certainly my pleasure to welcome robert boston to seattle glad that he could make it i've been reading his book taking liberties which i would say is a great piece of scholarship especially about where things are in terms of church and state in america today and he actually wrote this before the hobby lobby case i'm sure i have a few things to add to that what i got out of it is how much the definition of religious freedom has been changing over time from what our founding fathers intended it to be also there's a lot in there about this whole movement of the so called christian nation that we're a christian nation that has been really changed over the centuries and certainly the decades what i also got out of it maybe it's just reading the paper that to me we've gone from being against having an established religion in this country to sort of having a de facto established religion which is being sort of put on us by the supreme court and some of its decisions as well as a number of other movements trying to have prayers here is telling their employees what kind of health care they can get based on religious reason at any rate he will be signing books and selling books in the back of the room afterwards and you can get his autograph i really encourage you to read this book if you don't know about american jew night and i think most of you do that's been around since one thousand nine hundred forty seven and it's the only organization in america that's focused exclusively on church state issues it it's work is a lot about sending out  letters filing lawsuits but even more than not trying to educate people about the importance of keeping religion and government separate in our own seattle chapter we have been involved with a number of issues including the so called good news clubs which are luckily of kind of faded away to some degree here in seattle but are really just clubs to proselytize young children and scare the hell out of them about the possibilities of hell and the fact that they were born into sin and probably was not the kind of thing you'd want to tell a child i don't think we've also been involved in trying to prevent the funding of of religious organizations by governments including the pierce county government which was funding trying to fund at least one child a villa vangelis some fellowship booth to go from state fair to state fair or any kind of events like that and again proselytize and recruit new members not really talk about mix of church and state well that's a good example we've also heavily been involved in and a hospital mergers issue which rob will talk about where we're seeing that the catholic church now is in control of fifty percent almost of hospital beds in washington and it's trying to apply the so called ethical and really religious directives for catholic health care which among other things prohibit a lot of reproductive health practices and referrals as well as end of life care and we have a table  back manned or staffed i should say by my wife for anyone who wants to join our chapter is already on a americans united member or wants to join americans united know i have a little biographical information about rob who's been with americans united since one nine hundred eighty seven which he's a lot younger look and the not but he's been there that long but he's written a lot of number of books the first one  close encounters with the religious right journeys into the twilight zone of religion and politics then the most dangerous man in america pat robertson on the rise of the christian coalition then the next one was why the religious right is wrong about separation of church and state and finally the most recent is taking liberties why religious freedom doesn't give you the right to tell others what to do and with that i want to introduce rob who's come the way from oklahoma city to san francisco and eventually from washington d c to be with us thanks david thanks for coming in pleasure to see you here in a pleasure to be with you deceiving i was in oklahoma city last night speaking to a new chapter there and as you might imagine they have some challenges down in oklahoma some of the issues they've been dealing with so many of you feel no discouraged about their situation here remember there are states where they really really are being assaulted on all sides and oklahoma's one of them yesterday was constitution day now when it comes to holidays this is not exactly the fourth of july some of you may not have even known this was happening it's tends to be a little bit and secure holiday it's one of our more modern holidays and i don't think anybody actually gets the day off or anything but one interesting facet of constitution day is that public schools at all levels from elementary schools all the way up to colleges are required to spend at least part of the day talking about some facet of the constitution and since we did celebrate that yesterday i just want to read to you a quote from the father of the constitution james madison there's not a shadow of a right in the general government to intermeddle with religion it's least interference with it would have been a most flagrant usurpation i can appeal to my uniform conduct on this subject that i have warmly supported religious freedom that's james madison writing his personal journal june twelfth seventeen eighty eight now james madison here's a little thought experiment to engage in with me for a second what would happen if james madison had a fight with constantine the great now you might think well that's kind of a strange question i mean they're both dead didn't even live at the same time but let's say they had a fight now if they had a physical fight with fist punching and that kind of thing it really wouldn't be much of a and he so far surpassed his peers and personal strength to be a terror to them that's constantine now madison when people talk about madison scholars of his day the words they use are things like sickly frail small not exactly powerful god so had it been a contest of brawn madison would have ended up on the bad end of things but you know they had to fight and it wasn't a contest of brawn it was a contest of brain and because it was a contest of brain madison came out on top so you have those two visions of religious liberty there constantine's vision the idea of the church and the state sort of being combined the state directing the activities of the church or the church directing the activities of the state the idea that the state has a favorite religion and if you support that religion if you're a member of it will good for you you can reap the benefits of that if not well may be in for a hard time of it that's the  constantine vision the madison vision is quite different religious and philosophical freedom for everybody christians and non christians believers and nonbelievers the right to make these decisions for yourself and the right of conscience being protected and resting on a secular state when we look at those divisions we can see that you know one is clearly superior you know with hope we would say that we've been understand that but it's an unpleasant