+43

Yesterday I noticed that I am not sure, at least not until further thinking, that if it were I who sought the wine maker to sell him an amount of grape I have it would or would not imply that I made a choice to participate in the wine making. Therefore my talk about"other use rule" in post +41 should have been made to sound more as a step toward recognizing when an action is considered as participating in choosing the refused path which the buyer intends to follow instead of making it sound like an absolute rule in itself (Although in the following post I was careful enough to explicitly limit the example I gave to having the wine maker comes to me to buy the grape I have without including the other way around). 
This is all about contrasting enabling a path with choosing that path.
  

+42

In my religion I used to hear from early time about things being permissible if they have good use. However, I used to think about that more in the way of being about seeking the good results and did not see it as a way for assigning responsibilities based on choices until I read that example I mentioned before. It is about how I am religiously permitted to sell grape to someone who comes to me to buy an  amount of grape I have even if I know he plans to use it to make wine despite how severely wine is prohibited, because grape has other reasonable use that is good. 

Now I look at it also from the rational side and see that you can bring everything in the world to a complete halt if everybody acts as if his responsibility for his believes always extends to beyond leaving the choice to others.

There is another issue the case of the cake shop in Colorado could help me illustrates. Of course, the court may be more focused on the question of rights. But here I want to deal with issues of psychology and existence and doing the good thing, which although maybe clear elsewhere seems to be more clouded here because of that identity establishing issue. This case gives an example showing lines separating the issue of existence of the self from the issue of excluding others. Although I feel bad for the owner if he was required to customize a cake to fit only gay wedding celebration and thereby violates his believe by participating in the making of that choice, that feeling switches to the other side when I assume that it was denied even cakes that can also be used for regular weddings ("neutral" cakes). That is because my concern was to allow  the existence of the owner as extended through his belief. It wasn't to define that existence in the world through its separation from others (Notice that I am giving myself as an example here with my dependence on my view for relinquishing responsibility with leaving the choice to others).   

+41

Regarding the case of that cake shop in Colorado I still can not find a clear answer for whether the shop owner wouldn't have had a problem had he made a cake that can be also transferred to regular wedding and used there or whether that cake would be specially customized with things that make that other use unreasonable like having the names of the male couple on it. Because if it is the first then the owner may benefit from how reasonable that other use rule to realize that he could be unnecessarily burdening himself religiously if following religion is his concern. At first, reading that he offered the gay couple a pre made cake it appeared to me that his problem was that he was asked to make special customization for the cake that fit gay wedding only but then I became less sure of that reading the arguing about compelling speech and already made speech.

There are things you do not want to enable in any way like for example selling a knife to somebody whom you know intends to use it to kill somebody. On the other hand there are things where the other side affects itself (still not in a severely harmful way) and in this case the other use rule imply that you can enable that other party to make that bad thing in your eyes as long as that same enabling, seen with reasonable eyes, can also be used for good things and your connection to that enabling terminates with leaving the choice to the buyer (That could be only part of what the rule imply because some could argue even for enabling after the choice like that in the job of for example a mailman delivering items that could only have bad use since the job of the mailman is to deliver anything in general).
  

+40

Continuing from the preceding post:

It seems like I missed a big thing in the preceding post which I am going to point out here instead of deleting that post:

What I did there is that I jumped the level of pre assignment of marriage rights based on gender which was the root of the issue. The same argument I made there can be made about other gender discrimination issues if one can ignore that pre assignment level.

Last night I wondered how could it be that I found the answer here this easily even though I cannot see any identity connection making others perform in a handicapped way only to find out today that I did not.    

+39

Reading in the oral argument for that cake shop in Colorado brought to my mind the gender discrimination argument for same sex marriage. At the time I was shocked by how I could not find an answer to that argument and changed my position because of that. However the feeling that I missed something persisted and I think I have probably just found the answer.

The argument goes like this:

John was refused a marriage licence because he applied for it with Jim as his partner. Had John come with Jane instead of Jim he would have been granted that licence. That is a gender discrimination and therefore does not fit the legal precedence of the court.

