Trump is a Threat to Religious Liberty

Donald Trump is many things, but a defender of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment protecting freedom of religion, he is not.  Indeed, he is a threat to constitutional government and the religious freedom of except strident, far right Christian extremists who seek to totally subvert the concept as laid down by the Founding Fathers. Indeed, they want a de facto established religion that only upholds their own toxic and perverted version of Christianity.  Playing on the self-centered hypocrisy of the Christofascists and "Christian leaders" like Jerry Falwell, Jr., Pat Robertson and a host of similar scam artists, Trump has set about depriving others of their religious freedom and, hopefully in time, a major backlash against right wing Christians where their nonsensical claims of persecution might become a reality as they find themselves being treated as they have treated others for so much of history. A piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump and the Christofascists destruction of true religious freedom.  Here are highlights:

A central pillar of Donald Trump’s compact with conservative Christians, which has been immensely useful for him and is critical to his reelection prospects, is his much-professed concern for “religious liberty.” There’s a whole fact sheet about the topic on the White House website. It was the alleged subject of a major executive order early in his presidency.

But as Steven Waldman (founder of Beliefnet, a web portal for all things religious) observes in Sacred Liberty, his recently published comprehensive history of America’s tradition of religious freedom, Trump’s actual record is not so positive:

Donald Trump’s legacy on this issue can seem confusing. He talks about defending religious freedom more than almost any other president. His administration has taken a few positive steps, such as deciding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could give disaster relief to houses of worship and raising concerns about persecution of Christians overseas. . . . But much of his religious liberty agenda involves efforts, focused largely on helping conservative Christians, that are minor, symbolic, or actually damaging.

Most obvious, Trump is the first president since the virulently anti-Mormon Rutherford B. Hayes to publicly single out a religious community for opprobrium and (attempted) discrimination. . . . . he has violated most of the principles that have sustained religious freedom by favoring one religion over another; ignoring First Amendment protections; blurring the distinctions between Americans practicing their faith and extremists overseas; and proposing that practitioners of one faith should have second-class citizenship. He has made the concept of religious freedom partisan instead of universal, a way to divide rather than unite.

Trump is a friend to religion only if your religion happens to be the same as that of his conservative Evangelical and traditionalist Catholic allies, who have a mutually exploitative and very transactional relationship with the 45th president.

[M]uch of Trump’s talk about religious liberty involves reinforcing the fatuous paranoia of some conservative Christians who believe state neutrality toward their faith, as well as the spread of nonbelief or religious heterodoxy, actually represents persecution.

The many thousands of Christian martyrs over the centuries (and those still suffering in other countries) must be laughing or crying at the idea that being disrespected by retailers and seasonal-card senders is some sort of crucifixion. But it reflects Trump’s close identification with the Christian right’s claim that the liberty to practice one’s faith “in the public square” is so absolute that it excludes counter-concerns ranging from simple courtesy (the main problem with shouting “Merry Christmas” at non-Christians) to anti-discrimination laws. Again, Waldman explains how efforts to accommodate religious practice have degenerated into demands for plenary exemptions from norms the rest of society observes, to the point at which conservative Christians began to distort and politicize their own faith traditions . . . .

Millions of Americans (most notably Catholics, but many Evangelicals, too) go to church regularly without for a moment sharing the hostility to homosexuality (or, for that matter, legalized abortion) that their leaders increasingly treat as fundamental to their beliefs. Such distortion of an ancient faith is a lot more dangerous than any threats to the tender conscience of the occasional aggrieved baker.

Not that long ago, conservative Evangelicals typically regarded church-state separation as the central principle of religious liberty. Most Christian-right leaders have abandoned or even inverted that position. When Thomas Jefferson referred to religious liberty as requiring a “wall of separation” between church and state (a precedent today’s Christian-right leaders either ignore or attack in making the case that the Founders wanted a Christian nation), he was siding with Connecticut Baptists fighting a government that was hostile to minority religious communities. Similarly, James Madison’s commitment to total state neutrality on matters of religion was informed by his relationships with Virginia Evangelicals. . . . All that has changed radically.

