[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1439-H1443]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Lewis of Kentucky). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. 
Istook) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to address 
an extremely significant issue that relates to our schools, that 
relates to some of our most cherished principles as citizens of the 
United States of America and that unfortunately involves things which 
the courts of the United States have thrust upon the people despite the 
unwillingness of the people, in fact despite great concern and 
opposition by the public.
  This relates, Mr. Speaker, to the matter of what happens in our 
public schools. It relates to the practices that have gone on for 
generations upon generations in this country involving prayer in public 
bodies, in particular, in our schools.
  I am not talking about this just to be talking about it, Mr. Speaker. 
I am doing it because we are going to have an opportunity in the next 
few weeks here in the House of Representatives to vote on correcting 
what the courts in the United States have done, what the U.S. Supreme 
Court has done in its bans and restrictions and prohibitions on the 
practice of simple prayers being offered at public school. That 
particular legislation is the Religious Freedom Amendment, House Joint 
Resolution 78. I am privileged to be the principal sponsor of it. There 
are over 150 Members of this body who are sponsors as well. I would 
like to share with my colleagues the text of that. The Religious 
Freedom Amendment is very simple and straightforward and tries to 
return us to what were bedrock principles of this country until the 
Supreme Court began undercutting those principles some 36 years ago. 
The text is very straightforward and reads as follows as an amendment 
to the U.S. Constitution:

       To secure the people's right to acknowledge God according 
     to the dictates of conscience, neither the United States nor 
     any State shall establish any official religion, but the 
     people's right to pray and to recognize their religious 
     beliefs, heritage or traditions on public property, including 
     schools, shall not be infringed. Neither the United States 
     nor any State shall require any person to join in prayer or 
     other religious activity, prescribe school prayers, 
     discriminate against religion or deny equal access to a 
     benefit on account of religion.

