[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 54 (Tuesday, May 5, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2797-H2803]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FREEDOM OF RELIGION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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 appreciate the opportunity to speak to the 
House and other citizens about a major issue which we will have on the 
floor of this body in 1 month.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a great reverence and respect in the United 
States of America, and properly so, for the Constitution that was 
assembled and ratified by the States some 200 years ago, and the very 
first liberty that was put in the Bill of Rights, added to the original 
Constitution, is religious freedom.
  The first amendment begins, Congress shall make no law respecting an 
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and 
with those plain simple words the Founding Fathers intended to 
establish two basic simple concepts. First, that this land would not 
have any official church so designated by an act of the Federal 
Government; secondly, that we would have the maximum of religious 
liberty in the United States of America.
  Why did so many people come to this country if not seeking a land 
where they could freely exercise their religious beliefs and where they 
could exercise it right next to someone who might have some differences 
of faith but who would have not only a tolerance but a respect for 
those differences; who would say to one another, you may have your 
belief and I may have mine, and we believe that all men have a God-
given right to acknowledge God according to the dictates of their own 
conscience; worship who, where, or how they may, and we respect that 
right, and we are not offended by the fact that someone may have a 
differing religious belief.

  But, Mr. Speaker, it started 36 years ago that the Supreme Court took 
that very plain and simple language, that very plain and simple 
meaning, and they started to twist it, they started to distort it, they 
started to make misdirected rulings and basically said that if you are 
on public property, like a school, if you are on public property and 
you engage in an act of prayer or other religious expression, that that 
is the same as if this Congress had said that we are going to select 
for the American people what their faith must be. They said basically 
that an individual or a group of people coming together when they are 
on public property is the same as telling people what their beliefs 
must be as establishing a national church, an official religion. They 
are not the same thing at all.
  But in 1962 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that even when, even when 
students voluntarily choose to recite a prayer together, even when 
there was no compulsion that was involved, that was unconstitutional. 
And so began the controversy that has continued for a generation over 
voluntary prayer in public schools.
  It has gotten so bad, Mr. Speaker, that the add-on decisions from the 
U.S. Supreme Court just made it worse. For example, in 1985, and Mr. 
Speaker, this was a decision that came from your home State of Alabama; 
the State of Alabama had passed a law that said, well, the Supreme 
Court says we cannot have vocal prayers by groups of students in public 
school, but we will permit students to have a moment of silence. A 
moment of silence was permitted by the Alabama law, and in 1985 the 
United States Supreme Court, just across the street from the Capitol 
building over here, the United States Supreme Court said permitting a 
moment of silence was unconstitutional because it could be used by 
students for silent prayer.
  Now I thought the Constitution at least guaranteed the right to 
remain silent, but not if you are using that silence in a school to 
offer a prayer. That was the U.S. Supreme Court. That is part of the 
warped rulings that have so

[[Page H2798]]

twisted the first amendment that people cannot recognize the results 
that are achieved under it.
  In 1992 they said if it is at a public school graduation, if there is 
a prayer there, that was unconstitutional because, and this case was 
from Rhode Island and it was a rabbi that was asked to offer the 
prayer, but because students were expected to be respectful of the 
prayer, just as they were expected to be respectful of the other things 
that occurred during the graduation.
  Because they were expected to be respectful, the Supreme Court said, 
oh, no, having a prayer at graduation of school; my goodness, that too 
is unconstitutional because some students might think that just by 
being silent, others may think that they are joining in the prayer. And 
therefore to protect them, no matter what the majority wants, no matter 
how it steps upon and stomps upon the beliefs and the wishes of other 
people engaging in free exercise of religion and free speech, the U.S. 
Supreme Court said the prayer at that graduation was unconstitutional.
  And there have been other decisions. In 1980, out of Kentucky, the 
Supreme Court ruled that to permit the Ten Commandments to be posted in 
a public school was unconstitutional.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I know the Ten Commandments are the basis of our 
laws. They are the starting point for the laws not only in the U.S.A. 
but in so much of the entire world, and they are common to many 
different cultures and to different faiths. But the U.S. Supreme Court 
said they cannot be put on the wall of a public school.
  And yet here in this House Chamber I see right before me, right 
before my eyes as I face the opposite wall, Mr. Speaker, is the large 
bas-relief, the image, of Moses, the great law giver, the one who 
brought the stone tablets down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments 
written with the finger of God.
  The walls of the Supreme Court have the Ten Commandments depicted 
upon them.
  We open sessions of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, with prayer.
  The U.S. Supreme Court opens with ``God save the United States and 
this honorable Court.''
  And we have right above your head, Mr. Speaker, the words that we 
find on currency in America, ``In God We Trust.'' And do you know that 
is under attack? There are people who want to take that off currency.
  And let us take the State of Ohio. Ohio has a State motto, and it is 
kind of akin to ours, of ``In God We Trust.'' Theirs is, ``With God All 
Things Are Possible.'' They are being sued right now, Mr. Speaker, to 
stop that from happening. They are being sued by those who say, oh, you 
cannot say with God all things are possible in a public setting that 
involves public property, such as the grounds of the State capital of 
Ohio or anyplace else where they may want to put their State motto.
  And the ACLU is suing in West Virginia to stop prayers at high school 
football games, and we have communities all over the country that have 
different suits pending. For example, I was reading one today, a 
community near Kansas City, Missouri, and in that community one of the 
emblems on their city seal is a fish, and the ACLU is saying oh, my 
goodness, that is one of the emblems of the Christian faith, so let us 
have it taken off.
  Where will this intolerance stop? When will it end? When will the 
faith of the American people be able to be expressed freely? When will 
the Supreme Court stop things such as this and their rulings against 
nativity scenes, menorahs? Just came down a number of years ago, came 
out of Pennsylvania, at the courthouse there, I believe it was 
Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, and they had, among different holiday 
displays they had a nativity scene, they had a Jewish menorah, they had 
other things, too. But the Supreme Court said it is possible to look at 
that nativity scene and see it by itself and not notice the other 
secular emblems that might be on display. And they said if you have a 
display such as that, you have to balance it with Santa Claus, plastic 
reindeer, Frosty the Snowman. It is what we call the plastic reindeer 
test, except now the courts, they had a Federal court ruling in New 
Jersey just this last December saying, well, even though you have 
balanced a nativity scene with other secular emblems, Santa, Frosty, 
and so forth, no, the nativity scene still must go because it is too 
powerful, and it is more powerful than the secular emblems.

