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 warrant article (#5 this year) funding of Sacred Heart is it violates the First Amendment's "establishment clause," that government (in this case the town government of Hampton) violates the separation of church and state by paying invoices presented to a town official who writes the checks out of an account (slush fund) of taxpayer money.

How can a government "establish" a church? Only two ways to do tha: 1. Declare such and such a church the state (or town) church 2. Pay for the church, i.e., fund the church.

Clearly, openly, Hampton does the latter.  Nobody disputes that. Why Hampton would do that, why voters vote every year to pay for church school supplies and computers is another story, but it can be briefly summarized: there are enough members of the congregation of the Catholic church to vote through this measure.  In a town of 20,000, a congregation of 4,000 can swing a lot of political weight, especially if there is no countervailing political force.

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 invoice 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 writes checks 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 as well, the church which pushes this warrant article every year over increasingly rancorous objections?  Does this $50K really matter so 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 self styled "constitutional lawyer" who had spoken that night had shown. Best to leave the Constitution to the real experts, Mr. S advised: 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. 

Mississippi Cop on Trial for Murder of Negro

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=yDED5cDt5hg&t=873s

Under The Banner of Heaven: Hampton's Fundamentalist Churchfolk

 

God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven against the Government.--John Taylor, 1880, Third President of the Church of Latter Day Saints

"If you want to get good people to do wicked things, you need religion."--Christopher Hitchens

"I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that's not in the Constitution."--Lauren Boebert

 “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian Nationalists.”--Marjorie Taylor Greene

The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. God says different.--John Taylor

Allah 'akbar

I wasn't born or brought up Catholic. Well, not officially.

But so many of my friends and my mother's friends were Catholic, from an early age, I didn't realize I wasn't actually Catholic for some time.

My best friends were not always Catholic, but over the years I've had as many Catholic friends as most Catholics ever have. Maybe more.

On the other hand, I've been aware, from an early age, the dangers of absolutism, of anyone who claims to know the will of God or anyone who says he has a special, exclusive private line to God.

Or a certain knowledge of anything, for that matter.

My grandfather's immovable faith in the Communist party brought him to some pretty weird and unenviable places: He was an acolyte of Joseph Stalin.

In college, a professor told the story of Abraham taking his toddler son up to the mountain to stab him to death, because God had demanded him to do this, as a demonstration of Abraham's complete devotion to God. 

"But," the professor said, "Wouldn't a rational human being pause and say, 'Hold on a minute! Would MY God tell me to kill this innocent, lovely child? That could not have been the voice of God. Maybe the voice of the Devil. Or maybe I just didn't hear anything. But no, my God would never tell me to do anything so vile!'  "

Students objected that the professor had no idea of the context of that story: Abraham was living in the days when God walked the earth,  spoke directly to human beings.   Abraham would have known that was God speaking every bit as much as we know it is you up there on the stage speaking to us now.

"No," the professor insisted.  "You can know something by using your sight, hearing, smell. But there are other ways of knowing something. You can ask your rational brain: 'Is what I'm seeing, or think I'm seeing, is that what I'm hearing or think I'm hearing likely to be true? If not, perhaps I should investigate some other explanation.' "

That argument applies to so many current assertions we hear every day now.

When two Mormon brothers slit the throats of a young mother and her infant, they did so under the banner of Heaven, i.e., they did so because they have heard the voice of God, and are acting upon it. Or so they said.

The woman was the wife of a third brother, and she had objected to one of the brothers insisting he was commanded by God to take his adolescent step daughters as his "wives," (i.e. sex partners)  and he used as justification, the early, originalist teachings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The received word of The Heavenly Father.

The brother whose wife was murdered said later: "They just do what they want to do and then make up an excuse using The Heavenly Father as the reason."

The brother who wanted to take his step daughters to bed reasoned that God had given him a strong sexual urge, and to respond to that gift is to accept God's will, in this case in the direction of his step daughters.

Of course, the Mormons who practice polygamy and occasional murder are as rare, or more exceptional than the Muslims who fly airplanes into buildings or decapitate school teachers for daring to teach girls how to read and write.