  It is simple and it is straightforward. It states that just as the 
constitutions of every single State in this country state, we believe 
in the people's right to acknowledge God, and expressly mentions him, 
as the constitutions of the States do. No official religion, but not 
these restrictions that are put on prayer and positive expressions of 
religious faith but that are not applied to other forms of speech.
  Why is religious speech singled out for discrimination? Mr. Speaker, 
in 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that even when participation was 
voluntary and even if it was some sort of nonsectarian prayer, it was 
unconstitutional, they said, for school children to join together in a 
prayer in their classroom. That was followed by other Supreme Court 
decisions, Stone v. Graham in 1980, in which the U.S. Supreme Court 
said that the Ten Commandments could not be displayed on the walls of a 
public school. Mr. Speaker, I would note that that decision came out of 
your home State of Kentucky because it was Kentucky schools that had 
the practice. Groups would make copies of the Ten Commandments 
available and they would be hung with other important documents as the 
source of law as well as the source of spiritual guidance.
  I notice, Mr. Speaker, here in the Chamber of this House as I am 
facing and as the Speaker faces from the Speaker's dais, right there is 
the visage of Moses looking down on this Chamber, the great lawgiver 
who brought down from Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments which cannot be 
displayed in public schools. The U.S. Supreme Court says it is 
unconstitutional.
  They went beyond that. They ruled in a case that came out of 
Pennsylvania, they ruled that a nativity scene and also a Jewish 
menorah could not be placed on public property during the holiday 
season unless right up there next to it you put nonreligious emblems, 
like plastic reindeer and Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman. They had 
to be balanced. But, Mr. Speaker, I have never heard of any community 
that is required if they want to put out Santa Claus that they have to 
balance him with a nativity scene or a menorah or whatever it may be. 
It seems to be a one-way street.
  The U.S. Supreme Court kept going. They had the case in 1985 of 
Wallace v. Jaffree. It came out of Alabama. Alabama had a law that said 
you can have a moment of silence to start the day at school, a moment 
of silence. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that was unconstitutional, 
because one of the permitted uses of that moment of silence was to 
enable students to have a silent prayer, and thus they said the whole 
moment of silence is even unconstitutional. And then a case upon which 
I would like to elaborate in 1992. By a 5-4 decision, the case of Lee 
v. Wiseman out of Rhode Island, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a prayer 
at a school graduation to be unconstitutional. It was a prayer that was 
offered by a Jewish rabbi. The court held it was unconstitutional.
  All of these things, Mr. Speaker, are what the Supreme Court has done 
to twist and distort and undermine our First Amendment, the very first 
right mentioned in the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law 
respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof. Now, without even getting into the point of whether a 
school is creating an act of the Congress, and we are kind of two 
different bodies at two different levels, but to say that they are 
ignoring the part of the Constitution that says you do not prohibit the 
free exercise of religion, because what the Court did, Mr. Speaker, in 
all of these cases is to say that having a prayer or the Ten 
Commandments or a moment of silence or a nativity scene or a menorah, 
that that was the same as creating an official church. How absurd. An 
official church created just because you have a prayer? We open 
sessions of this Congress with a prayer. The House and the Senate, just 
like legislative bodies all around the country, be it State 
legislatures or city councils or private groups, Chamber of Commerce 
meetings, Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club, PTA meetings, people commonly open 
those things with prayer, just as we do here in Congress. It is normal. 
It does not make us a church just because we have a prayer. But the 
Supreme Court says, ``Oh, you have a prayer at school and you're 
turning the school into a church.'' Therefore, they ignore the free 
exercise clause of the Constitution.
  We have been living under this for 36 years. The only way that we are 
going to be able to fix this is with the religious freedom amendment, 
to straighten out the courts, by saying that the things they have said 
are somehow wrong are indeed, as the American people believe, right.
  I said I wanted to focus on a particular case. That was the case in 
1992 of Lee v. Weisman. What I would like to do, Mr. Speaker, is in 
different evenings during these special orders in talking about the 
religious freedom amendment, I think it is important to dissect and to 
help Members of this body as well as the general public to understand 
what the courts said so that we can understand the necessity of 
correcting it with the religious freedom amendment. After all, that has 
been the method that we have used to correct Supreme Court decisions 
ever since the 1800s in America, including, for example, Supreme Court 
decisions such as the Dred Scott decision that were trying to uphold 
the practice of slavery. We made sure that it was outlawed.
  Mr. Speaker, looking at the Lee v. Wiseman case, and I would note, it 
is a 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Had one justice, just one 
of the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gone the other way, we 
would not have this same problem when it comes to being able to have a 
prayer at a school graduation. Yet because one justice would not go the 
other way, we have to get two-thirds of the House of Representatives, 
two-thirds of the Senate to approve a constitutional amendment, and of 
course then it has to be ratified by the legislatures in three-

[[Page H1440]]

fourths of the States, all because by a margin of 5-4 the Supreme Court 
made this ruling.
  This was a very strange ruling, Mr. Speaker, because the Supreme 
Court rested the whole decision on the notion that to expect someone 
during a prayer is psychological coercion that the majority of the 
Supreme Court equated with the same as using compulsion on someone to 
have a particular religion just because at this graduation the students 
were expected to be respectful, not only respectful of the prayer 
offered by the rabbi but respectful of the other speakers, respectful 
of the people as they came in as a group, as part of this graduation, 
respectful of the other people in attendance. But, oh, if it was 
respect for the rabbi's prayer, oh, there the Supreme Court said, 
``Well, you can't expect people to be respectful of religion. After 
all, they may disagree.'' Okay. I disagree with many of the things said 
on the floor of this House. That does not mean that I have a right to 
silence and to censor the people who may say it. It is common in 
everyday life. In all sorts of settings, we hear things with which we 
disagree. That does not give us the right to censor and silence people. 
But this notion of political correctness which has been extended into 
schools is saying, ``Oh, but my goodness, if somebody doesn't like it, 
let's see if we can find an excuse to silence them,'' and they twist 
and distort the First Amendment to make it anti-religious instead of 
positive toward religion and use that as an excuse to silence people. 
Let us look at this decision. The decision came down from the U.S. 
Supreme Court June 24, 1992. The justices who said that this prayer at 
a school graduation was unconstitutional were Justices Kennedy, 
Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor and Souder. Dissenting and, boy, did they 
dissent in very clear terms, dissenting were Justices Scalia, 
Rehnquist, the Chief Justice, White, and Thomas.
  I am looking at the Supreme Court decision and for people that look 
up these things and want to look up the reference, which is called the 
citation, it is cited as 505 U.S. 577. That is 505 United States 
Reports, page 577. As the Court wrote, and Justice Kennedy wrote the 
opinion for the majority and a lot of organizations got involved in 
this, and I am glad to say, Mr. Speaker, by the way, that most of those 
who were arguing in favor of the graduation prayer are also supporters 
of the religious freedom amendment. The prayer actually happened in 
1989. The Supreme Court took 3 years to make its decision. But it was a 
public school, Nathan Bishop Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island. 
There was a 14-year-old girl who was one of the graduates of middle 
school, her name was Deborah Wiseman. At the time she was about 14 
years old. Now, it was the policy in the schools and the superintendent 
to permit principals to invite members of the clergy to give 
invocations and benedictions. Often, it was not always but often they 
chose to make these part of the graduation ceremonies.