  I am tired of all that. I am tired of that and so many other cases 
that I can describe, whether it be from the Supreme Court, the Federal 
appellate courts or the Federal courts, or whether it be the 
intimidation that it creates where schools say, my goodness, we have 
got to really, really stay away from anything, even if it is legal, 
because we do not want to get sued and we do not want to have these 
huge legal bills.
  And every year, and it is about this time that probably there are 
letters going out again that the ACLU and their fellow believers, I 
guess, send out letters to schools saying, ``Don't you dare have a 
prayer at your graduation unless you want to be sued.''
  I remember the case in Texas, in Galveston, at I believe it was Santa 
Fe or Santa Fe Ball High School at Galveston where a Federal judge told 
them, ``Well, because of another court ruling, I'll let you have a 
prayer at graduation if the students insist on it, but I will have a 
U.S. marshal there, and that U.S. marshal will arrest anyone if they 
mention the name of Jesus Christ as part of that prayer.''

                              {time}  2115

  He said that on the record. There is a transcript of it that the 
Federal judge said that.
  Mr. Speaker, I have to come back to the gentleman's home State of 
Alabama. Alabama is suffering under an order from a Federal judge right 
now that was issued last year from Judge Ira Dement, and Judge Dement's 
order has really taken things to a new height.
  I want to share some of the words that Judge Dement has written in a 
ruling that was issued just a few months ago, as requested by people 
who wanted to stop prayer that they were still having in some schools 
in Alabama in different settings. And this is what Judge Dement's order 
says: He said, The schools there are permanently enjoined from 
``permitting prayers, biblical and scriptural readings and other 
presentations or activities of a religious nature at all school-
sponsored or school-initiated assemblies and events, including, but not 
limited to, sporting events, regardless of whether the activity takes 
place during instructional time, regardless of whether attendance is 
compulsory or noncompulsory, and regardless of whether the speaker or 
presenter is a student, school official, or nonschool person.''
  Regardless of the circumstances, at any time, whether it is during 
class time or not class time, whether it is on the school grounds or 
off the school grounds, whether one has to be there as a student or one 
does not have to be there as a student, if there is a prayer from 
anyone, the judge said, they are going to answer to him.
  Mr. Speaker, he is not kidding. He has, at the expense of the school 
system, hired monitors to patrol the school and the hallways, and they 
have had student after student after student after student be expelled 
because they do not believe a Federal judge should have that much 
control over their freedom of speech and their freedom of religion. And 
if a group of students want to get together and they want to have a 
prayer, then why is it that only the opinion of the one that does not 
like it is the one that counts; and the opinions of those who want to 
have a prayer, their opinions are ignored?
  Mr. Speaker, in addition to prayer, we start sessions of this House 
with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of 
America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under 
God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And Mr. Speaker, 
the Supreme Court made a proper ruling in relation to the Pledge of 
Allegiance. The case came out of West Virginia.
  The Supreme Court said, no student can be compelled to say the Pledge 
of Allegiance, but they did not give a student that did not like it the 
right to stop their classmates or censor their classmates who wanted to 
say it.
  Mr. Speaker, that is the standard we ought to be applying to school 
prayer. Nobody should be forced to participate, of course not. But that 
does not give

