Issue Position: First Amendment

Issue Position

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution defines the separation of church and state and freedom of speech in concise terms, and few of the Constitution's ideals and protections have been so taken out of context and abused as these.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

-- The First Amendment, United States Constitution.

Separation of Church and State

The separation of church and state is confined to the passage by Congress of laws affecting the "establishment of religion and free exercise thereof," and nothing else, and free exercise does not mean a mandate to permit activity on public property, or to prohibit it there. The "free exercise" guaranteed is through religious and private facilities and public expression as permitted by law for any interest. This means that Congress (or state houses, or town or village halls) cannot pass laws regulating, taxing, confining, promoting, restricting, or taking any other action affecting any established religion, and as a House representative, my oath to uphold and defend the Constitution means that I am barred from supporting any law which attempts to address the legal activities of any established religion.
The abuse has been in the ways various groups have tried to extend the separation to areas of prohibition which clearly do not exist, such as prohibitions against prayer in school, or Nativity scenes in town squares, or the Ten Commandments being displayed on public property. If these prohibitions were valid, then the Founders would have been guilty of unconstitutional acts when they drafted the nation's charters and contributed to the design of some of its most iconic symbols. The only constitutional concern about these activities is whether or not there is discrimination applied to their acceptance or prohibition in the public space, such as permitting display of a Nativity scene, but not a Menorah; or prayer, in other than a Christian private school, which specifies the name of Jesus Christ, which in a public school would be exclusionary of other, non-Christian faiths. But this does not lead to a public-school prohibition, it simply would require a generic term which any faith can interpret to their belief, such as the word, "God."

As to the objection of atheists, there can be no requirement that they participate or contribute in any way to the religious expression of others, which would include funding with town tax dollars the placement of a town-square Nativity scene, but because it is expression, which the Constitution does protect, the religious expression which is sanctioned by a majority, through their government, cannot be suppressed by any group. In contrast, if a town's majority was atheist, and the town council voted against a Nativity scene in town square, then no other religious expression could be permitted, including any atheist sign, which being anti-religious, is inherently also religious, and the group proposing a Nativity would have no right to impose it in the town square upon the majority.

The argument cannot be if there is or is not a God, but rather one of majority rule and constitutional protections. The application of imposed tolerance has to be a two-way street, and majorities must be able to mold their neighborhoods and towns to their sensibilities, so long as the constitutional rights of others are not violated, and an atheist, then, has a participatory right, not an exclusionary one, and if intent upon obdurate imposition to create self-directed ill will in a evangelic town, that atheist could not be prohibited from an expression of belief by putting up a sign, to code, in the square, next to the Nativity scene and the Menorah, which has printed upon it, "There is no God."

Freedom of Speech

Perhaps the most important right guaranteed by the Constitution's First Amendment is freedom of speech: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech..." But the right is not absolute, it is limited and contextual, it applies to political, religious, and cultural speech, and despite what the Conservative-Republican-majority justices on the Supreme Court say, it applies to "men," and not corporations.

I will always support and be tolerant of responsible speech, and even if I disagree with what is said, as Evelyn Hall first spoke, I will defend to the death the right to say it. But one cannot (unless one is a U.S. politician campaigning) commit slander or libel, or yell fire in a crowded place when there is no fire, invoke hateful speech or speech to provoke violence, or make false claims on products which pose a danger to the public safety or welfare, which is why last year's injunction, handed down by a federal circuit judge, temporarily halting the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) order to tobacco companies to label their packages with pictures showing the adverse health effects (poisoning) their product inflicts upon consumers, is as abominable an abuse of the free-speech right as the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizen's United.

The purpose of government, and the constitutional right and obligation of the FDA, is to protect the public safety and welfare, to prevent substances which poison people from entering the market, or the water we drink, or the air we breathe, and by that charter, the FDA is being lax in its responsibilities by requiring the pictures of destroyed lungs and other body parts on packaging, when in fact it should ban the products completely. Yet, the special interests who prevent that, who demand that the government allow those who wish to poison themselves (and others through second-hand smoke) to poison away, have intruded with objections of the Almighty to prevent doctors from being allowed to painlessly poison dying patients who plead to be relieved of further, unavoidable pain and suffering inflicted by their fatal, incurable diseases. If special interests prevail to market hazardous products on the basis of the right of people to make their own decisions about health and safety, then no restriction must bar any measure to provide the most complete facts relating to the hazards those products pose.

Corporations have no free-speech rights. They only have the obligation to be truthful about how they advertise and promote their products and services, and if they cause harm, they have only the right to expect to be held fully accountable. No profit can ever justify sickening or in any other way injuring people, and there is no claim of free speech to provide a barrier to the truth of the harm a company's product or practices may cause or is known to cause, and any judge who so allows the claim of free speech to provide such a barrier should be held accountable, as a co-conspirator, for damages which may and will result.

Source