The answer is:

No it is not gender discrimination unless you can find an example where both the reason for the discrimination and who suffers that discrimination do not exist in the same person. Here, the gender of Jim is the reason for discriminating against John and vice versa. It is like if a person entered a shop and the owner, who generally serves everybody else, told that person that he (the owner) would serve him (the person) if, for example, he (the owner) sees a man through the window or in the TV and will not serve that person if he (the owner) sees a woman. Would you call that gender discrimination against that person who entered that shop?     

     

+38

I think that laws to protect minorities like the public accommodations law of Colorado could have been designed  with less unnecessary encroachment on the rights of the other side by assigning to the executive branch the authority to apply those anti discrimination laws contingent on some level of hardship that affect the minority in question from the specific discrimination in question. For example, applying this process when the executive authority receives a complaint about one grocery shop refuses to serve one minority group means measuring things like the availability of other grocery shops that accept serving that minority. If the executive authority finds a hardship it then would apply the anti discrimination law for that minority on every grocery store at least for some period until testing the environment again. This actually can be used for any discrimination and using the word "minority" here was unnecessary. 
Of course there should be a path for suing the executive branch on this issue if it miss carry this duty.        

  

+37

The test I made in post +35 is wrong. 

+36

Continuing from post +34 

While people err like suddenly loosing control and slipping, the Supreme Court errs more like sleep walking and carrying out an entire process of its own toward what it desire without noticing that. The tool and process given in the establishment clause were taken, with hardly any reason, as an end result, in order to make the clause permit tagging the self with minor religious things for identity, and even though the original process was much easier to follow than the circus currently employed to deal with related cases. There is a huge problem when a judge allows himself to go that path without noticing. With errors like this one feels struggling not to see a fraud.

Also if it is not enough to think of the issue of dealing internally with such interpretation for the clause, you have this published for the entire nation to see.

+35

continuing from the preceding post

If a law does not look respecting an establishment of religion by just reading it without measuring its effect, or to put that differently, if it is possible to imagine at pure theoretical level that no effect of respect reaches an establishment of religion through that law then that law is not violating the establishment clause, because it is not respecting an establishment of religion, regardless of how much it would cause an establishment of religion to be respected. On the other hand, if by just reading a law without measuring its effect it looks respecting an establishment of religion then it would be  violating the establishment clause regardless of how little the respect it would add to an establishment of religion (I am writing this assuming there is no problem with the "Congress shall make no law" as implying Congress shall not present a bill because I am not comfortably at that stage yet).        

+34: Establishment Clause Fun With The Supreme Court

Here is a quote from Lemon v. Kurtzman

The language of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment is, at best, opaque, particularly when compared with other portions of the Amendment. Its authors did not simply prohibit the establishment of a state church or a state religion, an area history shows they regarded as very important and fraught with great dangers. Instead, they commanded that there should be "no law respecting an establishment of religion." A law may be one "respecting" the forbidden objective while falling short of its total realization. A law "respecting" the proscribed result, that is, the establishment of religion, is not always easily identifiable as one violative of the Clause. A given law might not establish a state religion, but nevertheless be one "respecting" that end in the sense of being a step that could lead to such establishment, and hence offend the First Amendment.

Seriously? The language of the "Religion Clauses" of the First Amendment seems to me much more acceptable than this. Is it avoidable seeing this like somebody trying to confuse himself because of psychological motive?

"an establishment of religion" refers to what is established by religion or established as an extension of it. It is not a reference to the result or consequences of the law in question in themselves . If they wanted the latter they could have said "establishment of religion" or "establishing religion". They also did not say "an establishment for religion".  The singularity form used, the "of" suggesting belonging and how the action of respect does not fit being directed at what is being created at the same time, all points to this meaning. 

Based on the last part in the quote above, it seems that even things like giving to the poor or taking care of people in general could be in violation of the establishment clause if they lead to significantly inspiring people to be more religious because religion calls for that. No wonder the court talks about difficulty in taking the establishment clause in absolute sense. It first traps itself with a wrong understanding leading to such generalization then justify violating the real meaning through the difficulty of following that. Based on the correct understanding, one do not need to seek an exception to see that Congress laws in the directions above do not violate the clause because those things themselves are not establishments of religion. The resulted respect to establishment of religions because of the increased following do not make the actions in the mentioned examples violations to the establishment clause because they were not directed toward the affected  establishments of religion. 

