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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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I enjoyed reading your take on this.
As for point #3, is there not already a separation of church and law in the US?
To continue upon others threads. In theory, on paper. You are correct. In practice, that was left behind decades ago. Back in the 1940s the Christian Right began to coalesce. In the 70s it became a prominent voting bloc. Cut to present day and you have preachers telling their congregation who to vote for because they have a wink and a smile contract. Hurt the people we hate and we will give you power.
It's more than that - you have none other than the Church of Scientology to blame, partially. Thanks to their Operation Snow White back in the 70s, where Scientologists obtained key positions within the IRS and effectively doxxed thousands of IRS members (with the implicit threat of violence), they managed to maintain tax-free status despite operating as a political entity, and killed an entire investigation into their organization in one fell swoop. This spooked the IRS so goddamn much that it changed their entire approach to dealing with religious organizations entirely, and led to the hands-off approach that got us the Moral Majority in the 80s, and the marriage of the GOP to the American religious right.
Unfortunately, "separation of church and state" is a nice goal but leaves a lot to be desired.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a particular religion ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"). However, even that relatively narrow prohibition has been interpreted even more narrowly by conservative Supreme Court justices who only thinly veil, if at all, their favoritism to their particular religion.
Additionally, non-profit orgs are technically prohibited from endorsing candidates and campaigning. However, conservative churches and their pastors frequently give (again) thinly-veiled instructions to vote for Trump or the GOP, without repercussions.
There is, but that only prevents the government from acting as a religious organization. It doesn't prevent a group of private citizens from deciding to vote only for religious extremists, thereby filling all the lower offices with theocrats who slowly work their way up the chain until until they control the federal government. All the way they pay lip service to religious freedom until they have the numbers and authority to do away with it.