But, until recently, I had not thought of Catholics as fundamentalists or extremists. Sure, there may be extremists in any group, but I know so many Catholics who accommodate their religion to the practice of contraception and certainly to free speech and to  the separation of church and state. 

But when a hundred Catholic congregants attended a town meeting to vote for their church to be awarded taxpayer funds to the church, I saw the Church differently. 

These folks were not asking to be reimbursed for a soup kitchen they might have run, but they were asking the town, which has Protestants, Jews and likely a few well hidden Muslims, to pay for the church school which teaches their kids how to be good Catholics. 

And they could not be shamed by appeals to patriotism, or by arguments that  separation of church and state is a good thing, because, after all, it is separation of church and state which grants the church exemption from taxation. It did not shame these true believers to take the tax break with one hand and to hold out the other for taxpayer funds.

Christopher Hitchens

Their minds could not be changed by argument. Their priest was there, in his collar. They were there to strike a blow for their church. Anything that got between them and the money was  "anti-Catholic" and "anti-religion."

Somehow, when I listened to these folks, George Carlin floated up in front of my eyes: "God will send you to burn and suffer for all time! BUT, he LOVES you! And he needs MONEY!"

The essential parts of democracy boil down to two major things:

1/ You must have freedom of speech, to say what you think.

2/ You must agree that once the majority has spoken, has written down a set of rules, even if you disagree, until you can convince the majority to change those rules, you abide by them.  So, if the majority agrees the state should not establish a Church by proclaiming an official state church or by supporting it with taxes, then, until you can change that rule, you abide by it.

You can say, well, we elected a Catholic Supreme Court and they have said there is no such thing as separation of church and state, that separation of church and state is unconstitutional. 

But I will say: The Court is actually not elected. To change the Constitution on something so fundamental, you need Congress and 2/3 of the states to amend it.

If the Court said, well, actually, that thing about freedom of speech, that doesn't really apply any more, then we would rebel.

Oh, wait, actually, the Court did do that, once. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that in Schenck.  The Court killed freedom of speech, practically speaking.

Of course, the Court had a lot of help from President Wilson, J. Edgar Hoover and a host of absolutist fundamentalists who believed in a White, Christian, Anglo Saxon America.

Now we have, in Hampton, a church which believes in power over principle. This church has 1,400 families attending, which likely means about 6,000 citizens in a town of 20,000 souls.  And the members or friends are on the school board, the town budget committee, the zoning board, you name it. They are well placed.

So, it doesn't matter about separation of church and state, the faithful will do whatever they want to do, and they'll use the Heavenly Father as the reason. 

Hampton, New Hampshire Establishes The Catholic Church as the Town Church

 

Fans and readers of Mad Dog will by now know that the town of Hampton has, every year for the past several years, voted to establish the Catholic Church as the town church by way of voting to award a tithe to the Church from town accounts.

Mad Dog has pointed out to anyone who will listen that this is establishment of a state religion, which is forbidden by the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Because the federal government cannot write checks to churches, by the Supremacy Clause (Article 6, Clause 2) no local government can do what the federal government is forbidden from doing.

But there is law and then there is practice: Until someone forces the town to comply with the Constitution, the town is free to violate whichever of the articles or amendment the town pleases to violate.

Mad Dog has contacted all the folks you might think would be interested: the American Civil Liberties Union (no response at all) and the organization Americans United for Separation of Church and state. 

The lawyer from AUSCS (aka AU) responded that if the church used the funds for strictly non religious purposes, there would be no problem. He was quite emphatic on this point, as settled law, and he is sure how the Supreme Court would rule.

Here is a representative email:

First, AU has not “failed to respond” to your requests.  I personally emailed you three months ago, explained the law, and told you that I would need to know more about what the funding was specifically being used for.  Without that information, it’s not really possible for us to determine whether this is a violation or not.  It might be!  It might not!  This answer isn’t going to change even if you email every single staff member and email address you can find on our website, as you seem determined to do.  Find some more specifics on the funding, and we will be happy to take a deeper look at it.