                              {time}  2230

  The objector in this case was Deborah Weisman and her father Daniel 
Weisman. The school principal invited a Jewish rabbi to offer the 
prayer. The rabbi's name was Leslie Gutterman, and he was from the 
Temple Beth El in Providence, Rhode Island.
  Now these were the two prayers that he offered Mr. Speaker, which the 
Supreme Court held were unconstitutional, and I think people can decide 
for themselves if they think there is something offensive here. The 
invocation offered by Rabbi Gutterman was as follows:
  God of the free, hope of the brave, for the legacy of America where 
diversity is celebrated and the rights of minorities are protected, we 
thank You. May these young men and women grow up to enrich it. For the 
liberty of America, we thank You. May these new graduates grow up to 
guard it. For the political process of America in which all its 
citizens may participate, for its court system where all may seek 
justice, we thank You. May those we honor this morning always turn to 
it in trust. For the destiny of America, we thank You. May the 
graduates of Nathan Bishop Middle School so live that they might help 
to share it. May our aspirations for our country and for these young 
people who are our hope for the future be richly fulfilled. Amen.
  So the invocation by Rabbi Gutterman even praised the very courts 
which later said that he violated the Constitution in doing so.
  Then there is the benediction that the rabbi offered at the close of 
the graduation. These were the words that he pronounced:
  O God, we are grateful to you for having endowed us with a capacity 
for learning which we have celebrated on this joyous commencement. 
Happy families give thanks for seeing their children achieve an 
important milestone. Send your blessings upon the teachers and 
administrators who helped prepare them. The graduates now need strength 
and guidance for the future. Help them to understand that we are not 
complete with academic knowledge alone. We must each strive to fulfill 
what you require of us all, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk 
humbly. We give thanks to you, Lord, for keeping us alive, sustaining 
us and allowing us to reach this special happy occasion. Amen.
  That was the benediction offered by Rabbi Gutterman which again the 
U.S. Supreme Court, because someone chose to find it offensive, the 
U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
  Now in this, Mr. Speaker, do you notice the case was brought by and 
on behalf of one student?
  Now the Court does not tell us clearly just how big the class was. It 
was evidently, from other comments you know, a good-size graduating 
class from this middle school.
  No one else joined in the court case to say I also object, just one 
student, and that is part of the problem with the standard, the 
erroneous standard that has been created by the Supreme Court. If one 
person objects, everyone else is censored. In fact, they have even said 
even if nobody does object, the possibility that somebody could object 
is enough to make us say that you should not have prayers at school 
graduations or prayers at the start of the school day.
  Since when, Mr. Speaker, does something have to be unanimous before 
we can say it under free speech in the USA? And why should we restrict 
religious speech?
  But let me get back to what Justice Kennedy wrote for this five--
four-Court majority. He mentioned the parties stipulate attendance at 
these graduations is voluntary, and they also note the students stood 
for the Pledge of Allegiance, and then they remained standing for the 
rabbi's prayers, and the court wrote that they assume that there was a 
respectful moment of silence just before and just after the prayers, 
but despite that, the rabbi's two prayers probably did not last much 
beyond a minute each, if even that much.
  Now the school board, and by the way the United States of America 
through the Solicitor General's Office, sided with the school board. 
The Solicitor General filed a brief on behalf of the school. The school 
board argued that the short prayers and others like it are of profound 
meaning to many students and parents throughout the country. As Justice 
Kennedy noted, they consider that due respect and acknowledgment for 
divine guidance and for the deepest spiritual aspirations of our people 
ought to be expressed at an event as important in life as graduation.
  Now first the plaintiffs, the Weismans, asked for a court injunction 
to stop the prayer from taking place. The court said we do not have 
time before the graduation, did not grant the injunction. They 
maintained the suit after the prayers were given, the court made the 
decision, oh, it should not have happened, it was unconstitutional, and 
they held, of course, a violation of the first amendment. They issued a 
permanent injunction against the school system there in Providence, 
Rhode Island, saying you are permanently enjoined, do not do this 
again, do not have one of these horrible prayers at school graduation.
  Of course, I do not think it is horrible, I think it is normal. But 
the court held that it was unconstitutional, and on appeal the U.S. 
Court of Appeals agreed with the district court, as ultimately the U.S. 
Supreme Court did.
  Now Justice Kennedy wrote, well, even though attendance is voluntary 
at graduation it is really kind of obligatory because you expect 
students to

