DELIBERATIONS IN HAMPTON: KILLING SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

 

Last night, Wednesday, February 5, 2025, the Deliberative Session (DS) considering the warrant article which awards taxpayer funds to a religious school (Sacred Heart) was debated.

For the first time in town history, since this warrant article was introduced likely as long as 30 years ago, the Budget Committee and the School Board both voted to not recommend to the town voters that they vote for taxpayer funds for the religious school. This all happened before the DS, and some of the speakers are reacting to this. The vote which counts is the vote by Hampton citizens going to the polls to vote yes or no, in March. The DS is supposed to be the town hall meeting where people meet to inform, persuade and come to an understanding.

The primary and fundamental argument against this funding of Sacred Heart is it violates the First Amendment article--the article nullifies the separation of church and state.

Hampton's practice of local nullification of the First Amendment is particularly pure. In other cases which have come before the Supreme Court in Washington, there were always extenuating circumstances: In one case, Everson, the town had extended school bus service to all students but refused to bus kids to a Catholic school, and the Court ruled you cannot withhold funds you offer to all, on the basis of religious exception. Ditto for playground repair: If you undertake to re-asphalt all town school playgrounds, you have do the Catholic school playgrounds, too. And in Maine, kids who wanted to go to a religious school had no practical non religious school as an option. 

But in Hampton, there is a public school next door to the Catholic school and there are plenty of empty seats in public schools available to students who choose to attend the Catholic schools. What Hampton does is to simply provide a slush fund, and whenever the Catholic school wants to buy a new computer, it presents the check to the treasurer of the school board who pays the invoice. In the past, it was always claimed these checks paid for only "non religious" items, but it turns out the treasurer pays for things which could, and likely do, serve religious functions.

This particular pork barrel boondoggle can happen in this town because the local church has a voting block which can propose a warrant article and mobilize three thousand congregants to vote for it, no matter what the First Amendment says.

At the end of the comments, Bob Ladd, who voted for the article as member of the Budget Committee cited a principle of "Mutual Aide" as a justification for the community paying for Sacred Heart's computers. He noted that the fire department does not refuse to go to extinguish fires at the Catholic school, or at churches and this principle applies to cover funding the church school. 

Of course, this is a false analogy: we do not ask accident victims whether they are Catholic before putting them into an ambulance, or rescuing them from a riptide at the beach. The offering of life saving services does not violate the proscription for the government not to establish a church. We are not, after all building  a church or a school by rescuing it from fire, but we are protecting that structure, and other nearby structures, from destruction as a measure of public health and safety.

A better example might have been government funds used to support a church soup kitchen: Government cannot do everything, but when a church steps in as a helper in meeting a need, where the government has opted not to develop a program, partnering with that effort may not violate church and state and the establishment clause.

The other argument Mr. Ladd presented was that making a fuss about this warrant article or voting against it exacerbates divisions in the town, which left Mad Dog wondering: does that not apply to the Church, which pushes this warrant article every year over increasingly rancorous objections?  Does this $50K really matter much to the Sacred Heart School which is funded by the archdiocese of Manchester? 

Mr. Ladd demonstrated his lack of ability to abstract with a final comment about Texas Governor Anne Richards.  The sole  speaker who opposed the warrant article and who spoke in favor of separation of church and state, had told a story to illustrate how personally difficult and wrenching having to embrace the separation of church and state can be: Governor Richards had to tear down a nativity scene which was built on government grounds, outside her office, when the Court ruled that violated church and state, and she expostulated, "Damn! It's a crying shame! I really hate doing it! Because, in Austin, at the Capitol, this is the only time of year when we can ever gather together, in one place, all at the same time, three wise men."

This elicited laughter, even among the audience which was stacked with congregation members from the Catholic Church. 

Mr. Ladd, apparently unwilling to allow the opposition to have the last laugh said, "Well, but Governor Richards also said of George W. Bush that he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple!"

Which set Mad Dog's head spinning, as he tried to fathom what that had to do with anything being discussed that night about the warrant article.

That the audience had laughed with the citizen who opposed the warrant article apparently hit a nerve with its supporters. The principal of Sacred Heart began her remarks by saying she stood to speak "not to take a mocking tone" as "others who have spoken" that night had taken. Laughter, apparently, is a threat and not to be tolerated.

Another respondent, Patrick S., began with a sneer at "our constitutional lawyer" to say that just because someone says something is unconstitutional doesn't mean it actually is unconstitutional, and there are lots of examples of government giving money to religious institutions, not that he bothered to cite any. 

But anyway, Mr. S. asserted, we in Hampton are only "mere mortals" and the justices of the Supreme Court know a lot more about it, and decide cases with a lot less emotion than the constitutional lawyer who had spoken that night had shown. Best to leave the Constitution to the real experts: a naked appeal to closing down your mind. Just have faith in the experts down in Washington, D.C., the justices on the Supreme Court of the United States.  That argument about the funding of a religious school violating the First Amendment is "dead," Mr. S. concluded with what can only be described as a smirk.

In Mad Dog's brain danced the refrain from Dylan's song: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Mad Dog briefly considered leaping up to the microphone to say, "As was said earlier, the Constitution was not written for lawyers, but for the Common Man. You don't need 3 years in law school to know when government funds a church, that violates the First Amendment, if you have ever had a middle school Civics course, at least in a reasonably competent public school, or failing that, you can draw conclusions if you know how to read." 

But then he asked himself: "Who are you trying to persuade here? Who are you talking to? What do you gain by ridiculing a man like Patrick S? "

In that room, the wind was blowing, had always blown, for the Church. Hundreds of people file in every year, and not more than a dozen are not members of the Church.

 

Watching the video of this 90 minute session, Mad Dog understood why discussion of topics like this is unlikely to ever change anyone's opinions. People sat in the audience tapping away on their cell phones and applauded the proponents of giving taxpayer money to Sacred Heart, no matter how inarticulate or incoherent the speaker. 

Scanning the faces of a crowd sometimes tells you more than all the focus groups, all the telephone polls, all the pundits writing in the New York Times can possibly tell you. 

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The possibility of deliberation, persuasion seems remote in this mob. One wonders if it is ever a possibility. Can you see the United States Senate shifting from one position to another after a vigorous debate, where the reasoning of one Senator actually changed the mind of another? 

Which is not to say we should give up on democracy, but it suggests that the orator, the man who might persuade, may be an extinct species. Barack Obama may have changed minds, but not about issues like separation of church and state. He could change minds about how people saw him, by being erudite, articulate and non threatening. But he could not persuade anyone on issues, which is why he said some people cling to their guns and their religion and there was no changing them.

People come to the Deliberative Sessions with their minds made up. As Lincoln once remarked, you can show up with twelve angels blowing horns and you would not change anyone's mind on certain topics.

If you are interested enough to sit through the DS, here it is, unedited. Heaven help you. (Tip: you really should scan forward to minute 39 or even 42, as the first 40 minutes are mostly people chatting, like those dead zones on CNN Congressional hearings.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaSwqFUzQ0