Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 54 (Tuesday, May 5, 1998)

[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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