Ghost of the Plumed Knight

Is it simply a coincidence that it is from Maine that there arose the case in which the Supreme Court just struck down a legal ban on using public funds for religious schools? It is, after all, the Pine Tree State that gave America the Plumed Knight, as the Speaker of the House in the late 19th Century, James G. Blaine, was known. He was an anti-Catholic bigot who spent much of his career trying to block public funds from sectarian schools.We raise the point because of the shocking reaction of the Attorney General of Maine to the decision of the Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin. The case was brought by two families who reside in rural communities without public schools. They wish to send their children to Christian schools, but because the schools are religious, they are excluded from the tuition support Maine offers to families who choose secular private schools.The Supreme Court would have none of it. “The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That,” the Chief Justice wrote. “is discrimination against religion.” A State’s “antiestablishment interest,” he added, “does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise.”One would think that such a pointed decision would have been met with some humility and self-reflection among Maine officials who devised and executed this policy that has been officially ajudged “discrimination.” Not Maine’s attorney general, Aaron Frey. He turned around and attacked the very Christian schools to which the winning litigants before the Supreme Court had chosen to send their children. Mr. Frey called on Maine lawmakers to, as reported in the Press Herald at Portland, “ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.” Maine, he suggested, might take an option that was offered to it by the Supreme Court, of abandoning its voucher program altogether. Yet he went on to attack the two schools at the center of the case, Temple Academy and Bangor Christian, for their religious views.“They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff,” Mr. Frey said. “One school teaches children that the husband is to be the leader of the household.” In other words, Mr. Frey suggests, favoring of the traditional family is an existential threat to the citizens of Maine and an act of bigotry to boot.It is a shame enough that in today’s culture wars the rights of gay Americans and religious Americans are thrown into conflict. It is particularly shameful that an officer of an American state, a man sworn to the Constitution, would make disparaging remarks about Christian doctrine — or any other faith. All Americans should be able to choose the school that best suits their sincere religious beliefs without having to pass a state-imposed test on dogma.Has General Frey ever read the Supreme Court’s decision in respect of the wedding cake baker who is a devout Christian, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado? One reason Colorado lost was because its officers spoke in language that suggested his religion was giving cover to bigotry. The Nine quoted one commissioner as saying “To me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to — to use their religion to hurt others.”The high court warned that the commissioner compared the baker’s “invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.” The justices called the sentiment “inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement,” a law that protects against discrimination “on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation.”Let Maine’s legislators, officers, and judges note that the Supreme Court also marked the absence in the record of any “objection to these comments” from other commissioners and state judges. Nor were the sentiments disavowed in filings with the Supreme Court. Which brings us back to the Plumed Knight. Blaine ended his career as secretary of state. Yet his legacy was tarnished forever by the hostility to religion that was part of his brand.

Ghost of the Plumed Knight

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