[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 12, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   RELIGIOUS TOLERATION STILL NEEDED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. 
Smith] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the following is a quote:

       For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the 
     finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, 
     and someday may be again, a Jew. Or a Quaker. Or a Unitarian. 
     Or a Baptist. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may 
     be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is 
     ripped at a time of great national peril.

  Mr. Speaker, those were the words of Presidential candidate John F. 
Kennedy in 1960, at the dawn of the civil rights era.
  Just as the struggle for equality in those turbulent years did much 
to end political discrimination against minorities, so also did 
Kennedy's candidacy break a longstanding barrier against Americans of 
the Catholic faith.
  So cathartic was the Nation's wholesale acceptance of his religion 
that until recently it was difficult to even imagine a large group of 
Americans facing political attack for their faith.
  Until recently.
  The well-coordinated onslaught emanating from the White House and 
Democratic party headquarters against religious conservatives saddens 
the hearts of tolerant Americans everywhere.
  Anyone who participates in politics is fair game for criticism of 
their ideas, of course. That is a strength of the American system. But 
the unambiguous message of these attacks has been that religious 
conservatives have no place and no right to participate in the 
political process at all. The message is that they should abandon their 
agenda and simply accept, without protest, policies and lifestyles they 
find objectionable.
  That is a restriction that no other group of American citizens has 
been expected to accept for a long, long time. What other group would 
tolerate this back-of-the-bus treatment?
  Thomas Jefferson would have suffered to hear U.S. Surgeon General 
Joycelyn Elders lambast the ``un-Christian religious right *** for 
selling out our children in the name of religion.''
  Other, even stronger exclamations from Democrats at all levels would 
have had the father of the Bill of Rights fearing for the future of his 
beloved Republic, and bowing his head over his party.
  What appears to have been lost in the din of all the ugly rhetoric of 
the past month is that Jefferson wrote the first amendment's 
unprecedented guarantee of religious freedom not to protect the 
Government from organized religion.
  Jefferson's goal was to protect religion from the Government. Sadly, 
judging by the rhetoric of our President and many Democrats, that need 
is as acute today as it was 200 years ago.
  Tragically, many of our traditional defenders of free speech and 
political diversity have fallen conspicuously silent today. Some are 
even joining openly in the assault.
  A New York Times editorial, for example, refers to religious 
conservatives as ``sinister,'' ``retrograde'' and ``exclusionist.''
  As Bill Bennett, author of ``The Book of Virtues'' has put it:

       This is not political discourse. It is argument by 
     invective. It is worth reflecting on how liberals and the 
     mainstream media would respond if similar things were said by 
     conservatives about, say, homosexuals. Or feminists. Or 
     blacks. Or Jews. Or virtually any group actively engaged in 
     politics except conservative Christians.

  It appears that the burden of an unpopular President and control of 
both houses of Congress has driven some Democrats to desperation. In 
their search for a bogeyman to draw attention away from their own 
failings, they have violated one of our most hallowed traditions as a 
nation--that of religious toleration.
  Changing the subject is an old political trick. So is demonizing your 
rivals to try and fire up your rank-and-file.
  But there's a clear line between political drumbeating and outright 
religious bigotry.
  President Clinton and his party have not only crossed this line, they 
seem to have lost sight of it altogether. They would do well for 
themselves as a party and for America to rediscover the tolerance they 
displayed in 1959 when they nominated John F. Kennedy for President of 
the United States.
  Religious toleration is still needed in America.

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