[[Page H1441]]

want to be at their graduation. And they found a lot of criticism with 
the fact that the actual invitation to the rabbi, rather than coming 
maybe from a student body officer or something like that, the fact that 
the invitation was extended by the principal of the school, the Supreme 
Court thought that was very significant. Now I do not know how that 
affected necessarily the nature of the prayer that the rabbi gave, but 
the rabbi was given a copy of different guidelines for civic occasions. 
And that was the name of the document, Guidelines for Civic Occasions, 
that the principal gave him and said, I hope your prayers are going to 
be nonsectarian. And, as the Court said, well, that was a State effort 
to control the prayer.
  Now imagine that. They say we hope that you will offer a prayer that 
will be as acceptable as possible to people, and the Court says that is 
the same as controlling the content.
  And then the Court went on to say that it is unconstitutional for the 
government to try to suggest that a prayer seek common ground. Really, 
they really said that. This is what Justice Kennedy wrote, these are 
his words: If common ground can be defined which permits one's 
conflicting faiths to express the shared conviction that there is an 
ethic and morality which transcends human invention, the sense of 
community and purpose sought by all decent societies might be advanced. 
But though the first amendment does not allow the government to stifle 
prayers which aspire to these ends, neither does it permit the 
government to undertake that task for itself.
  I find it very interesting, Mr. Speaker, that Justice Kennedy says 
the first amendment does not allow the government to stifle prayers, 
and yet that is what the Supreme Court did in this very case. They 
stifled the prayers. They said that it may have happened that time but 
do not let us catch you doing it again.

                              {time}  2245

  What a remedy. They say that they knocked out the prayer to avoid 
insulting the rabbi who offered the prayer.
  It is really hard for me, Mr. Speaker, to follow this psychological 
coercion test that Justice Kennedy and the majority of the Supreme 
Court wrote about in this decision. I think it is much more fruitful to 
look at what the four Justices wrote when they dissented, that being 
Justices Scalia, Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice White, and Justice 
Thomas.
  This is what they wrote countering what the Supreme Court had done. I 
would like to advise you, Mr. Speaker, that it is the philosophy that 
was voiced by four Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in this dissent; 
it is that philosophy which is embodied in the religious freedom 
amendment. In fact, in other cases impinging upon religious freedom, 
there were dissents filed by other Justices of the Supreme Court.
  We have taken to heart what they said, and what they believe is the 
proper interpretation of the Constitution and I think what the American 
people believe is the proper interpretation. We have sought to 
incorporate that in the religious freedom amendment upon which we will 
soon be voting.
  So let us look then at what these four Justices wrote through Justice 
Scalia. Talking about the majority ruling, they wrote:
  As its instrument of destruction, the bulldozer of social 
engineering, the Court invents a boundless and boundlessly manipulable 
test of psychological coercion; lays waste a tradition that is as old 
as public school graduations themselves, and that is a component of an 
even more long-standing American tradition.