[[Page H2799]]

them the right to show their intolerance by trying to censor their 
classmates that may want to say it.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I will if the gentleman will let me make one 
point first, and that is simply the point to which I am building, that 
we have to do something about it.
  We are going to be having a vote in this House in a month on doing 
something about it, and it is called the Religious Freedom Amendment, 
to make it possible for students to have prayer in public schools, to 
make it possible for the Ten Commandments to be displayed, to make it 
possible to have holiday displays, recognizing the religious traditions 
or heritage or beliefs of the people, and to correct the abuses of our 
first amendment, the beautiful language of the first amendment which 
has been corrupted by the Supreme Court.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Kingston).
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  As the gentleman knows, I am a cosponsor and have plans to support 
the gentleman's amendment and congratulate the gentleman who, over the 
past now, 4 years now, correct?
  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I believe it is 3 years. Well, closer to 4 
now, the gentleman is correct.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Four years to get this done, and I do not think anyone 
would ever have anticipated how long it would take to get this to the 
floor, particularly when we have so many Members of Congress on both 
sides of the aisle who have sponsored, in some form or the other, 
school prayer, voluntary school prayer amendments.
  I do have a question, though, that has been raised by some people in 
my district that have expressed some concerns, and I think I mentioned 
some of them to the gentleman.
  In the case of a classroom, as I envision this, say first period in 
the morning, after rollcall, whatever, should a student lead a school 
prayer, he or she would have a right to, after the Religious Freedom 
Amendment is adopted by the requisite number of States, correct?
  Mr. ISTOOK. Yes. This would not permit government to tell them that 
they must pray, it would not permit government to tell them what the 
content of the prayer would be; but absolutely correct, I say to the 
gentleman, it would permit students to initiate prayer as part of their 
school day when they start it. Or it might be the school assembly or it 
might be a football game or graduation or some other school activity. 
The point is, it would be a permitted activity, but never compulsory.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, what would keep a teacher from salting the 
group for one particular religion over the other or encouraging the 
favoritism of one religion over the other?
  Mr. ISTOOK. Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I think that it is interesting 
that, of course, people are concerned that we do not use the pressure 
or influence of government to try to tell them what their faith or what 
their religion should be. And, of course, government might act through 
Congress, it might act through a school board, it might act through a 
principal or a teacher. The key there is to make sure that we reinforce 
the prohibition on government acting to compel anyone to be engaged in 
any particular religious activity.
  I think the best way that we can focus upon that is by looking at the 
text of the Religious Freedom Amendment, which is the proposed 
constitutional amendment. Let me share it. I think the text itself 
helps to answer your questions.
  The text of the Religious Freedom Amendment, which is House Joint 
Resolution 78, reads as follows:

       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.

  So we have, several places in the amendment, placed language meant to 
safeguard. For example, we have the language, ``according to the 
dictates of conscience,'' which parallels language that is found in a 
number of State constitutions, to make it clear that the rights of an 
individual conscience remain inviolate. We do not want to step upon 
anyone's. We have the requirement that we do not require any person to 
join in prayer or any other religious activity, and we do not have a 
government prescription that a prayer must occur, nor what the content 
should be.

  So it really goes back to the principle that is followed in schools 
in so many other ways, and that is, they provide students an 
opportunity to take turns so that it is not just one type of prayer or 
one particular faith's way of saying a prayer that is heard, but 
different people will have their opportunities on different occasions.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me ask the gentleman this question, 
which is less than friendly.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Okay.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if we have a minority religion in a group, 
say the predominant members of a class predominantly are Christian, 
Jewish and Muslim, and we have another child out there who is 7 years 
old, and we are going around the circle with the Big 3, but he has some 
obscure religion. I do not know what would be an example; say he is a 
Zen. How do we keep that 7- or 8-year-old from being proselytized by 
the other religions because he is going to be a little bit embarrassed 
to stand up for his religion because of peer pressure? At that age, 
nobody has the fervency of their convictions, but children know what 
the majority is doing and in order to fit in, often they want to do 
what it takes to fit in with the majority.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Certainly.
  Mr. KINGSTON. So, Mr. Speaker, they do not have that spiritual 
maturity that would allow them to tolerate it and say, well, let us go 
ahead and have that person's prayer today.
  How would this deal with that?
  Mr. ISTOOK. Sure. Certainly we recognize that different children will 
have different levels of maturity; and it is not something, of course, 
when we talk about people that may feel sometimes like they are not 
necessarily part of a group, it may not be religion. It may be how 
people dress, it may be how people look, it may be how people talk, it 
may be the shoes they wear, it may be what type of music they choose 
for listening. It can be all sorts of things.
  I think that we do a disservice if we say that we know that children 
are going to have differences among them in other respects and that 
part of learning and part of growing is understanding that there are 
differences and learning to cope with those, but if we set apart 
religion and say, but if it is a religious difference, that is somehow 
a threatening topic, and that we must protect children from knowing 
that there are some differences.
  I think we need to look at the words of a Supreme Court Justice, 
Potter Stewart. I am going to paraphrase him; I have the exact quote, 
but not in front of me.
  When he was talking about this discussion, when he dissented from 
what the Supreme Court did, from what his fellow justices did, and he 
said several interesting things. One of them was that we cannot expect 
children to learn about diversity, to learn that different people will 
have different beliefs and different faiths, if we try to isolate them 
and shield them from that knowledge until they are adults, as though it 
were some type of dangerous activity or something that is reserved for 
adults. If we do that, he says, we will foster in people the belief 
that this is something that is threatening, that it is something that 
needs to be pushed aside and pushed away or kept in a corner, rather 
than something that should be understood.
  Basically, we are teaching intolerance at an early age if we tell 
people it has to be suppressed rather than respected when they have 
those differences, and that is where the schools should properly show 
the proper respect, whether they say, well, different people have had a 
chance and this person does it a little differently and we ought to 
respect that and learn from it. That is how we learn tolerance and 
diversity.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, on that subject, let us say we have 
somebody who is a goat worshiper.

