Op. Cit.
July/August 1999 I was very interested to read "The Establishment Clause Assault" by Glenn Bergmann, in the March/April 1999 edition of Liberty. Mr. Bergmann eloquently illustrated the perverse paradigms in the Establishment Clause controversy. Frequently, we are tempted to believe that threats to religious freedom come only from Supreme Court rulings, such as Boerne v. P.F. Flores, 117 S. Ct. 2157 (1997), or Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources v. Smith, 292 U.S. 872 (1990), and similar lower court decisions. However, as Mr. Bergmann noted, threats to religious freedom exist in the political arena as well, which underscores the need for political involvement.In any event, I was extremely impressed with Mr. Bergmann's excellent presentation of this often complex issue. I noted that he is a third year law student at American University, and he should be commended on his superb prose. I am always encouraged to read articles by young shining stars.
ERIC A. GANG, Esq.
New York City, New York
PSEUDO-LIBERTY?
I have enjoyed reading your magazine for a number of years. Like many of your readers, I am not a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Nonetheless, your magazine usually presents a critical and objective discussion on religious liberty and for that reason it has many readers like me.
For those same reasons though, I am displeased with Samuele Bacchiocchi's article, "John Paul's Pseudo-Sabbath." Mr. Bacchiocchi raises a valid issue when he writes that the state should not legislate a holy day of rest for citizens regardless of their religious faith. Regrettably though, most of his article is a religious discussion of what is the true day of rest for Christians. Predictably, he concludes that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is correct on that issue, while the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church is wrong.
Your magazine earns a great deal of respect when it discusses the need for religious tolerance by all individuals. Your magazine has little to do with liberty or religious freedom though, when it engages in arguments over which religion or church is right and which religion is wrong.
GERALD B. HEINRICHS
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
HOW DARE YOU!
In July of last year, I wrote to your magazine to express my enjoyment of your magazine and its philosophy and doctrine of "Liberty" and religious freedom.
However, by extracting and publishing only the first and last sentences of my letter, you and your staff hypocritically failed to honestly "practice what you preach," and chose to deny me my honest thoughts and beliefs and my natural constitutional right to "freedom from religion."
As the Greek philosopher Protagoras said, "As to the gods, I am unable to say whether they exist or do not exist." But I personally have experienced in my "three score plus" years of life and human study that, as W.E.H. Lecky once said, "There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith."
In spite of your apparent inherent prejudices, I shall continue to enjoy reading your magazine, knowing that my non-theist philosophy of love of nature and respect for all life forms is shared by millions of honest and worldly notables such as Presidents John Adams and James Madison, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Clarence Darrow, H.G. Wells, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, "et al" millions of free thinkers.
DEAN H. RAY
Live Oak, Florida
SOFTWARE FILTERS O.K.
Your readers have been misled by the ill-tempered fulminations in your March/April issue complaining of Judge Brinkema's decision in the Loudoun County (Virginia) public library case.
First off, the judge did not hold that the library could not install filters on public reading room computer terminals accessible to minors to keep them from accessing sexually explicit material available on the Internet. Had the library merely done this much, it would not have differed from placing certain kinds of books on reserve, requiring a parent's written permission, before the librarian would permit the book to be read by a minor.
Rather, the county board demanded the installation of such filter software on all the terminals, effectively precluding even all adult library users to access any such material, regardless of the seriousness of its subject matter and regardless of its fully first amendment protected content. In thus censoring access to protected speech the Supreme Court itself has declared the state may not keep from adults merely because it may be unsuitable for minors, the county board ignored the Supreme Court's own first amendment decisions that are more than four decades old. In fact, Judge Brinkema broke no new ground at all. Indeed, had the judge sustained this draconian measure (effectively to purge a library of material other than that merely suitable for children) you then would have been right to criticize so bizarre a result.
Also, your notion that the decision to block access by installation of the software filter is not different from a refusal to spend taxpayers money to acquire certain books most taxpayers may not want to pay for (e.g. Das Kapital is an example you provide) is also way off the mark as well. As Judge Brinkema expressly noted, were it not for the county board's desire to keep (even adult) library patrons from seeing what would otherwise be available through the library, it would have been available. In brief, as the judge noted, the library did not save money by failing to acquire something (there is no cost in allowing the information merely to come through). In other words, as the court observed, this is a case of "book removal" rather than "failure to acquire," a distinction the Supreme Court has likewise noted in its own decisions as well.
Finally, you ask the rhetorical question, apparently thinking it relevant, whether one imagines that "Christian bookstores [can be required to] sell Das Kapital or Henry Miller's Sexus Nexus, or Plexus." The obvious answer is "no." They may assuredly be required to do nothing of the sort. For private organizations (such as a "Christian" bookstore and private book vendors) may stock, sell, and censor their inventory wholly as they please. But this is just what it means to be a private company or organization--to offer only such speech as one prefers to do. What the First Amendment does provide (as you most of all should know) is that the rules are different for government. Blocking people from ideas, sources, perspectives (religious and otherwise) government thinks somehow unhealthy for adults to be able to consider for themselves is not the business of government thinks somehow unhealthy for adults to be able to consider for themselves is not the business of government in a nation that prizes freedom of the mind, just as it also prizes freedom of religion, as you have been very stalwart over the years to point out. And that is precisely what was involved in this case.
WILLIAM VAN ALSTYNE, Professor of Law, Duke University
Durham, North Carolina
TOLERANCE IS THE KEY
I found Hegstad's article "Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth" interesting, but I disagree on Kendall vs. Kendall. The cornerstone of religious freedom is the tolerance of others. To teach a child that his or her other parent's religion is a sin is to deny that freedom to the other. By necessity religious freedom must be protected, even at the cost of one's own religious expression. Otherwise we are lost to the pit of the strongest group oppressing the weaker under the protection of religious freedom, the very concern Hegstad avowed.
Though religious freedom must be protected at the cost of other freedoms, it too, by definition, has limits. For example, I may express my belief that Sunday is the Christian sabbath, and you may freely express your belief that it is not. But when I declare that your belief is sin, and that all who believe as you do are less valid or more sinful than I, then I have denied you religious freedom and have endangered even my own.
Therefore, the court's judgement that "Neither [parent] may indoctrinate the children in a manner which substantially promotes their . . . alienation from either parent or the rejection of either parent" was wise and just.
DAN FULTZ
Dalhart, Texas