[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 92 (Thursday, June 26, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H4824]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


             RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AMENDMENT--SYMPTOM OR CAUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Paul] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, yesterday's Supreme Court decision in City of 
Boerne versus Flores is being touted as a blow to religious liberty and 
the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. It is, however, a blow 
to neither. The case of City of Boerne versus Flores came to the 
Supreme Court as a result of the zoning laws in Boerne, Texas which 
restricted the uses to which Reverend Cummings could put the property 
belonging to the Roman Catholic Church for which he worked. These 
particular zoning restrictions were not directed at Reverend Cummings 
or the Roman Catholic Church. The zoning laws were not even directed at 
religious organizations or churches generally. Rather, these zoning 
restrictions were directed at property owners in general in the name of 
historic preservation. These facts, however, beg the question as to why 
this case was argued instead as a violation of religious liberties 
protected by the first amendment.
  What made this an issue of religious freedom in the court and ``court 
of public opinion'' is perhaps a symptom of the U.S. Supreme Court's 
holding in Village of Euclid, Ohio versus Ambler Realty Co. (1926) in 
which the Court sanctioned the abandonment of individual rights to 
property in the name of zoning for the ``collective good.'' For those 
whose property rights are regulated away, devalued, or ``taken'' 
regulatorily, it is a natural symptom to expect these aggrieved parties 
to cling to whatever Constitutional liberties might still gain them a 
sympathetic ear in the courts. Those destroying flag-like property 
scramble for protection under the banner of free expression and 
Reverend Cummins sought property rights protection elsewhere within the 
first amendment, namely, religious freedom. Absent local, state, or 
federal governments' realization that such dilemmas are hopelessly 
irreconcilable outside a framework of individual property rights, 
similar cases will continue to find their way to various levels of the 
judicial system as those suffering infringements upon their rights in 
property, grope for justice against the collective expropriation which 
has become not only the rule, but the rule of law, in this country.
  It is no accident that a case such as this did not originate in 
Houston, Pasadena, or Alvin, Texas. Each of these cities have allowed 
the marketplace, through a series of voluntary contractual exchanges, 
(rather than a central-planning-style zoning board), to determine how 
private property is most effectively developed.
  The first amendment is meaningless absent a respect for property 
rights. Freedom of the press is a mere sham without the right to own 
paper and ink. Freedom of religion is vacuous absent the right to own a 
pulpit from which to preach or at least a place in which to practice or 
worship. Until this country's lawmakers and courts restore a system of 
Constitutional jurisprudence respective of the inextricable nature of 
so-called economic and fundamental liberties, all liberties will be 
subject to eradication at the whim of the legislatures, the courts, or 
both.

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