[[Page H2800]]

  Mr. ISTOOK. I am sorry?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, a goat worshiper, a devil worshiper or a 
bizarre type of religion. Now, they want to have equal time. Do we want 
our child in the room when that prayer is taking place? That would 
probably, it might in a Christian parent cause a little concern, the 
same way it would cause the goat worshiper's parent to have concern 
when the Christian prayer is going on.
  Now, I only say that to the degree that, as our society gets more and 
more diverse, it is reasonable to expect in a country of 260 million 
people some folks who are in a very minority, extreme minority-type 
religion who pray perhaps in a bizarre way; and by that I mean, maybe 
they do not bow their heads when they pray, maybe they scream or 
something. And I am only phrasing this question in a hypothetical right 
now, but it is still very possible for some fringe religions to get 
under the Religious Freedom Amendment equal time in the classroom, so 
to speak, and it is fair, the way the gentleman has bent over backwards 
to draw this thing so fair that it will happen.
  How does the gentleman answer those concerns?

                              {time}  2130

  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I think the first thing of course that we 
all need is perspective on it, because frequently I find that some 
people want to construct what they think is a trap. They will first 
say, oh, the Religious Freedom Amendment is only meant to enthrone the 
rights and the beliefs of a majority of Americans, and therefore to 
suppress those who may not be among the majority in their beliefs. They 
are wrong in what they assert because obviously we are trying to be 
evenhanded.
  Then they take the other side of the argument and they say, oh, well, 
if that is the case then it is also bad because there may be some 
people, such as the gentleman described, whose practices are 
distasteful to others. And, therefore, they say no matter which way we 
go, they are against it.
  The real agenda of course of such persons is they just are not 
tolerant toward other people's faith in prayer, whether in the minority 
or majority. But in a situation such as the gentleman described, the 
perspective to understand is that there may be some very rare and 
isolated occasions when someone may wish to offer a prayer that others 
will find distasteful. But should we say that because there will be 
very, very rare occasions of that, therefore we must suppress and 
stifle and censor the millions and millions of positive, uplifting 
prayers of hope, of vision, of seeking for faith and seeking for 
guidance in the day?
  It is sort of like having free speech in our society. In fact, it is 
a parallel to free speech in our society. We all recognize that part of 
the price of free speech is there will be occasions when someone does 
not go into the bounds of pornography, which is illegal, but does get 
into the bounds of tastelessness and offensive speech that nevertheless 
we recognize is protected.
  The same is true of religious expression. And I would submit that 
actually the cases such as the gentleman has described of someone who 
has something that is distasteful to others, and of course they can 
choose if they wish, if something is that distasteful to them, if they 
want to leave the room or something that is fine. Like I say, it would 
be a very, very, very rare occasion.
  But those cases usually have already been protected by Supreme Court 
decisions. There is one, for example, protecting the Santeria religion 
that involves animal sacrifice. I believe the case involved the City of 
Hialeah, which said a community could not outlaw the way they were 
killing animals as part of their sacrificial rituals because that was 
protected by freedom of religion. That is under the First Amendment as 
it is now.
  But the same Supreme Court does not wish to protect majority faiths. 
They have ruled against a cross, for example, in a city park in San 
Francisco that has been there for 65 years. They say that has to come 
down, a cross being included among numerous symbols on the seal of the 
City of Edmond, Oklahoma, in my district, similar rulings in Oregon and 
Hawaii, in Stowe, Ohio, against the inclusion of a Christian emblem 