and kind of unexpected fact of our life that even though madison vision is superior there have always been people who prefer the vision of constantine and they have been very vocal they've been very active they have been present in our political system for a number of years and many of them hope our today but lately they have been troubled and the world has changed our world has changed american society has changed and it's changing and this is led to something of a kind of crisis of faith if you will now i want to be careful about what i mean by that term a crisis of faith i don't mean that people are turning away from faith or that people are no longer interested in religion or that people decided that they don't care any more because comparing the united states to other western nations you still see a great interest in religious things and spiritual things  western european nations many of them there is a lot of rising tide of non belief or disinterest in religion and some churches have been sort of turned into museums that's not the case here but there is a situation where people are sort of and i talk about this little bit more and detail people are changing their religious perspective in their philosophical perspective to a degree that some religious institutions are starting to feel a bit of a crisis of faith in their own faith now what i mean by that is for a long time the religious organizations in the united states were very proud of what they had achieved you know they sometimes built an entire denomination up from the ground they built houses of worship they had missions they had social service programs they had various outreach and many of them still do and many of them are very happy to pay for this and support all this with money and support that they get from people sitting in the pews but some denominations and s leaders are feeling the stress of the change and they are starting to look to you and look to the taxpayer look to the public to support their religious endeavors and we see this play out in many different ways one example is the question of religious education of religious schools more and more demands for taxpayer funding for those school systems sometimes we even have situations where churches will demand taxpayer support because they their structure has been damaged after a storm or something like that we see issues of religious symbols ripping through our culture organizations religious organizations demanding the right to put their symbols at the seat of government as if they didn't have the power to support them to private means any more we see  disputes over issues of prayer and government meetings and again some of these conservative religious groups demanding that their prayer be the one that the government holds up for everyone in the community we see organizations demanding the right to display their religious symbols in front the court house of the city hall or the state house again as if they didn't have the power to do that through private channels and i would submit that even the dispute over hospital mergers what you're going through here is another manifestation of this very restrictive form of directives being imposed on everyone interestingly by the state if they were so great if they were so wonderful people would voluntarily accept these directives but in fact they don't they resist them so churches seek to impose them on folks in other ways for a long time to guiding principle of religion in the country was we will support our faith and people took joy and pleasure and the fact that they did that and make no mistake there are still many religious leaders who hold to that point of view that they're proud of what they achieve they're proud of their private funding they're proud to be able to take that out into the arena with their own money but there are some religious leaders who feel differently and the argument they seem to be making is we can't we can't build this thing this religious thing without your help or we build it but it's broken and you have to help us fix it or we can't keep it going we've built it but we can't keep it going without your home your taxpayer help and a good example of this i mentioned is a roman catholic education let me give you some interesting statistics and nine hundred sixty there are five point two million children attending thirteen thousand catholic schools in the united states nine hundred sixty two thousand and six which most recent figure i could find there were two million students attending six thousand six hundred catholic schools and united states and we've seen catholic schools closing recently in cities like new york in buffalo chicago philadelphia and so on now what happened i mean not all of that can be attributed to demographics changes in the birth rate some of it was caused by people simply deciding that they don't necessarily want to use catholic education anymore there are many reasons for that in some communities people simply looked around and said we have very good public schools in our community don't want to spend this extra money or people said i would rather put this money into a college fund because as we know the cost of a college education continues to increase very dramatic rate and as someone who has a daughter in college i can testify that that's a very alarming thing so people are saying we'll put the money into that instead or most interestingly some people have simply decided they don't have to listen to the bishop anymore when i was a kid i grew up in an irish catholic area western pennsylvania large family lower middle class as they say  y we had this idea that the bishop told you to do something while you really did i mean you didn't question what the bishop was saying so in the bishop said find a way to send your children to the catholic school system that's what families did when our fewer and fewer people were saying well i don't really have to listen to everything down the line just because the bishop says and that sort of spirit and that philosophy has kind of ripped through some other issues that we're going to be talking about tonight i'll be discussing with you on social policy for example the idea that you don't necessarily have to listen to the dog mama of a faith right down the line now the reaction to that from some of the conservative religious leaders has been kind of interesting faced with this sort of new idea new way of thinking this recalcitrance on the part of people their response hasn't been to change their message or to fine tune or make it more attractive to people it has been instead to rely on force to say we failed to persuade you so now we will force you and we see this playing out on issues like rights birth control creationism vs evolution in the schools censorship compelled worship and prayer all these issues that are just rippling through our society that are part of what people call the culture wars what ties all of this together what underlies all of it is the belief the insistence that someone feels or some group feels that they have to make moral decisions  and good example of this is the birth control cases we've had these