 

Second, you keep bringing up Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion in Everson.  I’m going to assume that you aren’t a lawyer and explain something that may not be obvious: dissenting opinions have no precedential authority.  No court in this country is allowed to use Justice Jackson’s dissent as controlling authority, save the U.S. Supreme Court, which will not do so.  You may find Justice Jackson’s opinion to be well-reasoned, compelling, and utterly convincing, but until a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Everson’s majority opinion and adopts Jackson’s reasoning, it is not the law.  Whether or not you think Everson’s majority opinion is correct is irrelevant. 

Of course, the lawyer for AU is quite correct: Mad Dog is not a lawyer.

Justice Jackson's dissent likely has no "controlling authority." 

But let's look at the case this way: Precedents in cases brought to prevent towns from supporting churches with money have been concerned with a different set of circumstances, as in Everson. The Court has found that when a town makes funds available to students or children in a town, say for bus transport to school or for playground equipment repair, the town cannot deny use of town funds to church schools simply because they are connected to a church because the town has to provide services and repairs equally to all children in town regardless of their religious affiliation.

Fair enough, so Everson does not apply to the current Hampton case for 2 reasons: 1. Jackson in saying support of a church school is the same as support of the church which encompasses the school is a dissent not a majority opinion.  2. In the case of Everson a service provided (school buses) was supported for all students.

But in the case of Mad Dog v Hampton, the money is not for a service provided for all Hampton children, only for those who attend the church school.

Suppose, for example, the town of Hampton decided to buy a boat to rescue swimmers in trouble off the Hampton Beach shore. No problem there: a service for all the town's people funded by taxpayer funds.  But then, the Church of the Miraculous Medal/Sacred Heart School decides it wants to launch a rescue boat and it gets the money for the boat from the town of Hamtpon account. Now, the church uses its rescue boat to rescue drowning Catholics only, not drowning Protestant, Muslims or Jews. 

Would you have a problem with that? Well, the Church argues, our mission is to care for our flock, our Catholic flock, and we like our boat for that purpose.

Now the lawyer for the Americans for Separation of Church and State argues, well, if the money was used for non religious purposes, say painting the boat, or buying better oars or a walkie talkie for use with the lifeguards on shore, no problem. Only if the boat is used for sermons delivered from the boat as it patrols the beach would that be a problem the AU would be interested in involving itself in. 

And one last thing:  The fact that a truth is contained within a dissent does not make it less true. If,  in fact, distinguishing a church school (whose main purpose in life is to promulgate faith) from the Church itself, is like drawing a distinction between the jet engines and the jet. If the town pays for the jet engines for the papal jet, but not for the jet itself, would you still say we have no "controlling authority"?

To the Editor:

The Sacred Heart School community would like to extend a sincere thank you to the Hampton voters and Seabrook voters who supported our child benefit service (CBS) funds article. The yes vote from the Hampton voters on the warrant article guarantees Sacred Heart School’s continued support for the Hampton students. The no vote from Seabrook was close and we hope for success from the Seabrook voters in March 2020.

These funds are applied towards non-religious textbooks, school supplies, technology, testing materials and school nurse services and supplies for our SHS students that reside in Hampton.

We’d also like to express our gratitude to the budget committees and school boards of each town for recommending and supporting the CBS funding for the Sacred Heart School students from each respectful town.

A sincere thank you for your continued support.

Teresa Morin Bailey

Principal

Sacred Heart School

The Thing About The Law

 

From Everson v School Board, United States Supreme Court, 1947

Mr. Justice JACKSON, dissenting.

. In fact, the undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters. The case which irresistibly comes to mind as the most fitting precedent is that of Julia who, according to Byron's reports, 'whispering 'I will ne'er consent,'- consented.'

Great Boar's Head--O. Youngblood

Mad Dog, not being a lawyer, thought  the idea of the town of Hampton writing a check to a religious institution, namely  Sacred Heart School, was so absurd he could hardly find words to express his incredulity.

But he recently received a phone call from Gene Policinski of the Freedom Forum Institute, a group connected to the now defunct Newseum, which advocates for First Amendment Rights which led him to a new understanding of how obvious truths can fail to persuade.

Mr. Policinski pointed out that every analysis must begin with the facts and Mad Dog had to admit he was not sure he had ALL the facts.  Mad Dog did have the letter written from the principal of Sacred Heart to the citizens of Hampton and Seabrook which stated:

These funds are applied towards non-religious textbooks, school supplies, technology, testing materials and school nurse services and supplies for our SHS students that reside in Hampton.

