroused their indignation. It was these feelings which found expression in the First Amendment. No one locality and no one group throughout the Colonies can rightly be given entire credit for having aroused the sentiment that culminated in adoption of the Bill of Rights' provisions embracing religious liberty. But Virginia, where the established church had achieved a dominant influence in political affairs and where many excesses attracted wide public attention, p ovided a great stimulus and able leadership for the movement. The people there, as elsewhere, reached the conviction that individual religious liberty could be achieved best under a government which was stripped of all power to tax, to support, or otherwise to assist any or all religions, or to interfere with the beliefs of any religious individual or group.

The movement toward this end reached its dramatic climax in Virginia in 1785-86 when the Virginia legislative body was about to renew Virginia's tax levy for the support of the established church. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison led the fight against this tax. Madison wrote his great Memorial and Remonstrance against the law. In it, he eloquently argued that a true religion did not need the support of law; that no person, either believer or non-believer, should be taxed to support a religious institution of any kind; that the best interest of a society required that the minds of men always be wholly free; and that cruel persecutions were the inevitable result of government-established religions. Madison's Remonstrance received strong support throughout Virginia, and the Assembly postponed consideration of the proposed tax measure until its next session. When the proposal came up for consideration at that session, it not only died in committee, but the Assembly enacted the famous 'Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty' originally written by Thomas Jefferson. The preamble to that Bill stated among other things that

'Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are [330 U.S. 1, 13] a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either . . .; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern ...'

And the statute itself enacted

'That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened, in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief. . . .'
...
The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another...."


This is worth talking about, it seems to me, since it involves one of the very foundations of our republic, not to mention, in this instance, the life and health of so many of its citizens. It is at least as important as whether it has been adequately proven that celebrities get treated better than the rest of us.