reach the supreme court we know what the court said and we're dealing with the fallout from that now one of the things a bothers me about the current supreme court and there are a lot of things that bother me about the current supreme court one of things that bothers me most is that they don't seem to be terribly interested in factual data one of things i've noticed about the community of individuals who support separation of church and state where they're coming from a non religious human istic perspective or progressive christian or jewish or hindu or muslim or whatever approach they're taking is that they tend to respect the rule of facts in this type of discussion and feel that the way people behave in a way people live their lives and facts that that ought to somehow impact these debates that it should be relevant but unfortunately the supreme court it's often not let me give you some facts that i think are very relevant to this debate about access to birth control the first fact is that i don't want to surprise anybody in the room service social studies research about human sexuality ninety five percent and that's not really a new figure i mean that's not really a new phenomenon it's been going on for quite a while so ninety five percent are engaging in sexual activity before marriage second piece of information it's interesting to this debate is family size but this is changed somewhat over the years if you ask women today who want to have a family you know want to have children what they think the best number of children to have is you know if you asked them that maybe fifty or sixty years ago they would have maybe said four or five but now they say two so two children that's the second piece of information to children being the ideal family for long period of time there what does this all mean well it means that over the course of her life the average woman is going to spend a lot more time trying to avoid pregnancy then get pregnant that's where birth control comes into play it is a well settled principle and has been for a long time in this country legally that the government can override and asserted religious claim if it has a compelling state interest and for a long time we had this understanding that shoring women's access to birth control protecting that access making that available for people could make their own decisions about these things was indeed a compelling state interest when the supreme court handed down the hobby lobby rulings they actually said you know it is a compelling state interest but there is this other factor we have to consider that the government could do other things too obviously if ending this microphone in some way that the government could do other things to assure this but you know we have to ask ourselves once the stores open what other medical treatments and what other medical conditions will be subjected to somebody is religious veto the job as witnesses don't believe in blood transfusions so if your boss's job was witness can he now say that we're not going to pay for any surgical operations that might include blood transfusions what if your boss is a fundamentalist christian and believes that you should get a vaccine because that showing a lack of faith in jesus what if your boss is a scientologist scientologist have a well known  fight with the psychiatric profession so could your boss cut off your access to the drugs you may need to treat depression or a d h d or lots of other types of drugs that people really rely on every day what about counseling marriage counseling personal counseling all these types of things could be jeopardised now the supreme court of course when handed down the hobby lobby rulings are what we're just dealing with birth control here we're not addressing those other things well not that day they weren't but whatever the court sets down a broad rule like that whenever the court throws open a door like that people run through that door they try to press the argument factor already seen some fallout from the hobby lobby people taking the legal theory that was and then ca did in that opinion and pressing it into other areas and  the results here have not been good so it's troubling and what's especially frustrating about this to go back to the birth control issue is that if you know your history you know how hard we had to fight to get that right in the first place now there are people in the room who are with live through that i read about it but there are people in this room who lived through that in many states until the mind mid one nine hundred sixty s it was illegal for doctors to not only prescribe birth control but to discuss it with couples so in connecticut for example a married couple could go to their doctor and say we'd like to engage in family planning we'd like to have a small family what are our options and the doctor couldn't tell them legally it was against the law because the power of the catholic church in that case was so strong they had these laws on the book books now a woman named griswold decided to test that and she enlisted the help of dr lee buxton at yale medical school and they opened a clinic in new haven to distribute information about birth control just information they were not handing out any devices or medicines or pills it was only information but even that was seen as such a threat to the ruling religious establishment of connecticut that they called the d and the next thing that happened was that facility was raided and ms greer's wallet and dr buxton were arrested now that is exactly what they wanted to have happen because they wanted to take it into court and they did and they won and the supreme court a few years after that extended the right to  use birth control to unmarried couples as well so we really had to fight hard to get that right established and break the clerical the nomination that had domination that had just lorded over that issue for so long and it's disturbing today to see that being eroded in any way knowing how hard we had to fight to get that right and to see it happening under the grounds on the grounds of religious freedom is even more disturbing and i go back to something i said earlier those who hold to a confident faith don't feel the need to use the power of the government to impose it on others they lead by and they persuade by example if the beliefs of the hobby lobby individuals in the people in a corporation are sincere and i don't doubt that they are maybe they could do a better job explaining them to their employees and persuade them to adopt their point of view but they seem to be worried that their argument isn't strong enough isn't persuasive enough is that maybe realistic enough i would say instead they have turned to this complicated mechanism of trying to shut that access off they are interested in persuading by example why not well probably because in many cases their examples are very good tracked the religious right and fall of these organizations for more than a quarter of a century which sometimes is hard for me to believe but that's what i've been doing professionally and i've been going to their meetings and visit their websites and read their publications i debate their spokes people on television and what i have observed is what they're offering to us is a very good it's anger and it's bitterness it's conspiracy theory thinking it's hate in its rage it's division and most importantly it's designed to make you afraid of somebody you know whoever the enemy does your is maybe the enemy of the day is feminist maybe the enemy of the day is muslims maybe the enemy of the day is secular humanists whoever they decided they've used all these different arguments over the years to keep people afraid of some sort of insidious force that supposedly is undermining our society when i was in oklahoma last night i said you know you guys had a really really close call with that shari'ah thing because member they they were going to they actually passed a constitutional amendment in oklahoma to ban islamic law because you know the muslims that just about taken over oklahoma it was really i mean they were just on the verge there something like less than one half of one percent the population but they were going to do it and that amendment was declared unconstitutional and rightly so the first amendment protects us or should protect us from all in position of religious law so what what where does this leave us where do we stand well you know the change that's occurring the changes that are occurring in society the changes that are occurring to religion changes that are even occurring politically how people live their lives it has a lot of folks worried on the other side of this a lot of folks afraid they see this they look at the religious complection and they're worried that they are losing out and they should be worried because i do think they're losing out if you look at what's kind of happening religiously in the country and i'm not a sociologist of religion but i've tried to keep up with the current data and it's very interesting as i said earlier the interest in religion is there that's not going away although the number of self professed nonbelievers has risen somewhat most americans say they're still spiritual they're still interested in religion you hear a lot of people these days though say things like i'm spiritual but not religious phrases become very common and that says something about the way people are thinking people are generally speaking more open to a broader religious experience one that is open to say the blending of traditions some people may say why i was raised a whatever and i like certain aspects of that but i've also been influenced by some eastern religion that i've read about in my spouse's faith which is different and i take some of that and we blend this together with other things we've read and we are interested in this kind of do it yourself spirituality and a country that separates church and state that maximizes freedom of conscience people feel very confident engaging in that type of experimentation and we're seeing a lot of that today people listening less to the rigid voice of a dogmatic cleric and more to a voice that comes from inside themselves and a book a voice that may consider a book like the bible to be you know an interesting collection of stories some metaphor maybe some history but not necessarily a step by step instruction guide for how to live your  life this new credo is more tolerant it says live and let live in it there is to suggest that for those who believe in an afterlife there may be more than one pathway there now you can see what that would be threatening to a fundamentalist i mean the fundamentalists still claim for this very rigid idea that their dog is the only true path the only one way and it i find most interesting about that is if you get five fundamentalist in a room you'll get five different paths five different one ways there i mean they don't even agree among themselves yet they arrogantly with the authority that they do and they would try to impose this on us as much we can so this is causing the theocrats among us that would be theocrats i think a lot of sleepless nights as they stare into the face of this changing religious landscape and again what is their reaction to that been has it been to modify their message preach a better sermon offer a better product no no it is not it has been instead to cry persecution whenever they are challenged and to demand preferential treatment from the government on that latter point i would refer you to ben franklin who said in a letter to richard price of to overnight seven hundred eighty the following when the religion is good i can see that it was a port itself when it cannot support itself and god does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call upon the help of the civil power it is a sign apprehend of it being a bad one now i mentioned earlier these two visions of separation of church and state they have always been with us the secular state to protect the right of conscience for all secularism in this vision is not a dirty word it is not a corrosive force that is not a bad thing it is a positive good thing and it is not at war with religious freedom it is a partner of religious freedom because the secular state rests that wall of separation rest that right of conscience rest the right of all of us to decide what religion if any we will feel the it with pay for and support that's the vision the second vision state as a favorite religion you share it you reap the benefits and the rewards but if you don't maybe you're tolerated at best but you are still open to persecution or you have some religion imposed upon you to various state mechanisms your children may encounter in the public school system you may be forced to pay taxes to support these faith you may see the symbols of the dominant faith reflected in public life government especially well why when the choice is so stark and clear are so many seduced by the second vision well i think we have to look a little deeper with a look at deeper and specially the changes in society that have occurred say in the past fifty or sixty years we've been through a lot of rights movements we had a civil rights movement we had a women's rights movement we had a gay rights movement and now we even have nonbelievers pressing for their rights so we have these rights movements and some people most people i think look at this and say well you know those were tough times to go all through those rights movements they were difficult but we better nation for it you know we're extending the rights and freedoms to lots of different groups we're trying to include everybody that's a positive good but there are some who look at those rights movements and say it's too much too fast it's too quickly especially with  e right so i want to take a few minutes to talk about that because that's i think a very illustrative example of how things are changing and how quickly they're changing and why some people are so frightened by that now if someone had told me fifteen years ago that we would have same sex marriage legalized in as many states as we do right now i don't think i would have believed it just didn't seem like the society was ready for that yet i mean we