Mr. Policinski said that there is some case law which allows for public funds to be given over to religious institutions if those institutions are doing social work which is not religious in nature: e.g. some churches run programs for ex convicts trying to re enter society, or soup kitchens to distribute food to the needy. "Government cannot do everything," Mr. Policinski noted and when the churches provide such non denominational services local governments have been allowed to compensate them.

Of course, Mad Dog replied, the uses of these funds as the principal outlined are simply to cover operating expenses of the school, and every religious school has ordinary expenses like heating the school, cleaning it, janitorial services but covering these operating expenses is simply no different than asking villagers to support the monastery or the abbot, i.e. it is state support of an established religion.

Justice Robert Jackson

Justice Jackson addresses this point directly:

I should be surprised if any Catholic would deny that the parochial school is a vital, if not the most vital, part of the Roman Catholic Church. If put to the choice, that venerable institution, I should expect, would forego its whole service for mature persons before it would give up education of the young, and it would be a wise choice. Its growth and cohesion, discipline and loyalty, spring from its schools. Catholic education is the rock on which the whole structure rests, and to render tax aid to its Church school is indistinguishable to me from rendering the same aid to the Church itself.

It is of no importance in this situation whether the beneficiary of this expenditure of tax-raised funds is primarily the parochial school and incidentally the pupil, or whether the aid is directly bestowed on the pupil with indirect benefits to the school. The state cannot maintain a Church and it can no more tax its citizens to furnish free carriage to those who attend a Church The prohibition against establishment of religion cannot be circumvented by a subsidy, bonus or reimbursement of expense to individuals for receiving religious instruction and indoctrination.

Note well: Justice Jackson is not saying that the only prohibition of state funding for religious schools is a prohibition of funding religious instruction. He is saying when the core purpose of a school is to inculcate religious values and teaching, it does not matter whether the school also teaches math and good citizenship, it is fundamentally a part of the church and whatever social value it has unrelated to its religious mission is irrelevant. A school can be many things, but a Catholic school is simply one organ in a religious organism.

The principal of Sacred Heart School says the money helps fund technology, presumably computer technology and testing materials, expenses religious and non religious schools share. So she is admitting the town is funding general operating expenses of her religious institution.

So it is clear, despite Mr. Policinski's admonition this area of state support for church functions is highly controversial, with wise people on both sides, the fundamental arguments have been in place since the 1947 case Everson v School Board.  Justice Jackson was writing in dissent; the Court found that in the case of a New Jersey town providing bus service to deliver Catholic students to a Catholic school, this was permissible because the town offered to pay for transportation to all students to any school in town. But in Hampton's case, the funds are directed specifically to the Sacred Heart School.

Some have argued that the state of New Hampshire requires a school nurse in every school and that the use of the funds for a school nurse is simply the town providing funds for something every student in Hampton, whether in Church school or public school deserves. But the school principal admits the funds are used for more than the nurse and in any case, it's clear if you run a Catholic school, you have to provide for the safety and comfort of the students--heat, clean classrooms, materials--and you are asking the town to reimburse you for a necessity of school life in this case.

Reading the opinions of the Supreme Court in this case, Mad Dog is reminded that in law, even the most obvious assertions are argued over, presumably because this is what judges and lawyers love to do. So in the Everson case many paragraphs were spent on the argument that the tax supporting the school buses for Catholic schools was an illegal seizure of property of the non Catholic taxpayer to be used for a purpose for which he did not approve, which of course is ridiculous as the justices finally noted, because that would prevent any government from doing anything if a single taxpayer objected.

So where does this leave us?

There is no doubt the Hampton law is unconstitutional. The current Supreme Court with six of nine justices Catholic, may not see it this way, but the case should be brought. Citizens should be seen arguing in the library, the hardware store, on street corners about this because it is a matter of whether or not we believe in the Bill of Rights in Hampton. 

Fighting for the 1st Amendment in Hampton, NH: Church/State Separation on Life Support

 

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of Religion..."