You think the establishment clause is insufficient for the purpose of preventing the government from establishing religion? Then you can add your own Amendment. But a law wouldn't be respecting an establishment of religion just because it result in establishing religion. That is because, unlike a word like "honoring" for example, "respecting" imply a difference in the state of the affecting thing (the law) in that direction and that is the measure that was used here regardless of the change that happens to the status of the affected establishment.           

+32

continuing from the preceding post:

There is a test here that could leave this resolved with even less doubt (That is for my side at least because I still think there could be a way to see that chaplain for congress thing fit with the full meaning of the establishment clause). I have done some of that test but others may already know how to do it more efficiently. The test is to search past congress enactments before the civil war to see if  that salary for the chaplains which was decided in 1789 before ratifying the Amendment increased or remained the same, and if the latter for how long, while the pay to others was increasing. I did some of that checking on the salary searching some names of senate chaplains and found the salary for chaplains was still that same $500 in 1832 or 1833   ( LINK1, LINK2 ). 
However, I just found THIS, which in its "History" section says that law of 1789, which contains the chaplain salary,  was reenacted in 1816. This is the first time I deal with this legal term and I do not know if it implies that that part of the law was created anew in the related capabilities even if we assume no addition or augmentation.

+31

Continued from the preceding post

I read somewhere on the Internet describing the Congress chaplain enactment of 1789 as a violation of law. I emphasize again that unless I am wrong in my understanding that a constitutional amendment does not become law even on the segment that just approved it until the ratification is complete, there was no violation of law there because the Amendment was not the law yet.

Back to the opinion of the court. According to that opinion the Constitution "affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions". Although this may not matter much here I still want to ask where does it say or imply that? The First Amendment stated the required relation with religion in a way that does not leave a gap to be filled by that.

At first glance it may sound like that opinion contains some strong support for the court. However, on subsequent looks one may find that it contains or imply more than that toward its own demolition. For example, referring to how congress made Christmas and Thanksgiving as holidays might first look impressive for the court until that fires back when one finds out how late that have happened. So why was not that or any thing similar to it in designating respect toward religion approved by Congress earlier if the reason was not being restricted by the establishment clause? The court itself even support you more when it says " Beginning in the early colonial period long before Independence, a day of Thanksgiving was celebrated as a religious holiday to give thanks for the bounties of Nature as gifts from God". So what prevented Congress from formally applying that tradition until so late later? Also, when the court speaks about the deep history of having the presidents honoring Thanksgiving it takes less than what it gives because the establishment clause has nothing to do with the executive branch. On the other hand it makes one wonder what made Congress abstain from doing the same throughout all that earlier period if it were not because of the establishment clause . Notice how much the significance of such points is augmented when one adds the attachment to religion which the enactment related to chaplains for congress imply. It suggests even more that the abstinence mentioned above is an active choice resulted from consideration of related factors. Or, who knows, it might be even the intention of  those people for that chaplain thing is to show that indifference is not the reason for future restrictions toward respecting establishments of religions. Add to that the proximity to the making and approving the Amendment and you would get a picture much more worthy of following than that of those later times. 

On the other hand, the approval of those holidays was, in addition to the time separation, also not far enough after the civil war to exclude as a motive making relatively small sacrifices like these to heal the wounds by bringing the nation together through common things after such disaster.  

It seems that none of the examples cited by the court for congress violation of the Amendment if not understood the way for which it argues goes back close enough, like, for example, before that civil war. 

+30

What the court mentioned there (LYNCH V. DONNELLY)  is not even in the same galaxy with actions that could through what they suggest limit what the text states. The court took things like seeing the drifts away from the path after a person gets tired from running for a long time as part of that path.    There were hardly any conflict with the Amendment for probably more than sixty years after ratification. As for actions mentioned there to suggest a hard attachment to religion in this nation even when it comes to just sparing the government from getting involved, that clearly can also support the opposite direction as a justification. For what the court apparently intended that to serve, it was as insufficient as in somebody telling you that a third person wears a shirt held by ten buttons and because of that that second person expect you to take asking that third person to take that shirt off like asking the latter to get out of his own skin.          