were moving in a more tolerant direction on gay rights generally i think we were moving toward more acceptance but but marriage that seemed like kind of a longer term goal and even many gay rights activists felt that way yet here we are and you see same sex marriage legal in an increasing number of states even my home state of pennsylvania which the spite the fact that it tends to vote you know democratic presidential elections it can be very culturally conservative james carville once famously reflected that pennsylvania was philadelphia and pittsburgh with mississippi in the middle and coming from the mississippi part i can tell you that that's true there's a lot of cultural conservati but there are same sex marriage now so when you look at this change when you look at this wave really there are a couple ways to deal with it one way is to simply accommodate get used to it accept it another way is to dig in and fight and to say you're  to try to stop it and more and more what we're seeing from fundamentalist religions it is an attempt to fight it and to base their argument on the doctrine of religious freedom and this is very disturbing to me especially because they often attempt to dress up a shabby doctrine of discrimination and a noble garment of religious freedom and i can give you an example of that you may have heard about that in arizona there was a law proposed some months ago that basically would have allowed the owner of a for profit business refuse service to anybody if they felt that the person's lifestyle offended their religious beliefs now who do you think what class of individuals do you think that this law was aimed at presbyterians right now they were talking about gays  lesbians transgendered they did not want to have to serve those individuals now for a lot of people looking at that and seeing that law and listening to the debate it was a little uncomfortable because it reminded a lot of folks of a time in our society when we told entire class of individuals business owners had a legal right to tell an entire class of individuals you can't come in here that your hotel for your people that's across town the restaurants that serve you can't your kind they're there over there you can't come in here and we heard that argument raised i mean that's how it used to be in our society we move beyond that yet here it looked like we were trying to go back to that and religious freedom was being used as the justification interestingly enough what killed that law  was the business community governor jan brewer of arizona is not exactly a liberal and you know about her pretty conservative governor yet the business community said wait a minute here we don't really want to be the state that's telling people dot to come here they're not welcome not to here for tourism not to spend their money here and that's sort of turned things around but that law versions of it are being proposed and has been proposed and even slightly modified versions of it passed in a few states so the battle is still out there you know we have a thing in this country called a public accommodation law if you are a for profit business generally speaking you must serve the public now there are you know some limitations on that but you cannot say you're just going to exclude entire classes of people from service at your institution at your for profit business and that again going back to the days of jim crow and people trying to reestablish that and using religious freedom as their argument is very offensive to a lot of us but what makes people want to go to extremes like that to the point of actually trying to write the stuff and the law well a lot of it is simply that fear of that tide of change that i have mentioned especially in the area of rights and inside themselves i mean admit this publicly but inside themselves they almost certain knowledge that they are standing on the losing side of history now because at some point the courts are important what the courts say very important courts have done a lot to push this forward but the culture is pushing to sometimes the courts lead the culture sometimes the culture leads to courts but you can see the push there and i don't know what the supreme court will say when it reaches then this issue reaches down to same sex marriage but the culture will continue to push in a certain direction if you look at the polling data especially for younger people this is not even a question for them they are very much in favor of the idea of marriage equality so the culture is going to push that thing through now can imagine imagine if the fundamentalists to see that tide of change observe that wave coming at them the fear that they feel the anger rage i mean no grasp at anything including trying to draft a noble doctrine like religious freedom to cover their discrimination but i don't think in the end run it will work they'll keep talking but the train is pretty much leaving the station now i want to talk about a couple of other issues of where wrapped up in one is the case that we had in new york and greece some of you are familiar with this case we had a situation where we  brought this matter into the court concerning prayers before city council meetings in the suburb of rochester new york they were almost always christian prayers in fact they only went and found a couple of non christian prayer givers  appear before the council after we complained that americans united they went out and they found a couple folks but they obviously were going to stop this practice of almost always having christian prayers until they were sued now we sued and we actually won the case in the first couple levels of course but when it went to the supreme court and unfortunately the court did agree to hear it they reversed and it was a five to four decision as they so often are these days and that was very depressing but after the depression we kind of got angry because looking at the decision you can see again how out of touch with reality it is i mentioned earlier how sometimes the supreme court seems to be out of touch with reality well think about this for a minute justice kennedy who wrote the opinion in that case said that it really wasn't a problem because adults have the right to leave the room if they don't want to participate in the prayer now most people who go to a city council meeting or a county council meeting are not going there because it's a fascinating way to spend the evening they are going because they want something maybe they  want sidewalks fixed in their neighborhood or better lighting or what have you they want something they want to present a petition to the local government the government that is the closest to the people and you cannot usually you know walk into state legislatures and you certainly can't do it in congress with your petition for whatever you want but you can't the local government many times so we're to believe that the individual who wants something from the county or the city council is going to offend the council first of all by walking out on a prayer or doing so publicly  front of everybody and then come back in five minutes later and