--First sentence of the Bill of Rights, First Amendment, Constitution of the United States

To the Editor:

The Sacred Heart School community would like to extend a sincere thank you to the Hampton voters and Seabrook voters who supported our child benefit service (CBS) funds article. The yes vote from the Hampton voters on the warrant article guarantees Sacred Heart School’s continued support for the Hampton students. The no vote from Seabrook was close and we hope for success from the Seabrook voters in March 2020.

These funds are applied towards non-religious textbooks, school supplies, technology, testing materials and school nurse services and supplies for our SHS students that reside in Hampton.

We’d also like to express our gratitude to the budget committees and school boards of each town for recommending and supporting the CBS funding for the Sacred Heart School students from each respectful [sic] town.

A sincere thank you for your continued support.

Teresa Morin Bailey

Principal

Sacred Heart School

The principal's argument is not different from the general who says, "For those who object to war making, your tax dollars will go only for the gasoline for our tanks, not for the ordinance or bullets."

--Mad Dog 

Before mention even of freedom of speech, the First Amendment begins with admonition to keep church and state separate.

Not lost on those 18th century bewigged founding fathers was the blood soaked history of church and state in Europe, of its effects in the New World where Spanish galleons filled with pilfered silver and gold blessed by the Church, sailed from the conquered civilizations of Mexico and South America. 

Those who oppose the separation of church and state see it as an attack on the Church.

After all, if the Church is a force for good, an expression of God's will on earth, why would you ever want to limit its effects on government?

The problem, of course, is when human beings seek to speak for God, who has  remained resolutely silent throughout human history, then trouble has often, if not always, followed. 

Advocates of the separation of church and state, like Jefferson, were unconvinced that any man, whether pope or Protestant, actually had a special line to the mind of God. 

Even today, Mad Dog questions not the goodness of religion, but the ultimate arrogance of any man who claims God speaks to him and not to Mad Dog.

Mad Dog has no doubt churches enrich the lives of many of his fellow citizens, and he wishes them the best. 

Churches can be a force for conscience. After all, Martin Luther King, Jr. was first and foremost a minister and he spoke of conscience.

Frederick Douglass, A secular voice

But churches have, since early times, gone beyond theological concerns of saving souls to the practical concerns of feeding the poor, offering care to the sick, founding soup kitchens and hospitals. When church enters the greater sphere of social action, they lose one aspect of their special status and they have to play by the rules established for anyone and everyone who seeks to have an effect in society.

Every year, the citizens of Hampton have ignored the wisdom of the First Amendment and voted to draw a check from the public town treasury and deliver it to the bank account of the Sacred Heart School, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Catholic church, on the grounds of the Miraculous Medal church, on Route 1.

Mad Dog wishes to say immediately and publicly if you look at the rolls of contributors to Sacred Heart, those who have written checks to Sacred Heart, you will find his name (Not signed as "Mad Dog" but under his birth certificate legacy name.) Mad Dog wishes the school well and hopes it thrives. But he insists the school be treated as any other charity, supported not with taxpayer funds, but with private donations written by individual citizens.

You may ask how it would be different if the town of Hampton decided by warrant article every year it would contribute to Catholic Charities.  That would make all the difference to Mad Dog. If the town wrote checks to the Jewish Defense Fund,  the Muslim Anti Defamation League, the ACLU, the Shriners Hospitals, the Sierra Club, the ASPCA, Mad Dog would not object, if that's what the town people vote to do.

But there are certain things you cannot vote on in America and those are spelled out in the Constitution. That is, in one sense, what the Constitution is all about: These things cannot be voted on. You want to change these things, you have to amend the Constitution.

There were laws, local laws, which made slavery, and then segregated schools legal, which provided a legal framework for these. But that's why we amended the Constitution (13th) to end involuntary servitude and that's why the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education: it didn't matter whether local laws in Alabama said separate but equal schools were just fine. Alabama could not vote for segregated schools because Alabama's wishes violate the Constitution, which embodies the sense of justice and of right and wrong of the rest of the nation. If you are part of this nation, you have to cleave to certain agreed upon principles.

For the folks of Hampton, New Hampshire, their violation of the 1st amendment has been reaffirmed annually. 

There are reasons for this:

1. It's never been actively or vigorously challenged. In Seabrook, vociferous objections were raised, but Hampton was unmoved. 