+29

I just noticed how what I described in the preceding post may not fit the formal process of making a law without leaving a record for that initial spending approval. I guess that using the expression "make no law" instead of present no Bill or something like that for example, and probably also the reference to "law" instead of Law (which was also a practice that was kept throughout the Bill of Rights in contrast with the original constitution) made me forget about the formal law making process and instead think about it as an entirely internal process for Congress (Even then there maybe an issue with the internal record keeping not mentioning that initial approval but I am talking about what made me go this direction to begin with).

However, I also noticed a little while ago that I probably gave weight to that action by that Congress much more than I should because I failed to realize that was before ratifying the Amendment. Until the ratification to be part of the constitution for an Amendment is completed it would have no effect as if it does not exist. Because of this, one may actually ask why should we consider any weight for that action instead of taking it as irrelevant to begin with? Still if we force a relevance on ourselves here, why should that be to the direction where the court took that? It can be taken exactly to the opposite of that if we take the action as intended to be done before it becomes impermissible if the Amendment gets ratified. It seems hardly explainable why the court was more willing to take that action as being caused by less restrictive understanding for the Amendment than  that because it was not effective yet. Also what happened to that less restrictive taking for the establishment clause through out all that long time after the ratification? How much can we find what support taking the Amendment that way through out, say, seventy years after that ratification which is a very long time when it comes to holding people from invoking their religions? It is ironic how as much as the court talked about the strength of connection between people and their religion here as much as it also strengthened the indication of the absence of signs for its position as long as that continued after the ratification as an argument against its position.

But I also, after reading the related part in the opinion of the court (LYNCH V. DONNELLY) more carefully, think that I could have been wrong or hasty in my argument against its association of Thanksgiving with Christmas because I depended on the common understanding to the origin of the former. 

+28

To be more specific, notice how the following implementation for the process described in the preceding post seems not to conflict with the establishment clause:

Congress with merely its authority on itself as a group, asked itself in its capacity of having the authority on the nation, to empower the former with needed money for some reasonable spending which the former will choose what it is once, and the latter approved the request. Then the former chose that to be for chaplains for itself.    

+27

It seems that there is a better and easier path to argue for the conformity of that chaplain for Congress decision with the establishment clause of the First Amendment than I did in post 20. Instead of taking deciding to pay for chaplains as not in violation of that clause because it was for the want of an entity and not for respecting an establishment of religion, that paying decision can be seen made by that entity itself. In other words, this action by that Congress to provide payment to chaplains for itself can be seen as comprised of two parts. The first part is the decision by Congress to allocate money for itself which comes from its authority on the nation. The second part is the decision by Congress to use that money to pay for chaplains which comes from its authority on itself. Since at the root the role of Congress is to serve the nation not itself, the second part fits included within the first for presentation. 

+26

Why is there in this country more tension on the issue of immigration than other countries? Other countries seems to discuss controlling immigration with less sense of guilt than here. The bad thing I fear is that this good looking behaviour is being part of trying to deny the implication of the issue that the Native Americans existed in this land first.  Of course suppressing a symptom  is not the answer. This is not about abstaining from helping others. It is about pointing out that doing good things where one owes has more priority than doing good things to others.   

+25

Although my intention in the preceding two posts is probably easily reached, it is still good if someone ask: 

What view point are you talking about? All the verbs you mentioned in the Amendment describe things from the doer side?

to be capable to respond with:

I am referring to the view point that was applied at the earlier level in constructing the sentence and involved choosing those verbs which contains the grammar level you just described.  

+24

Continuing from the preceding post:

In trying to take account for a passive side of "respecting" I missed that by default there is no such side here unless proven otherwise. That is because I probably mistakenly compared the situation here with other situations where the word used, because of targeting the action from the receiving  side, is, unlike here, wide enough in its meaning to include a passive effect. The way the Amendment was written helped or directed me to notice that. 
By the way, I probably needed to do more thinking before putting the example of giving Christmas as holiday just because people like that, without intermediate reasons, in post +22, in the same basket with those in the lower half of the post preceding it.       