say oh by the way would you do this thing for me it's not going to happen people are going to say well i guess i just have to deal with this because this is what's happening so we've looked at the fall off not decision it's again like a lot of court rulings these days it's a little murky and we're asking ourselves what happens next what we've been trying to do is ensure as much inclusion as we can at these local government meetings now i would be happy for the city council members or county members to meet in their private chambers before the meeting and do whatever they wanted to religiously if they wanted to pray read the bible get down on their knees and their private chambers that's fine but they seem to want to do something else they want to come out and have their religious experience spread out toward the entire community and send the message that they are speaking on behalf of the entire community not just themselves and that is wrong i think the supreme court obviously missed that decision they did the wrong ruling but we're trying to be more inclusive so we're trying to get individuals from non christian communities and from non religious communities to approach these these towns and these county councils and ask for a right to speak as well and we are also working with religious leaders of a more progressive bent who even though they may be christian personally well we're cite an invocation that is inclusive of everybody and doesn't make anyone feel like they're being excluded that's probably the best we can do with this ruling right now the second  want to touch upon is the hospital murders because i know that's been a concern to folks here in this area and that's you're not alone there we've seen this issue appearing in a number of states what's happening is hospitals are sort of merging in many parts of the country for various economic reasons many hospitals and united states are catholic they're run by catholic the catholic church and what happens when a catholic hospital merges with a non catholic institution the catholic institution is required to accept what are called the ethical directives of the church which deal with various medical issues obviously there's no borsch in the hospital anymore there's no distribution of birth control certain types of operations are no longer performed and people don't realize this your end of life directives fall under the catholic directives so you may think up no problem it's got a living will my will states what's going to happen to me i've got advanced directives spells out everything i want done or don't want done but if you're in a catholic hospital i don't have to abide by that they can say up sorry our rules are that we're going to override that so you definitely need to be aware of this now there isn't a lot of case law in this area our attorneys have been looking at this and we've been working on the issue along with groups like the a c l u and merger watch and planned parenthood some of these other groups that are interested in this we've all been kind of keeping an eye on it there's a case from the nineteenth century supreme court ruling from the late nineteenth century that allowed the government to give public aid to religious hospitals so it kind of cuts the other way and that case is often cited as justification for allowing this type of arrangement where public money is flowing into a obviously sectarian institution but that doesn't mean that there are other options in florida a few years ago in the tampa st pete area we had a situation like this where a merger was proposed and it would have meant a loss of services for a lot of especially low income people who relied on a public hospital that was going to merge with the catholic system in the a c l u americans united other organizations rallied people made them aware that they may lose these services and particular merger was stopped cut out and didn't do it so there is that opportunity also there are sometimes various midway suggestions and the halfway measures that are proposed whereby some of the services may be moved to another facility that's technically on to control of the church and at least services aren't lost although it does create an additional layer an additional thing that a person must do in order to achieve or to get these services so it's definitely an issue that we concern about it's one that is important to a lot of people and it's one that is touching more and more people's lives  because these mergers are are just occurring at a incredible rate all around the country our tourney's are looking at the situation here in washington state as i said it's a difficult issue because of the case law there's just not a lot of it out there and this is not as we know right now looking at the supreme court not a court that is very favorable to the entire concept of separation of church and state what's very frustrating about that is that it's a one vote situation there  and you know that happens down the line in other areas as well not just separation of church and state when you think about some of these issues we've had to deal with lately there have been a lot of these five to four ruling so obviously the court very important issue that you need be thinking about just due to the fact that some of the judges are justices are getting up in years we know there are going to be changes on the court in the years to come and some of these justices just can't stay on the court much longer so it's very important be thinking about that now our organization is nonpartisan we're not allowed to candidates or oppose candidates or get involved in politics at that level but i can tell you that you can tell other people in your mind other people how important the federal  judiciary is because it's the final word on these issues congress can pass a law the president can sign it or veto it but it's really the courts that often have the final say in these matters and remember how do we get our federal judges well they're nominated by the president either confirmed or denied by the senate on a strict up and down vote fifty one votes will put a judge on the federal courts the house doesn't play a role it's a president and the senate so those individuals are very important and it does make a difference i don't know how much you know about the federal court system but essentially at below the supreme court the nation is carved up into different circuits there are i think eleven or twelve and most cases stop at one of these lower courts the supreme court except only one point eight percent of all the cases it is asked to hear one point eight percent so the odds are always against  court case going all the way to the supreme court in a popular culture people love to say that you know i'll take it all the way to the supreme court but that's movies that's t v and real life you're not going be able to take it all the way the supreme court in most cases but nevertheless the lower  judges the lower court judges are very important for that reason the fourth circuit is the circuit includes a couple of states on the east coast virginia maryland couple others and it was very