March 3, 2007, on this blog: Michael Medved hates Catholics
We civil libertarians and Baptists view both the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment as necessary for the protection of religious liberty. We view these clauses as complementary. We believe that the establishment of a state-sponsored, official, privileged religion would disastrously, and unconstitutionally, prohibit the free exercise of religion.
People like Medved, however, see these two clauses as contradictory. They believe that the only way to guarantee the free exercise of their religion is to grant it official state sanction — to create an establishment of religion. Thus they view the Establishment clause as a limitation, a negation, of the Free Exercise clause. Some of Medved’s allies, people like … judge Roy Moore, unabashedly call for the elimination of the Establishment clause. Others take a subtler, more gradual approach, arguing as Medved does that certain broad privileges — like the posting of the Ten Commandments — should be granted to certain popular religions as a way of making the Establishment clause more elastic and less of a perceived threat to Free Exercise.
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