among multiple other emblems and they say that is unconstitutional, yet 
that same Supreme Court has said that a Nazi swastika is 
constitutionally protected. That was in a case in Skokie, Illinois, 
where the American Nazis were walking through the street with the 
swastika and the Court ruled that the symbol of hate is constitutional, 
but the symbol of hope is unconstitutional.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt in my mind that there is 
a special place in hell for a number of Federal court judges, as I am 
sure there will be for Members of Congress.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Let us hope that there are some special places above for 
many of us as well.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Probably plenty of room for judges and congressmen and 
many others.
  Who will decide if the school puts up the Ten Commandments or the 
Articles of Goat Worship? The reason I ask that, yesterday I was at the 
dedication of the Coastal Middle School in Savannah, Georgia. I was at 
the dedication of the Freedom Shrine, which the Chatham County Exchange 
Club has given to many, many schools, and it is a great thing and it 
has the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, George 
Washington Inaugural Address and all sorts of good documents of 
American history. And as I was looking at the Freedom Shrine I was 
wondering how do they decide which documents go? Do you put the 
Gettysburg Address in there or Lincoln's second inaugural speech?
  Mr. ISTOOK. A beautiful, moving document.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Yes, so those judgments have to be made, and the 
Chatham County Exchange Club does that. I do not know how they do that, 
but they do it. But who decides if the Ten Commandments gets put on the 
wall or the Articles of Goat Worship?
  Mr. ISTOOK. I think this is an interesting question, and I think that 
the issue is really freedom. Frankly, that it is not our job to make 
those decisions from Washington, D.C. Those decisions for a local 
community can be made in a local community, so long as they are not 
trying to establish or endorse a particular or official religion. So I 
do not think that the Congress of the United States should even 
attempt, and I do not think it is our place to try to say court houses 
in Georgia, in Colorado, in Alabama, in Oklahoma, in California, or any 
place else for the United States Congress to establish the standards of 
what can be put on the walls of county court houses or city halls all 
around the country, nor do I think it is the role of the U.S. Supreme 
Court.
  In other words, we have bodies that make those decisions right now. 
People made the decision what art work is going to hang in the Chamber 
of this Congress. That decision included the visage of Moses and there 
are also the images of a couple of popes, as I am sure the gentleman is 
probably well aware, among people with legislative or legal 
significance.
  So when we are asked the question who decides, I think that is going 
to be basically an issue of who is involved in that community or in 
that State, if it may be a decision that involves the State facility, 
and of course then when it becomes a national facility, we have the Ten 
Commandments depicted in the U.S. Supreme Court Chambers, and that is a 
decision for the U.S. Supreme Court. What is in the Chambers of 
Congress is a decision for Congress. We have different Federal 
agencies, State agencies and local ones.
  I think what we have to do is get away from this ``big brother'' 
notion that says that the Supreme Court is the fount of all wisdom and 
it should describe standards and everyone else has to follow those 
standards before they can hang something on the wall. The test should 
not be whether we have hung something on the wall which everyone likes 
or some people like and others do not like. The test should be did we 
actually take some action that truly tries to make people follow a 
faith selected for them as opposed to choosing to put up something that 
was significant to the religious traditions, heritage or beliefs of 
that particular community, which obviously will differ in some places 
around the country. That is called diversity.
  What we have to do is to get away from this terribly false 
politically correct notion that we cannot do anything

[[Page H2801]]