       Today's opinion shows more forcibly than volumes of 
     argumentation why our Nation's protection, that fortress 
     which is our Constitution, cannot possibly rest upon the 
     changeable, philosophical predilections of the Justices of 
     this Court, but must have deep foundations in the historic 
     practices of our people.

  They went on to discuss, Mr. Speaker, some of the historic practices 
of prayer in public settings. As they wrote, the history and tradition 
of our Nation are replete with public ceremonies featuring prayers of 
thanksgiving and petition.
  In his first inaugural address, after swearing his oath of office on 
a Bible, George Washington deliberately made a prayer part of his first 
official act as President. Such supplication has been a characteristic 
feature of inaugural addresses ever since.
  Thomas Jefferson, for example, prayed in his first inaugural address. 
In his second inaugural address, Jefferson acknowledged his need for 
divine guidance and invited his audience to join his prayer.
  Reading further from the Court dissent, similarly, James Madison, in 
his first inaugural address, placed his confidence in the guardianship 
and guidance of that Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny 
of nations.
  Most recently, President Bush, continuing the tradition established 
by President Washington, asked those attending his inauguration to bow 
their heads and made a prayer his first official act as President.
  Reading further from Justice Scalia, the day after the First 
Amendment was proposed, Congress urged President Washington to proclaim 
a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging 
with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God. 
President Washington responded by declaring Thanksgiving for November 
26, 1789.
  Reading further from the dissent in the Lee v. Weisman case, the 
other two branches of the Federal Government also have a long-
established practice of prayer at public events. As we detailed in 
Marsh v. Chambers, congressional sessions have opened with a chaplain's 
prayer ever since the first Congress. And this Court's own sessions 
have opened with the invocation ``God save the United States and this 
Honorable Court'' since the days of Chief Justice Marshall.
  In addition to this general tradition of prayer at public ceremonies, 
there exists a more specific tradition of invocations and benedictions 
at public school graduation exercises.
  By one account, the first public high school graduation ceremony took 
place in Connecticut in July 1868, the very month, as it happens, that 
the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, when 15 seniors from the Norwich 
Free Academy marched in their best Sunday suits and dresses into a 
church hall and waited through majestic music and long prayers.
  As the Court acknowledges in describing the customary features of 
high school graduations, the invocation and benediction have long been 
recognized to be as traditional as any other parts of the school 
graduation program and are widely established.
  Yet, Mr. Speaker, despite what 4 dissenting Justices were telling 
them in the words which I am reading to you, Mr. Speaker, despite that, 
just by a margin of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court said you should not have 
prayer at school graduations.
  Now, these dissenting 4 Justices, Mr. Speaker, they turned their 
attention then to the argument, this psychological coercion argument 
that had been made by Justice Kennedy on behalf of the majority. Let me 
read you what they wrote about this.
  According to the Court, students in graduation who want to avoid the 
fact or appearance of participation in the invocation and benediction 
are psychologically obligated by public pressure as well as peer 
pressure to stand as a group or at least maintain respectful silence 
during those prayers.
  This assertion, the very linchpin of the Court's opinion, is almost 
as intriguing for what it is does not say as for what it says. It does 
not say, for example, that students are psychologically coerced to bow 
their heads, to place their hands in a prayerful position, to pay 
attention to the prayers, to utter amen, or in fact to pray.
  It claims only that the psychological coercion consists of being 
coerced to stand or at least maintain respectful silence. That is all 
anybody was coerced to do. Nobody was required to join in a prayer. 
They were just expected to be respectful.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day when students in public schools are not 
taught to be respectful even, and perhaps especially, when somebody is 
saying or doing something with which they disagree.
  The 4 dissenting Justices called the arguments of their 5 brethren 
ludicrous. That is their word for it, ludicrous. But they wrote 
further, let us