+23

Continuing from the preceding post:
One may wonder why the first Amendment was written in this manner. One benefit that just appeared for me here is in answering if "respecting" should be taken to count also passively. One can see the other two verbs used, "prohibit" in "prohibiting" and "abridge" in "abridging". Both of those verbs describe actions from a point of view focusing on their effect on the affected thing . "respect" on the other hand describe the action from a point of view focusing on the affecting thing. If "respecting" was also intended to apply for passively causing such effect it could have been replaced with a word directed toward the effect on the affected party like  "honoring".     

+22

I changed my mind from stating that giving holiday on Christmas violates the establishment clause to that I do not know. That is because it is very reasonable that the reason could be caring not about the religion itself but about what the people want and having a day off does not by itself contain anything honoring to the religion. That makes it similar to the examples I mentioned in the lower half of the preceding post for which I also need to change from affirming their validity to the I do not currently know position (However the point of contrasting them with the example in the upper half of that post remains the same). That is because I feel that I may have not given enough attention to the passive side in applying the establishment clause.
By the way, even with the way the court took things here according to its opinion in that case, how did Thanksgiving get thrown to the same basket with Christmas in relation to that clause? Thanksgiving could have been called Thank The Giving of God and people would generally go to their worship houses to thank God on that day and there would still be no proof of violation to that clause. That is because one very reasonable understanding here, if not the main one, is that the celebration is for a history event not related to religion.  Choosing to Thank God for that event no matter how wide spread would not change it to an establishment of religion. 

+21

Continuing from the preceding post:

In other words, the issue is different with that city than it is with the Congress chaplain example because even if the government of that city is certain that taking votes of all persons with right to vote in that city would approve the display of those establishments of religion, and assuming that would be representing the want for the whole city like how such process represent the want for Congress, unless this representation materialize and chooses those Christmas displays, the action of the government in making those displays would still be respecting those establishments of religion of those religious displays because it depends on the connection of those establishments to the people, in its decision to show those displays (This got to be the longest written sentence in history).
On the other hand, if for example, it is known that there is usually a traffic congestion on Christmas day and the government want to make that day a holiday because of that, or simply the government thinks that there is enough probability that there would be enough of missing work on that day because of being late to justify benefiting from counting it as one of the holidays it gives, then doing that wouldn't be respecting an establishment of religion even though there is a dependence on the connection of Christmas to people in recognizing the fact or probability that is the reason. The difference from the above situation is that the government in this is not doing something that is honoring or emphasizing the significance of a religious establishment (like a Nativity Scene or a Christmas Tree) and therefore needs the respect involved in doing that to be a pass through to another reason. Here, in the traffic congestion example for example, what the government interfacing is simply that traffic congestion or the probability for it to occur.     

+20

Continuing from the preceding post:

Here is a wikipedia LINK to an 1984 case in which the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts in their ruling that the Christmas decorations in question violate the First Amendment. I think that the court was wrong here and one can respond to the examples mentioned in the "Ruling" section there as follows. Yes, giving federal holiday on Christmas Day violates the establishment clause. But that practice began on 1870. The legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate, on the other hand, has much more importance here because of its proximity to the making and makers of the Amendment. However, that action does not necessarily violates the Amendment. That is because unlike the situation with the Christmas decorations of that city or giving Christmas Day as holiday, starting the action in question from the want of the same entity to which it applies and has the choice to accept or refuse can be claimed to be motivated by respect for the need or want of that entity without having that respect follows from a respect that was applied to the religious establishments first. Congress is good fit for that because representing its want is no different from making any other law.
The above was written with the assumption that the establishment clause also applies on the government there because I have not yet thought about the issue of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporating to this one.

+19

Continuing from post +17 and the issue of Congress making a law for printing "In God We Trust" on the money, as the main focus, I want to say that I cant see holding that as not in violation of the First Amendment except as clear denial and for a whole nation to agree on that, especially through out all this time, except as huge shame.

