Twisting The First Amendment

By the far right wing Christians they are twisting the First Amendment to cover bigotry. Somehow, they believe that they can use their religious beliefs to justify discrimination.

Parents angry over transgender student's bathroom choice
WOWK-TV
Posted: Sep 09, 2015
By Chase Numbers


Prents freaked out over a transgender student using the girls’ bathroom at an Ohio elementary school.

Outraged parents protested Tuesday night at the board meeting of the Northwest Local School District, reported WOWK-TV.

“If you have a child who has boy anatomy, let him go to the boys’ restroom,” said parent Karen Jones. “If you have a child who has girls anatomy let them go to the girls’ restroom. It’s simple.”

It’s actually not that simple.

Title IX of the Federal Education Amendments of 1972 protects a student’s right to use the bathroom that corresponds with his or her gender identity, and school officials are not allowed to force students to use unisex bathrooms available at the school.

The superintendent said he had recently refreshed his knowledge of Title IX requirements after the school year opened with a transgender girl at Northwest Elementary School in McDermott.

“Our job is to educate every child regardless of gender, and we want to make sure every child is safe,” said Superintendent Todd Jenkins.

And somehow this has become a religious issue…

“I despise it,” said parent Patty Crabtree. “We’re Christians, we don’t believe in this all these different types of males and females — you know, what we have now. We have slowly watched all of our rights, our Christian rights, are being taken from us. We are tired of it.”

Governor George Wallace of Alabama in his Inaugural Address of 1963 that is known as the “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” speech said,

We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station . . as we will work with him . . to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for BOTH races . . the tubercular and the infirm. This is the basic heritage of my religion, if which I make full practice . . . . for we are all the handiwork of God.

Religious beliefs have been used many time for the right to not obey the law and the Supreme Court has ruled many times over that the 1^st Amendment does not grant the right to disobey laws. One of the most famous cases was United States v. Lee,

United States v. Lee involved an Amish farmer’s contention that his religious beliefs precluded him from paying social security taxes or withholding them from the paychecks of his employees. The farmer sued in federal court for a refund of the taxes he paid. In its decision, the Supreme Court emphasized that not all burdens the government places on religion are unconstitutional. The government can justify a burden on religion so long as it is essential to achieving an overriding government interest. In this case, the Court found that maintenance of the social security system was an overriding interest, and allowing individual exemptions to social security taxes based on religion was impractical. The Court noted that the tax system simply could not function if it was susceptible to challenges on the grounds that certain expenditures were inconsistent with a particular individual’s religious beliefs. Thus, the requirement that employers withhold and pay social security taxes from their employees does not violate the Free Exercise Clause.

In another Supreme Court case “Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith” where an employee was fired for eating peyote which he claimed to take because of a religious ceremony,

Respondents Smith and Black were fired by a private drug rehabilitation organization because they ingested peyote, a hallucinogenic drug, for sacramental purposes at a ceremony of their Native American Church. Their applications for unemployment compensation were denied by the State of Oregon under a state law disqualifying employees discharged for work-related "misconduct." Holding that the denials violated respondents' First Amendment free exercise rights, the State Court of Appeals reversed. The State Supreme Court affirmed, but this Court vacated the judgment and remanded for a determination whether sacramental peyote use is proscribed by the State's controlled substance law, which makes it a felony to knowingly or intentionally possess the drug. Pending that determination, the Court refused to decide whether such use is protected by the Constitution. On remand, the State Supreme Court held that sacramental peyote use violated, and was not excepted from, the state law prohibition, but concluded that that prohibition was invalid under the Free Exercise Clause.

He appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court,

Because respondents' ingestion of peyote was prohibited under Oregon law, and because that prohibition is constitutional, Oregon may, consistent with the Free Exercise Clause, deny respondents unemployment compensation when their dismissal results from use of the drug. The decision of the Oregon Supreme Court is accordingly reversed.

In other words the court found that the ingestion of peyote for religious purposes was not protected by the 1^st Amendment

So the far right wing Christians claim that their “right” to discriminate under the First Amendment to being protected is wrong, just like Kim Davis was wrong to deny marriage license for same-sex couple was wrong.

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