Florida voters don’t seem to be buying into a proposed constitutional amendments that would fling open the door to public funding for religious institutions. The defeat of that amendment, which is on the November ballot, could discourage efforts to pass similar measures in other states, including Texas.
A Suffolk University/7NEWS(WSVN-Miami) poll found that just 28 percent of registered voters in Florida support Amendment 8. The measure, deceptively titled the “Religious Freedom” amendment, would allow public dollars to fund religious schools, houses of worship, other sectarian institutions, and any religious sect or denomination. The poll showed that 52 percent of registered voters oppose the amendment, while the remainder were undecided or refused to answer. The amendment must receive 60 percent of the votes on November 6 to be added to the state’s Constitution.
Our friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State have more on the amendment here.
TFN will be on the look out for any similar legislation when Texas lawmakers begin filing bills later this fall for the 2013 legislative session.
Hey there TFN and friends!!!
Along these same lines, knowing that Tennessee has become far worse than Texas, I plan to ask my local state representative (R-John Ragan) to sponsor a bill that would amend the Tennessee state constitution to declare “Bible-believing Christianity” as the official state religion of Tennessee.
I figure he and his friends will bite into it, hook, line, sinker, pole, and fisherman, because the popular belief in the United States during the 19th century (even in most American legal circles) was that the establishment clause in the First Amendment forbids only the federal government from establishing an official state religion—but all of the states were free to have an official state religion in their constitutions if they wanted one. No state ever bit on it for various reasons—but the belief was always that they legally could do so if they wanted to. I looked this up.
Of course, we all know that later U.S. Supreme Court rulings changed all of that and effectively took the position that it was never really true. However, most wingnuts today take the position that we need to get back to an “original, purified” U.S. constitution that does away with all those silly amendments and court rulings that came later. Never mind that the original constitution officially gave the authority that permitted such amendments and rulings–the founding fathers fully well knowing that such power would be necessary down the American road.
However, after they pass the amendment here in Tennessee, more than half the fools in the state will be a “heeing” and a “hawing”:
“Weez wuns izz freed you now!!! Weez wuns izza gonna turn the school cafeterias into evangelistic seeners. Weez wuns izza gonna empty that huge uquarium in the skule lobby, wheel her into the cafeteria, and make that baby our baptismal font. Youz wuns jist wait and see. Y’all parents needs to start a teachin yer chilun bouts how to holds their brayuth a cupla secunds cause all youz one’s chilun izza a gonna be ires now.”
Pray that Romney will mess up badly in the debates tonight—or this might be real one day.
Outrageous! Sadly, it just might pass.
It would pass here. There is no doubt about that.