Separation of church and state – is it a right or a suggestion?

Thanks to Mr. Moskovitz for his Coercing Religion - Part Two (Daily Journal 9/19/22).

Even at my advanced age, I remember that peer pressure among kids is real and can be harmful. When a public school even inadvertently forces a student to choose between their family's beliefs, religious or otherwise, and a school board's "party line," it can feel to the student like they are being forced to abandon their family. After all, attending school is required by law, students have little or no choice about the curriculum, and teachers' academic freedom allows for a wide range of legally acceptable teaching methods.

"Suck it up kid. We're a Christian country" at least approximates how I felt when I was made to kneel at the "every day and twice on Sunday" chapel services that were required to attend at the boy's boarding school I was packed off to when my parents split up. Even then I knew that my civil rights were being violated, but when I protested by continuing to sit on the bench during the prayers, I was eventually summoned to the headmaster's office for a "talk."

He reminded me that somebody was paying good money for me to be there, and that if I didn't like the way things were done, I didn't have to stay. When I called my mom to protest the obvious outrageousness of what was being imposed on me by these Christian, religious academics, she quietly, and in retrospect for the best, told me that if I got kicked out I would not be welcome at what had become our new home. Today some of us call that "tough love."

Although some of my classmates thought what I was doing was GREAT, and encouraged me to continue my protest, I resentfully conformed, eventually graduated, and went on to college and law school where even greater "outrages" befell me. Now I find myself knee deep in the controversy surrounding the decision by the "powers that be" to change the name of my law school alma mater, Hastings College of the Law, without having first sought my permission! Courthouse, here I come!!

I guess a more mature take on the "kneeling in chapel" incident is that I could have asserted myself by leaving that school, but if I'm honest I suspect I would have found something wrong wherever I landed. I had the right to be free from the forced behavior, but at what cost to me? A shorthand for that in question form is: "Do I want to be right, or happy?"

Religion, and "irreligion," as articulated in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 537 (1997) (Stevens, J., concurring), are hot-button issues, as is Everson v. Bd. of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)'s application of the First Amendment's "establishment" clauses to the States.

To be sure, We the People should use the political process (as in, before school boards) to assert and enact our likes and abolish our dislikes, but when it comes to asking a court to declare unconstitutional the use in schools of handy things that originate from religious traditions (like easily available Spanish translations of familiar - at least to Christians - Christmas carols), especially in this ever diversifying world, it seems to me important to remember that President Jefferson's letter advocating a "wall of separation" between church and state, was just that; a letter. It wasn't voted on and ratified by the States.

-- Kris Whitten

Retired California deputy attorney general.