Case Study: Respond to the following paragraph. You can either agree or disagree with it. response, should be 150 words.
The ‘No Establishment' Clause
The establishment clause is different from freedom of conscience because it deals with unconstitutional state endorsements on religious practices. For example in the McCollum v. Board of Education this case is based on religious teaching in public schools. There is a law that children from the age of seven to sixteen must attend public school, which is funded by the community tax. If the child would not attend public school then they must be enrolled in a private or parochial school. In the public school setting a religious teacher would go to the public school and for thirty minutes they would do religious teaching. McCollum did not believe a public tax funded school should give religious teachings to children. Not everyone in the community was from the same religion. This in turn violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the children.
This differs from the ‘free exercise' cases because those cases were brought about to have the freedom to practice their religion as pleased. For example having the holy day of your religion off from work so you may worship. The no establishment case is for not having one-religion being favored and imposed in government funded building in a society where there are different religions. The common problem with both ‘no establishment' and ‘free exercise' is the favored religion is both being imposed and preferred in the society not respecting all religions.
With the examples in Hammonds article addressing the issue of abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality is not supported by the society because the majority believe it is evil and not gods will. But all three issues are the rights of conscience of the individual. When it comes to the issue of abortion and euthanasia it is felt that the assistance in ending life should not be allowed at all. With the abortion case government aid was not allowed to be used to perform the abortion. While with euthanasia physician assisted suicide was not allowed. In each case it was not said that it wasn't allowed but assistance would not be given to carry out the act. With homosexuality they were fighting for their rights as a couple for example being able to be married. The Courts denied this because they saw this act as unfavorable and a sin. This as well goes against ones conscience limiting them to what society believes is right and wrong. As Hammond mentioned the ‘no establishment' and ‘free exercise' case is similar because with all cases ones conscience is being ruled against due to what society believes is right or wrong.