conservative for a long time and whenever we had a problem and one of the states we were always worried because we were concerned about approaching the judges on the fourth circuit and that circuit well because of changes during the obama presidency and different types of judges being nominated retirements and so on the fourth circuit is now one of the more friendly circuits to separation of church and state there are still circuits that are very problematic the fifth circuit the eleventh circuit but essentially you're talking about a court that really changed because of maybe four or five judicial nominations or think usually fifteen judges on these lower panels so you know you're talking about a real significant change they're brought about because of a political situation so remind people of that because sometimes people just there's a disconnect i don't know where they think these judges are coming from they just saw the sky and land on the court you know we have to remind folks that there is a political connection you need to be aware of that i threw up i want to just kind of say one of the thing to you that kind of goes back to what i said to begin if people sometimes say oh you know maybe you're gone overboard or is it really fair to accuse some of these groups on the religious right of favoring theocracy or advocating for this sort of thing let me just read something to you that addresses that issue pretty well there's a group called the alliance defending freedom it's a very large religious right legal organizations based in scottsdale arizona has a budget of about thirty five million and they they pay for a lot of the religious rights legal work when we were fighting that case in greece it was lawyers for the alliance defending freedom that were taking the case on for the city of greece when we were fighting for access to birth control and hobby lobby it was those lawyers from the alliance defending freedom on the other side that you know were advocating there and i always find it interesting about these organizations as their names you know the alliance defending freedom if you don't know any better that sounds pretty good these organizations are great at picking these euphemistic names you know they'll say well our goal is to take away the rights of gays and lesbians and to take away women's rights and take away the rights of non christians and we're called the liberty federation and there's an old joke historians have about the holy roman empire they say there were three things wrong with it it was neither holy roman nor an empire  freedom has a similar problem it's not an alliance and it's not defending freedom except the freedom of the fundamentalists tell you what to do this statement appears on their website the alliance defending freedom seeks to recover the robust christian  third fourth and fifth centuries you thought i was kidding about constantine not kidding all right it's real and that kind of brings me back full circle as we go through this and if we watch this all unfold i would urge you to take these threats seriously obviously every time but also remember despite the setbacks we've had how much we have gained and there again are people living people in this room living who lived through those times you know a lot about more than i do because i want to read about them but you may remember for example not only the restrictions on birth control their strictures on women's rights there is the censorship that was very common in our society you may remember how religious organizations used to have the power to ban books magazines movies stage plays you know when i was a kid i was always perplexed by the people would say a book was banned in boston because in my view boston was  cosmopolitan liberal new england city and you know they were open to things but as i read more and learn more well the reason they said that was they used to ban things in boston the bishop had the power to have that done  movie was seen as offensive to morals or catholic church or what have you they could have removed from circulation and it took people going to court and fighting for the right to read and to learn to overturn those types of policies when they lost that battle and they lost some of these other battles and they've lost a lot of things that is i mean they're not going to keep fighting but whenever you get the scourge of never you get angry about some of these things just remember how much they have lost and how much more they will lose if we all remain active in this area and this want to conclude by saying that you know i think the biggest challenge we face is what i said to beginning preserving the victory of madison and fighting all those who would give it to constant  have any questions i have to take questions that was employment division v smith yeah that was a pivotal case dealing with as you point out used to pay o t by native americans in religious ceremonies and the supreme court did deal with that matter and that language is a come out of justice scalia now the thing that really kind of the range that was drawn into all of that was that after that ruling came down there were going to say sions and individuals that were not happy with that decision because they felt that it put too many restrictions on free exercise of religion so they advocated for passage of the federal law the religious freedom restoration act was passed in one thousand nine hundred three and it was designed originally to protect members of minority faiths like native americans and others from what were seen as sort of oppressive religious government regulation and now it has been turned into something else entirely i guess it should be an object lesson to all of us not to try to fool with the first amendment or tinker with it even on the our organization supported that law back in one thousand nine hundred three because it seemed like it would protect some of these minority religions that were running into all these difficulties well now it's become this other thing entirely the the interesting thing about that bill though that act is remember it's a federal law it can be changed it can be altered it can even be overturned i mean it can be wiped off the books that's not likely to happen in the current congress but i think somehow modifying that legislation to make it clear that it does not apply and things like hobby lobby would be something well with pursuing the standard we're looking at is does the religious activity in question impact the rights of a third person third party give an example you know people in prison will make certain that requests or demands based on religion some of them are honored some of them are not but a good standard to look at is well how does it affect other individuals you know if the jewish inmate wants a kosher meal that's really not affecting anybody else if they wish to have certain objects to be turned into weapons that's a different matter that could affect other individuals that's the missing piece of this right now if the courts are not looking at and i would say that's what we need to press for if the religious freedom in question is affecting the