Ernest Istook

Mr. ISTOOK

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. ISTOOK. I am sorry?

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. ISTOOK. Let us hope that there are some special places above for many of us as well.

Mr. ISTOOK. A beautiful, moving document.

Mr. ISTOOK

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 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. ISTOOK. They can go to the Web page and we have that information for them there.

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. ISTOOK. Correct.

Mr. ISTOOK. Approximately that number; correct.

Mr. ISTOOK. Yes, by 290 votes. By two-thirds of those who vote. If everybody votes, it would be 290.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. ISTOOK. This was the Internal Revenue Service.

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. 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. ISTOOK. Correct. And we have an e-mail set up on the web page for that.

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. ISTOOK. It certainly does.