HERE is a link to the case of 1970.  Of course more can be said about that opinion but my focus here is on the two quotes from the final court at the end starting from "The course of constitutional neutrality...". One could easily point out here that the establishment clause could have been written as "Congress shall make no law establishing a religion" and one could still argue that it prohibits the action mentioned above. But it was not even written like that. Instead, the expression "respecting an establishment of religion" gives more weight to the lack of none religious interpretation for the "In God We Trust" statement than to its harmlessness. That expression is impressive with how much it seems to hit things from far. Although expressing the effectiveness of this expression in the establishment clause in terms of distance might not be that fitting because it is more like that the word "respecting" changed the dimension of the conformity measure with the clause from effect to meaning.    

Unless you show me a behaviour contradicting this interpretation that was very wide spread and very close to the making of the Amendment, I really do not care much how far this "motto" goes back in history. The signs I saw in relation to the focus and the careful way this constitution was written make me feel even more confidence in that it was written to be sufficient through merely its own content without any additional help.

I thought that this was printed on only paper currency but it turned out to be even on coins.

         

+18

Where I lived before here I was oppressed  as a citizen which, as bad as it is, also makes it easier to escape moral responsibility for the actions of my government toward others in the world. Democracy on the other hand as much as it is better, also brings harder moral responsibility because it is the citizen who is the decision maker at least at the root level. For this reason I, as a citizen here, refuse that my government does the injustice of helping in installing or supporting the continuity of nondemocratic systems anywhere in the world. Furthermore, nondemocratic systems do not have the right to represent their people and therefore dealing with them should be as limited as possible and things should be judged by what we see as good for the people there not what those governments seek. As a citizen here, I want the protection of being on the just side and not only the material protection from the outside.

In addition to the moral obligation to conform to the above, it is much more closer to your identity than printing "In God We Trust" on all paper currency. Is there a better example of a country that was rooted in democracy and still has it ongoing than here? And of course this is also much more on the path to God.  

  

+17

Continued from the preceding post

While this is far from being as important as the issue with the Second Amendment, it still demonstrates another scary example for how much people may allow themselves to follow their wishes blinding themselves off the facts. So the mentioning of God has nothing to do with religion? Are you people serious? Could the excuses to justify the "In God We Trust" on the dollar bill be more lame? I cant see how something as purely religious as this can be seen in conformity with the First Amendment. But lets assume there is a room for a doubt here. Still, the question to the legislators is do you people really think that you are more on the side of God when you take such risk of violating the agreement on the Constitution? Or is it that you do not care about hijacking God's name like this just to continue with an identity established based on the contrast with the communists?  

+16

We have a constitution saying that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" but still we put "In God We Trust" on the Dollar. For which one of those two things we should admit to just kidding ourselves? 

+15: Second Comma in A 2 S 1 C 5 of The Constitution 2

Again, better focus supported my original inclination and showed a strong argument for the second comma being not just correct to be there but also not needed. First, for the argument that the part "at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" could be understood to also apply on the "natural born Citizen" one could ask why then the first comma was used? This counter argument will be strengthened by seeing the importance of the purpose the second comma could be serving. The second comma supports that the description" at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" applies to being a Citizen and not to "United States". Without this comma it could be argued that it is always permitted for person who is not a "natural born Citizen" to become the President of the country if he is from one of the States that formed the "United States" during the Adoption of the Constitution.    

+14: Second Comma in A 2 S 1 C 5 of The Constitution

The second comma in Article 2 Section 1 Clause 5 of the Constitution ("No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to...") seems to really stands against my inclination that the effect of all commas and capitalization should be counted in and not ignored.

+13

My top personal priority is an enormous thinking task (the task of trying to recover from and reverse being erased from existence from the start). All the applicable resources for that task (time and my own mind) are usable now. 

+12

At least partly, the purpose of the preceding post is to remove any unease or discomfort because of the thought that I could be in an unease or discomfort or that I am losing the passing time. For that purpose it was intended for a different blog in order to be as much as possible closer to expressing my condition and beyond mere taking of responsibility for my position toward a situation connected to things mentioned here.      

+11

Are we really in a new year? Last year ran out like a weekend. Any other person with the free time of the unemployed and still his problem is the lack of time?