[[Page H1442]]

assume the very worst, that the nonparticipating graduate is suddenly 
coerced to stand. Even that does not remotely establish a participation 
or an appearance of participation in a religious exercise.
  The Court acknowledges that in our culture, standing can signify 
adherence to a view or simple respect for the views of others. But if 
it is a permissible inference that one who is standing is doing so 
simply out of respect for the prayers of others, then how can it 
possibly be said that a reasonable dissenter could believe that the 
group exercise signifies her own participation or approval.
  The opinion manifests that the Court itself has not given careful 
consideration to its test of psychological coercion. For if it had, how 
could it observe with no hint of concern or disapproval that the 
student stood for the pledge of allegiance which immediately preceded 
Rabbi Gutterman's invocation?
  Does that not ring a bell, Mr. Speaker? Is that now how we open our 
sessions of this Congress? We stand together, and we say the Pledge of 
Allegiance to the flag that is draped behind you, Mr. Speaker, and a 
prayer is offered. The Supreme Court said that that simple pattern was 
unconstitutional in a public school setting.
  Now, about this requirement of standing, which is the only thing that 
any student was asked, not compelled, but they said, well, it was 
coercion. It was coercion to expect him to stand, even though they were 
not forced to.
  As Justice Scalia wrote in the dissent, if students were 
psychologically coerced to remain standing during the invocation, they 
must also have been psychologically coerced moments before to stand 
for, and thereby, in the Court's view, to take part in or appear to 
take part in the Pledge of Allegiance. Must the pledge, therefore, be 
barred from the public schools?
  I mention that, Mr. Speaker, because there is another U.S. Supreme 
Court decision, it is 50 years old now, 50 years old this year, 
relating to the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. I think, Mr. 
Speaker, that it incorporates the proper standard, whether you are 
talking about at the graduation or the classroom setting, the proper 
standard.
  Because in that case, which came out of West Virginia, West Virginia 
versus Barnette, the U.S. Supreme Court said no child can be compelled 
to say the Pledge of Allegiance. That is fine with me, Mr. Speaker. I 
do not want to compel someone to say the Pledge of Allegiance if they 
do not wish to say it. But what the Court did not do was to say that, 
because one child objects or might object, therefore, they can stop the 
other children from saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
  That ought to be the standard that applies to prayer, to voluntary 
prayer at public schools or at a school graduation. No one is compelled 
to participate. The religious freedom amendment makes that explicit. 
You cannot require any person to join in prayer or other religious 
activity, but that does not give you the right to censor and silence 
those who do.
  And as Justice Scalia noted here, does this mean that under this test 
that the Supreme Court applied to graduation prayer, now we are going 
to have to go back and ban the Pledge of Allegiance from our public 
schools? Because it is the same coercion to be respectful for that.
  Mr. Speaker, it is long overdue that we correct decisions like this 
that have come from the U.S. Supreme Court, decisions that have used 
the First Amendment not as a shield of protection for religious freedom 
of the U.S.A., but as a weapon to stifle simple prayers, simple 
expressions of faith, whether it be at a school graduation or in a 
classroom.
  Let me read some of the last words that were written by the 4 
Justices who stood strong for our values and our traditions and 
dissented from this decision in Lee versus Weisman. Here is what they 
wrote in closing their decision or their dissent:

       The reader has been told much in this case about the 
     personal interest of Mr. Weisman and his daughter and very 
     little about the personal interests on the other side. They 
     are not inconsequential. Church and State would not be such a 
     difficult subject if religion were, as the Court apparently 
     thinks it to be, some purely personal avocation that can be 
     indulged entirely in secret, like pornography in the privacy 
     of one's room. For most believers, it is not that and has 
     never been.
       Religious men and women of almost all denominations have 
     felt it necessary to acknowledge and beseech the blessing of 
     God as a people and not just as individuals, because they 
     believe in the protection of Divine Providence, as the 
     Declaration of Independence put it, not just for individuals, 
     but for societies.
       One can believe in the effectiveness of such public worship 
     or one can deprecate and deride it, but the long-standing 
     American tradition of prayer at official ceremonies displays 
     with unmistakable clarity that the establishment clause does 
     not forbid the government to accommodate it.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing, the closing words of Justice Scalia, 
nothing, absolutely nothing is so inclined to foster among religious 
believers of various faiths a toleration, no, an affection for one 
another than voluntarily joining in prayer together. No one should be 
compelled to do that, but it is a shame to deprive our public culture 
of the opportunity and, indeed, the encouragement for people to do it 
voluntarily.
  The Baptist or Catholic who heard and joined in the simple and 
inspiring prayers of Rabbi Gutterman on this official and patriotic 
occasion was inoculated from religious bigotry and prejudice in a 
manner that cannot be replicated.
  To deprive our society of that important unifying mechanism in order 
to spare the nonbeliever what seems to me the minimal inconvenience of 
standing or even sitting in respectful nonparticipation is as senseless 
in policy as it is unsupported in law.

                              {time}  2300

  We have had a lot of senseless decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court 
when it comes to prayer in public schools, at graduation, the ability 
to have the Ten Commandments displayed in public places, or a nativity 
scene, a menorah, or it might be an emblem of some other religious 
holiday at an appropriate time of celebration. But, Mr. Speaker, to 
strip away the history, the culture, the tradition, the beliefs, the 
faith and the heritage of the people of the United States of America, 
not by a joint decision of the people of this country, but by bare 
majorities or even a 9-to-0 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, to 
tromp upon the beliefs and convictions of the people of this country is 
not justified by the First Amendment.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not want to change the Constitution to fix this, 
but there is no other way, because the Supreme Court has already 
distorted our First Amendment, using it as a weapon against public 
expression of faith; using it to censor and to silence simple prayers 
of hope and faith by children in our schools.
  The religious freedom amendment, Mr. Speaker, addresses this, and we 
will be addressing it in the next few weeks. It has been approved by 
the Subcommittee on the Constitution; it has been approved by the House 
Committee on the Judiciary; it will be coming to this floor for a vote, 
to correct decisions such as this one and others of the U.S. Supreme 
Court.
  I repeat, Mr. Speaker, a simple text, the Religious Freedom 
Amendment:

       To secure the people's right to acknowledge God according 
     to the dictates of conscience. Neither the United States nor 
     any State shall establish any official religion, but the 
     people's right to pray and to recognize the religious 
     beliefs, heritage or traditions on public property, including 
     schools, shall not be infringed. Neither the United States 
     nor any State shall require any person to join in prayer or 
     other religious activity, proscribe school prayers, 
     discriminate against religion, or deny equal access to a 
     benefit on account of religion.

  Religion is something that is good in this country. It has had a 
positive influence ever since it motivated the pilgrims to come to 
America and to found this Nation, because they sought religious 
freedom; they sought the protections that the Supreme Court would deny 
people today.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the Religious Freedom 
Amendment. To those who have not joined the more than 150 cosponsors, I 
invite them to join and put their name on this amendment and join with 
us today in that. I hope that their constituents will call their 
offices and tell them they need to be supporting the Religious Freedom 
Amendment, they need to put their name on it. They need to be helping 
Congressman Istook and the others who are supporting this.
  Mr. Speaker, this is something that is so vital because our cherished 
first freedom is being undercut by the Supreme Court that is supposed 
to be its

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guardian, and the Constitution sets up a system where if something goes 
wrong with interpretation of the Constitution, we offer an amendment, 
because we, Mr. Speaker, are charged to be the protectors of what the 
Founding Fathers intended, and the Religious Freedom Amendment helps us 
to provide that protection.

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