2. The mechanisms for challenging this offense have been limited. There is only one day when 20 pages of warrant articles are discussed and if you miss that day, tough luck. And even then, there is no guarantee you can prevail.

3. Sad to say, there is simply not the intellectual substrate in Hampton to form a grounding for the debate. A school teacher from Hampton, when asked his opinion about the funding of a religious school by public funds replied, "Well, the separation of church and state has never been absolute in American history." 

Mad Dog was not given the opportunity to press him on this, but presumably he's talking about the Pledge of Allegiance ("one nation, under God") and "In God We Trust" on the coins and the fact that Congress has a chaplain. But there is no instance where the federal government writes a check to the account of any church for the purpose buying books, or for that matter for plowing the church's parking lot, or painting its classrooms. All expenses of running a school, even if they are the ordinary expenses of upkeep are the responsibility of the church.

Obadiah Yougblood, Water Street Bridge

The principal of Sacred Heart notes that books bought with town money were non religious in nature, which is entirely beside the point.  As is the funding of a school nurse by town money. Just as paying for heating oil, maintaining the plumbing, keeping the flower beds and plowing the parking lot, all are expenses which ought to be born by anyone seeking to run a school. As soon as the taxpayer's dollars go into a church bank account to fund this stuff, the taxpayer is now paying for church activity, just as sure as the townspeople in Henry VIII's England paid to support first the Catholic Church and then the Church of England.

It does not matter how the principal of Sacred Heart School earmarks town funds, whether she is careful to segregate money spent for secular, administrative purposes from money spent on religious topics. The fact is, once the money is provided for costs in the school, the school nurse, for poor student scholarships, that frees up money to continue the religious aspects of the school. 

The principal's argument is not different from the general who says, "For those who object to war making, your tax dollars will go only for the gasoline for our tanks, not for the ordinance or bullets."

That the citizens of Hampton, many of whom were educated in Hampton public schools, cannot recognize the conflict of voting to write a religious institution a check from public funds suggests the citizens have not been provided with a sufficient education. 

Waving about the letters "RSA" or any other letters to justify the expense of public funds on religious institutions ignores the fact that there have always been laws to justify unjust or unconstitutional actions. 

In 1974 a New Hampshire man taped over the "Live Free or Die" motto on his license plate and was arrested. The Supreme Court said he had the right to do that in Wooley v Maynard . Citing a case from 1943, when children refused to say the pledge allegiance in school, Justice Jackson (who later presided at the Nuremberg trials) wrote,  

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

Thus an action by a single, humble Granite Stater pushed a principle to the ultimate test. In doing so, he demonstrated that he ought not be compelled to do something, in this case to display a sentiment, with which he did not agree. Like funding Sacred Heart, there was no poster child for this case. Nobody was harmed by the license plate motto and the citizens of New Hampshire saw no reason to take action to remove it. But it offended this citizen's sense of the Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and by extension guarantees that you cannot be compelled to speak in a manner you abhor or to display a symbol--symbolic speech--which you reject.

Here was a man, a humble citizen, who understood the importance of the First Amendment, which separates church from state, which forbids government from limiting freedom of speech or imposing speech upon its citizens and which protects a free press and affirms the right of people to assemble and to confront the government with complaints (grievances).  All that is in the First amendment and every citizen of Hampton ought to know why, what the history was, why the founders put all this into the First Amendment. 

And so it is that Mad Dog is deeply offended by the annual payment to the coffers of the Catholic Church in Hampton.  Mad Dog contributes from his own personal account to that very same church, but for the town to do this is an offense to the first amendment and if the townsfolk do not understand why that is, then Mad Dog would suggest they spend that $65,000 (up from $45,000) on a course on the whys and wherefores of the First Amendment to be taught in all the schools, Marston, The Academy and Winnacunnett.

UPDATE:  MARCH 10, 2021

2179 CITIZENS OF HAMPTON VOTED TO AWARD $65,000 FROM THE TOWN BANK ACCOUNT TO THE SACRED HEART SCHOOL OF THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL CATHOLIC CHURCH.

805 CITIZENS VOTED FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

ONCE AGAIN: HAMPTON EMBRACES THEOCRACY.