unless everybody agrees. If we are told that if we say or do something 
which may give offense to another, and the problem may be in their thin 
skin, not in what we set out to do or to express, but if we are told 
that only if everybody agrees with something that is the only 
circumstance when we can utter it, that is a totally false standard. 
That flies in the face of the concept of freedom. It flies in the face 
of free religion, it flies in the face of free speech, and yet that is 
increasingly what we are being told that everyone, everyone must stifle 
and suppress their religious expression and their religious beliefs and 
accept muzzling and censorship of it just to make sure that there is 
not one person sitting there that chooses to take offense.
  It is about time that we understand that the intolerance frequently 
is not on the part of someone that is voicing a religious opinion. The 
intolerance is on the part of the one who wants to shut them up.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, let me ask the gentleman this question. This is 
endorsed by a number of Christian groups.
  Mr. ISTOOK. And those of many other faiths as well.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman has worked hard with such groups. Can the 
gentleman tell me the non-Christian groups who are supporting this?
  Mr. ISTOOK. I do not have the full list with me, but for example we 
have an organization of Jewish rabbis which is called Toward Tradition.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Is the Jewish rabbi group, is this a large group or an 
outsider group?
  Mr. ISTOOK. I do not know the actual number of how many hundreds or 
thousands of rabbis are in this particular organization. It is a 
national organization of rabbis. The American Conference of Jews and 
Blacks, the American Muslim Network, those are some of the non-
Christian groups. And of course there are many that are Christian 
groups, and we would expect that of course because that is the faith of 
most Americans.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Does this religious freedom amendment have a web page, 
a freestanding web page?
  Mr. ISTOOK. It certainly does.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Because I think if people want to have some of these 
questions answered, and I know the gauntlet the gentleman has gone 
through in the last four years, having answered just about every 
question that has ever been raised on this, but not everybody has heard 
the questions or the answers.
  How do they find this out? How do they find out some non-Christian 
groups that are endorsing it?
  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the reference there. 
The web page that we have established for reference is 
religiousfreedom.house.gov., and I should caution people, do not put a 
www in front of it, or they will get a totally different web page. But 
it is religiousfreedom, all one word, religiousfreedom.house.gov.
  There, as the gentleman is aware and I appreciate him pointing it 
out, we have a wealth of information. Detailed legal analysis and going 
through different Supreme Court decisions and other decisions and 
citing this. Copies of many of the endorsement letters that we have 
received. Papers discussing how does this fit in with the notion of 
separation of church and State. How does it fit in with the claims 
different people make about well are we a captive audience to this? All 
of these different questions that are sometimes posed are discussed and 
answered at that web site. So it is a great resource that people can 
utilize to get more information. We even have made it easy for people 
to download and if they want to copy and distribute documents as 
handouts to other people, it is a very useful place.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If they have a particular question, they should first 
search the web page and then if they cannot find their question and 
answer they need to contact the office of the gentleman from Oklahoma 
(Mr. Istook).
  Mr. ISTOOK. Correct. And we have an e-mail set up on the web page for 
that.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, could the gentleman give his address for 
people who do not have computers.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Mailing address? Certainly. They can reach me, and the 
last name is spelled I-S-T-O-O-K, Congressman Istook at 119 Cannon 
House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.
  I would like to take a moment to mention a couple of other aspects 
about the religious freedom amendment because as the gentleman from 
Georgia knows, this has not been a lightly pursued undertaking. It is 
only because it has been 36 years now since the Supreme Court rendered 
its original decision suppressing prayer in so many circumstances in 
public schools and all the other approaches have basically been tried 
and exhausted and the route of the constitutional amendment is the only 
one left to be workable.
  But we have tried to make sure as we mentioned before, frankly. There 
is more language here to safeguard against any effort at government 
control of religion, there is more text in the amendment devoted to 
those safeguards than there are to express that students should have 
the right to pray in public schools and that the religious traditions 
or heritage or beliefs should be something that could be freely 
expressed.
  I, like so many other parents with children in public school, have 
gotten sick of looking at all the times when we go to school, we think 
it is going to be a special occasion, maybe it is a special school 
activity or pageant in December. They have the school choir and we say, 
well, they are going to sing some different holiday songs. We hear 
``Here Comes Santa Claus'' and ``Walking in a Winter Wonderland'' and 
`` Rudolph and ``Frosty the Snowman,'' but we do not hear ``Silent 
Night'' or ``O Come All Ye Faithful'' or Jewish Chanukkah songs, and it 
is because of the fear of lawsuits and in some cases actual court 
decisions that have gone that far.
  The U.S. Post Office a couple of years ago took down the banners that 
said Happy Chanukkah or Merry Christmas in the Post Office.

                              {time}  2145

  They will not let those be displayed anymore. They had to fight with 
some people to keep issuing the Christmas holiday stamps.
  Take the Internal Revenue Service. One of its big offices in 
California issued an edict to all of their workers saying, on your own 
desk and in your personal work space, you cannot have any type of 
religious item or symbol. It might have been a Bible. It could have 
been a Star of David. It could have been a little nativity scene, a 
picture of Christ. Whatever it was, they said those were taboo. They 
cannot be there on your own desk.
  I wrote the IRS, and I have said, why have you done this? They sent 
back a letter to me. They said items which are considered intrusive, 
such as religious items or sexually suggestive cartoons or calendars 
must be prohibited. That was their full description of the restricted 
items, a religious item or something that is sexually suggestive.
  Mr. KINGSTON. This was the IRS?
  Mr. ISTOOK. This was the Internal Revenue Service.
  Mr. KINGSTON. They are doing such a good job on tax simplification 
and tax clarity that they have enough time to worry about something 
that is offensive.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Yes. The ones that they categorize as offensive, if it is 
a religious symbol or if it is sexually suggestive or pornographic. But 
do you see the connection? Why do they lump a religious item or symbol 
in the category of things that are offensive to people? That is exactly 
what they have done. They treat it as something that is suspect or 
something that is dangerous, which is wrong to do.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the IRS is cracking down on people posting things 
that are offensive to most people, then obviously, you cannot put up an 
IRS sign, because that is far more offensive than most of the other 
items that they are talking about.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Maybe they should have banned an emblem of the IRS itself 
since that is, as you point out, offensive to many people.
  But that is such a dangerous trend. But you see, it is not only the 
IRS. If you read the Supreme Court decision in the case of Lee v. 
Weisman, that is the graduation prayer case, in it, Justice Kennedy, 
writing on behalf of the Supreme Court, says, Assuming as we must that 
the prayer which the rabbi

