Things You Cannot Vote On

 

When I was growing up in Virginia, the local townsfolk voted to have segregated schools. The folks wanted White kids in one school and Negroes in another school. Been that way for 100 years. Then, the Supreme Court said, "No, you cannot vote on that because that local law violates the law of the land, the most basic law, which is the Constitution."

Monday night, in Hampton, New Hampshire, I heard the same sort of argument coming from a very agitated man who said he had grown up in Hampton, and for 50 years the town of Hampton had voted to write checks to the Sacred Heart (Catholic) School to support their operating expenses. But that night citizens rose to object to funding a religious school, a church with town taxpayer funds and he was dumbfounded and outraged.

There was an attempt at obfuscation: The supporters of the government funding of religion attempted to say that this money was being spent on the school nurse and that the state government says that every school child is entitled to a nurse and so we can't discriminate against the kids in the Catholic school. But the treasurer of the school board said 65% of the $65,000 was spent on the nurse--as if that made it alright--and she left unsaid that meant 35% or $22,750 was spent on textbooks, computers and testing materials, operating expenses of the Church school.

When a woman proposed that if any other school, a Muslin or Jewish school for instance requested the same $65,000 this be automatically awarded. The Catholic school folks objected to this on two grounds: 1. The school requesting the money might be a church of Satan and we would not want to give money to a church preaching stuff we don't approve of  2. The Catholic Church had done its "due diligence" which is to say, it had come to the town government, got itself a warrant article and got that warrant article voted through, so every other school, Jewish, Baptist or Episcopalian ought to have to "earn" it the way the Sacred Heart School had done. 

The New Hampshire state Constitution specifically forbids spending state funds on religious institutions,

The NH State Constitution says that "no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination.” 

 but that didn't matter to the folks at the meeting: They vote 22 to 11 to fund Sacred Heart and the same vote to not fund any other church school unless that school managed to get a warrant article passed and they approved of the $22,750 being spent on non nurse items, like computers, and for all I know, the painting of classrooms and other operating expenses.

Apparently, the mechanism is the school spends money and then sends invoices to the school board or some Hampton town official who then cuts a check to cover the costs.

So, in Hampton, every member of the school board voted to reject the 1st amendment of the US Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." 

Apparently, the school board has not been schooled in civics, in Hampton, New Hampshire.