A few weeks ago, remember how we were all a buzz about Keith Ellison (D-MN) choosing to make his oath on the Koran as the first democratically-elected Muslim to sit in Congress? We all agreed it would be unconstitutional to prevent him from doing so (“no religious test,” Art. VI Sec. 3). Yet, something was deeply troubling about it even though we couldn’t quite put our finger on it.
Then, last Tuesday, this posting on the website of the North Carolina ACLU (here),
“A unanimous North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled this morning that the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina (ACLU-NC) can proceed with its lawsuit, filed against the State in July 2005, which chal-lenges North Carolina state courts’ practice of refusing to allow people of non-Christian faiths to swear re-ligious oaths using any text other than the Christian Bible.”
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The lawsuit filed by the ACLU-NC in July 2005 seeks a court order clarifying that North Carolina’s existing statute governing religious oaths is broad enough to allow the use of multiple religious texts in addition to the Christian Bible. In the alternative, if the Court does not agree that the phrase “Holy Scriptures” in the North Carolina state statute must be read to permit texts such as the Quran, the Hebrew Bible and the Bhagavad-Gita in addition to the Christian Bible, then the ACLU-NC asks the Court to strike down the practice of allowing the use of any religious texts in the administration of religious oaths.
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This lawsuit asks the Court for an interpretation of the phrase “Holy Scriptures” that is broad enough to include multiple religious texts.
The ACLU believes that all religious texts should be honored with the title “Holy Scriptures,” revealing their contempt for the Bible, and their total lack of appreciation to the set of Judeo-Christian values that gave birth to Western Civilization in general and America specifically. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, don’t they understand they saw at the log upon which they sit? Without those values there would be no ACLU. Ever heard of a CCLU, a Chinese Civil Liberties Union? Or a MCLU, a Muslim Civil Liberties Union?How does the Left express appreciation for the intellectual soil out of which they have grown? By declaring war on those values that gave them life. They commit intellectual patricide. When was the last time you heard of a Western Civ class in a public school that didn’t rail against all things Western?To return to the North Carolina case, the ACLU’s argument is essentially, “all or nothing.” Either accept all religious texts as “Holy Scriptures” or accept none of them as such. And if it’s the latter, then eliminate the practice all together. Either way they win.
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