[[Page H2802]]

offered at the graduation was offensive, so the Supreme Court said we 
must assume that a prayer at a public school graduation is an offensive 
act. Four of the justices disagreed. It was a 5 to 4 decision.
  Mr. KINGSTON. What year was this?
  Mr. ISTOOK. This was 1992. In this particular case, and I would like 
to read something from the words of the justices who disagreed with 
what their brethren on the court had done. The four justices who 
dissented from this were Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and White. Let me 
read what they said. This goes back to something that the gentleman 
from Georgia asked before about what happens when we are able to 
recognize, yes, we have got some differences of opinion among religion, 
and it is not a threat to anyone.
  This is what those four justices, Scalia, Rehnquist, White and Thomas 
wrote in their dissent in Lee v. Weisman, and I quote now their words: 
``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 to the God whom 
they all worship and seek. Needless to say, 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 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 be the 
minimal inconvenience of standing or even sitting in respectful 
nonparticipation is as senseless in policy as it is unsupportable in 
law.''
  So they were talking about what we were discussing before, that the 
act of people of different faiths sharing a common respectful 
experience creates, as they said, not just a toleration, but an 
affection for one another and an appreciation of what we have in 
common, because it emphasizes the things which we share, rather than 
emphasizing the ways in which we differ.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Now, I want to ask another question, though. You say in 
some of your frequently asked questions that the Religious Freedom 
Amendment does not permit teachers or any other agent of the government 
to proselytize or to dictate that any person must join in prayer or to 
prescribe what prayer should be said. Where is that wording in here?
  Then what would keep the teacher from praying?
  Mr. ISTOOK. What we have here is a clear requirement, because a 
teacher, of course, as any person who is part of local government, is 
considered an agent of State government. That is a binding rule of law. 
Local government is a subset of State government. So when we say, 
``Neither the United States nor any State shall require any person to 
join in prayer or other religious activity,'' you are saying that no 
agent of government can dictate to people you have got to pray or we 
are going to pressure you to participate in some sort of religious 
activity. That is to avoid just trying to get people to join in the 
prayer if they may not want to do so, but trying to make sure that you 
are also not trying to push them into any other type of religious 
activity. So we have tried to make sure that we cover that as well as 
other concerns of people with that language.
  Mr. KINGSTON. But that would mean you could have prayer which is not 
student led. You could have teacher-led prayer.
  Mr. ISTOOK. You can have the initiative for prayer that must come, 
not from government, but from the students, because following that, we 
have the requirement that it says, ``Government shall not prescribe 
school prayers.'' That means two things. You do not prescribe or 
dictate that they must occur. Secondly, you do not prescribe or select 
the content of those prayers.
  Is it possible, for example, let us take a case such as the 
graduation case in Rhode Island, the Lee v. Weisman case, Rabbi Leslie 
Gutterman was invited to offer the prayer. Should students, on some 
occasion, invite someone else to join the prayer? Yes. That could be 
permitted. But the initiative must come from the students, not from 
government.
  Let me tell you a personal story that relates to that, because I 
recall, in 1963, when I was a student in junior high school in Fort 
Worth, Texas. That day, our whole school had let out briefly to walk 
down to the highway to see the motorcade where the President of the 
United States was passing by as he was going to downtown Fort Worth to 
Carswell Air Force Base and passing our community to do so to get on to 
Airforce One and make a quick hop over to Dallas where he was shot and 
killed. That was November 22nd, 1963. I recall, of course, we had just 
seen the President that morning, the shock as the first, the rumors and 
then the confirmation spread through the school.
  You can imagine, of course, as from your own experiences, because we 
are of the generation where everybody knows where they were the day 
that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and I recall on that occasion, 
despite what the Supreme Court had ruled just the year before, and I 
cannot tell you to this day who offered it, but the whole school shared 
in the prayer over the school intercom.
  If you took the case today and the order that Judge Dement has issued 
in the State of Alabama, whoever offered that prayer could be put in 
prison under the judge's order. So we need to recognize that there are 
extraordinary circumstances, and there are extraordinary deeds, and 
there are times that we need to reinforce the common bonds, just as 
these four justices said in their dissent, that we need to reinforce 
those common bonds.