rights of another person who's not even you know in that religion something's wrong and we need to get back and get that standard in place yes that was very disturbing it was a case dealing with there's a group of fundamentalist mormons you may have read about them or even seen him on t v because they're the ones that still practice polygamy so there you know a lot of great interest to folks specially on reality television a group of them were involved in a dispute about child labor and  this individual was believed to have information about this that would be relevant to the court case and was asked to testify and has refused citing the hobby lobby ruling saying that his violation of his religious freedom for him to be expected to give the information that he has even if it would be used to stop something as bad as child labor so this is how some of these courts are interpret the hobby lobby ruling now one would hope i mean it's bad enough that they would let that extend to a case like that but one would hope that if it were a criminal matter they would not extend it that far but who knows what's going to happen in light of this ruling some people are trying to to take some of these recent decisions and turn them around and use them in ways that will you know obviously offender anger conservative christians there's some interesting things going on in oklahoma city recently actually the state capital has this ten commandments monument that  was donated by a private group an a but they've got it on state capitol grounds and people are concerned about that they don't think it's right that there be a religious symbol there so the saying this to group this i don't know how serious these folks are but they they have offered to this to have their own symbol displayed alongside of it and of course it's like a statue of some strange god with horns and stuff so they're bringing this out another thing that happened it's been an outbreak of satanism in oklahoma recently i can't explain it there's a facility an oklahoma city that is open to anybody to rent it it's a civic facility but anybody can rent it who has the money so religious groups had rented it in the past and it had services there which is fine you know they're renting it but this santana group rented it and they were putting on it what they call black mass and the catholic archdiocese just went crazy there in oklahoma city they just went nuts because it was black massacring in this institution but the people there at the st saints group they paid the fee  paperwork they have a right to use it to now saying this group had done this in the past it had these black masses and like nobody was showing up but now they sold every ticket because of the cow there gerry spence such a fuss about it i mean they had just continued to ignore it and it probably been the same three people again i time will tell how that strategy will work i think it's interesting i'm always interested in saying well if you're going to extend a right of access or funding or whatever to the majority religion let's make sure that everybody else gets in on it too and then some of the folks will start to say wait a minute that's not what we met yes well there are there are some i mean obviously you know tempered by secular generally speaking the religious groups have the right to determine how they will raise children parents have the right to do that can't subject children to abuse or anything like that you can't make them work can't violate labor laws but there are certain exemptions that have been given to religious organizations for example the amish most states have laws that require mandatory attendance in school up to you know maybe age sixteen most states say sixteen the amish argued a few years ago that they didn't want their children to go to school until age sixteen because and their tradition and their community children would begin sort of doing an apprentice on a farm or in some kind of a trade as early as age thirteen so in a case called wisconsin v yod which was decided by the supreme court i think in one thousand nine hundred two the court said it's ok we can give this exemption to the amish because they have this other type of a system where children are being educated but it's just kind of in a different way it's in more like trades than in traditional education so they when certain types of exemptions like that are granted to religious organizations but generally speaking i mean in a broad kind of way of looking at this family law is subject to the same sort of controls and regulations of secular law for example if you have are a fundamentalist christian and don't believe in going to the doctor that's fine for you as an adult but a child who is exposed to serious illness possibly death the state can step in and require medical treatment for a minor so there are sort of you know it really depends almost on a case by case basis but there does a general rule there are some exemptions that are given when there's not really it's not being vald more people are reading our material through facebook through social media through clever graphics that we disseminate through twitter the bad news is that some of those people then really consider themselves a full fledged member and we'll sit down and write a check or do something  concrete the great thing about social media is its reach the bad thing about it is what people call slacktivism the idea that you have done something when all you have is click the like button you know if you're against kicking puppies clicking it like button against kicking puppies does not stop any puppies and being kicked you have to go out and do something more than that and that's the problem we're having is getting people to take that next step yeah they're reading about us on facebook they're looking at the blog they're looking at the materials reading church and state online seeing our press releases disseminating them challenging that aspect of things and i wish i had you know an easier answer for you we're always trying new things and we are open to hearing any ideas you may have as well about how to extend their reach but one thing about that you know there there is no law stating that religious institutions have a right to all the tax money they can grab and no regulations all it takes is for lawmakers to have the will to say ok if you want funding here are the is that it's not that hard believe me any secular contractor that gets government money is meeting a host of regulations mean there are all these organizations in d c that people jokingly call beltway bandits they get money to run contracts for the f agencies my wife used to work on one of these so i know a little bit more about education department defense department labor you know all these federal agencies that contract this work out you have to follow that contract if you deviate or do one thing wrong the funding you won't get it back again that's the kind of regulation and oversight they put on secular organizations why not put the same thing on religious organizations nobody is required to try to get those contracts if you feel that the regulations are on