                              {time}  2200

  So that, I think, is the best answer we can give to the question that 
the gentleman posed when someone says, well, gee, if I cannot do what I 
want to do and to do it right now, that my constitutional rights are 
being infringed upon. I do not think we want to teach our kids that and 
certainly the Religious Freedom Amendment would not do that.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask the gentleman this. Some of the critics feel 
that right wing Christian extremists are pushing this. And I have seen 
literature that labels groups who advocate this amendment.
  Mr. ISTOOK. And they probably labeled the gentleman, who is one of 
the cosponsors, as a right wing religious extremist. Of course, they 
are wrong on that.
  Mr. KINGSTON. That would not be the first time. The question, though, 
this is a constitutional amendment. Therefore, it has to pass this 
House by 290 votes.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Yes, by 290 votes. By two-thirds of those who vote. If 
everybody votes, it would be 290.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Now, the gentleman has 152 co-sponsors.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Approximately that number; correct.
  Mr. KINGSTON. And there are people who will support this but will not 
co-sponsor it.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Correct.
  Mr. KINGSTON. But it would appear to me the gap between 152 and 290 
is still a large one.
  Mr. ISTOOK. That is typical, of course, because most pieces of 
legislation have far fewer co-sponsors than they do have people who 
actually vote for them.
  Mr. KINGSTON. And if people want to find out if their Representative 
is a co-sponsor, they can go to that Web page.
  Mr. ISTOOK. They can go to the Web page and we have that information 
for them there.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Now, should this pass the House, it has to get 60 votes 
in the Senate.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Here is the requirement, for this or any other 
constitutional amendment. The requirement that is set forth, in I think 
either article 5 or 6 of the Constitution, sets up the way that the 
Constitution is amended.
  Now, the way the Supreme Court does it, they issue a ruling which 
bends or twists or distorts or breaks the Constitution, and then we 
have to go through this process to correct it. So the way the Founding 
Fathers intended is, we have to have a vote on a constitutional 
amendment that is approved by two-thirds of the House and by two-thirds 
of the Senate and then is ratified by three fourths of the State 
legislatures.

[[Page H2803]]

  Now, it is important to note that in the process of ratifying it, we 
do not need a two-thirds vote within a State legislature. We only need 
a simple majority. But we have to have the simple majority from three-
fourths.
  It is also important to note the President of the United States and 
the governors of the several States do not have any formal or official 
role in any constitutional amendment. It is something that is done 
through the legislative bodies, both in the Congress and in the State 
legislatures. And the Religious Freedom Amendment specifies a period of 
7 years for the States to consider ratification of this.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Does the gentleman have a similar piece of legislation 
being introduced and worked in the Senate?
  Mr. ISTOOK. Our intent is first to have the House vote, which will 
create the incentive for the Senate vote. And there are multiple 
Members of the Senate who are potential principal sponsors in the other 
body.
  Mr. KINGSTON. But the reality is this has a long, long way to go. As 
far as the gentleman from Oklahoma has gone with it, he is only at the 
starting gate still.
  Mr. ISTOOK. But we are at a key position, because this amendment has 
been approved by the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee 
on the Judiciary, and approved by the House Committee on the Judiciary. 
That is the first time a committee of this House has ever approved an 
amendment on voluntary school prayer. Only one other time, in 1971, did 
we have a vote in this body on such a proposal, and that was done with 
a mechanism that bypassed the committee process.
  So even though, as the gentleman correctly notes, the Constitution 
establishes a deliberately difficult process for any constitutional 
amendment, we have come through the necessary stages to bring it to a 
vote in this House. And it will be the first vote in this body since 
1971.
  And that is something that, frankly, ought to embarrass the many 
Congresses that have met year after year since then. Because if we look 
at public opinion polls since 1962, consistently three-fourths of the 
American people say we want a constitutional amendment to make it 
possible to have voluntary prayer in public schools again. Not 
compulsory, but not with the kind of restrictions they put on efforts 
to have prayer in public schools today. So it is long overdue for this 
body to act.
  And I want to make note, too, that this is what has happened before, 
when the U.S. Supreme Court went in one direction and the Congress and 
the American people said it is the wrong direction. The most prominent 
of the constitutional amendments that have been adopted to correct the 
Supreme Court was the 13th amendment to abolish slavery, because the 
Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision had said Congress and the 
States do not have the power and do not have the right to abolish 
slavery. That took a constitutional amendment.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and the opportunity this evening 
to address this important issue to restore the full range of religious 
freedom that the Founding Fathers intended; that the first amendment in 
its simple terms was meant to represent before it was twisted, 
unfortunately, by the court decisions. And I certainly look forward to 
the vote that we will be having in this House in a month, and I hope 
that the citizens who are represented by the Members of this Congress 
will talk to the Members of this Congress and tell them that they need 
to be supporting the religious freedom amendment.

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