In this transformation of conservative Christianity’s political arm from the self-confident advocacy of pluralism in matters of faith to a narrow, sex-obsessed movement fighting to bring back the imagined paradise of the 1950s, Trump was perhaps an inevitable figure. If ever there were a complete product of the most de-Christianized traits of secular culture, it’s Donald Trump. Yet he offers his religious supporters unconditional backing in their wars against abortion, LGBTQ rights, secular public education, and, yes, believers in what they consider false gods.

In 20th-century Europe, authoritarian movements exploited conservative Christians eager to fight socialism and secularism and regain their old power over cultural life. These politicized believers were ultimately corrupted and betrayed. Trump may serve the short-term purposes of those who have convinced themselves he is a modern-day Cyrus the Great, a “nonbeliever appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the faithful.” But he is no friend of liberty and, in the longer view, represents a threat to America’s great tradition of religious pluralism.

Paul Ryan Wants Priests to Shut Up About the Poor

I have noted in numerous post how Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives claims to be a "devout Catholic" even as the reverse Robin Hood agenda he has pushed for years is diametrically opposed to the Catholic Church's social gospel which makes helping the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the sick a priority.  Ryan's policies, indeed, seek to kick those very categories of people into the gutter while lavishing tax cuts on the obscenely wealthy.  Ryan's hypocrisy is  on a par with that of evangelicals who want to police the sex lives of others yet support a morally bankrupt and confessed sexual predator that occupies the White House.  Now, with the firing of House chaplain, Jesuit priest, for lamenting the misplaced priorities of the Republican majority has put Ryan's hypocrisy on glaring display (while also raising the issue of the impropriety of having congressional chaplains in the first place).  A column in Esquire looks at Ryan's behavior.  Here are highlights:    

Right around 1817, after his term as president and having retired to the family homestead at Montpelier in Virginia, James Madison, who never stopped thinking about things, jotted down some further thoughts on one of his favorite subjects—the danger of mixing religious faith and secular, godless politics. He was pretty clear about where he stood. He was opposed even to the idea of congressional chaplains:

The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment . . . . The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.

[R]ecent events have added a third reason for not having congressional chaplains. Because, one day, a zombie-eyed granny starver might become Speaker of the House and fire a chaplain for being insufficiently devout as regards the theological basis for sacred tax cuts. From The New York Times:

Though Father Conroy said he did not know whether politics were behind his departure, he pointed to a prayer he had given on the House floor in November, when Congress was debating tax overhaul legislation.

“May all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle,” he prayed. “May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

About a week later, Father Conroy said, he heard from the speaker’s office. “A staffer came down and said, We are upset with this prayer; you are getting too political,” he said.   . . . . “That is what I have tried to do for seven years,” Father Conroy said. “It doesn’t sound political to me.” “If you are hospital chaplain, you are going to pray about health,” he added. “If you are a chaplain of Congress, you are going to pray about what Congress is doing.”

Fr. Conroy is a Jesuit. Ryan can’t seem to learn the fundamental lesson that you do not fck with The Society. When he was employed as a millstone on the 2012 Republican presidential ticket, Ryan got crossways with the Jesuits at Georgetown, to his hilarious disadvantage.

However, as this incident makes clear, and even though he has announced that he will blight our lives no more next year, Paul Ryan plans to “run through the tape” in his tireless search for ways to be a public jerk. Mr. Madison says, “I told you so.”

The Founders' Blue Print for Fighting Wealth Disparities

As America slides back into a Gilded Age society and with Republicans and the conservatives on the Supreme Court waging a constant war on the working and middle classes, it is noteworthy that the Founding Fathers recognized that wealth concentrations in the few was not a good thing for the future or the nation's economy.  Perhaps it was their living experience with the wealth inequalities in Great Britain and the deference given to aristocrats, but whatever the motivation, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton and others sought to strengthen the average American financial, not strip them of benefits and property to aid the few.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at some of the actions of the Founders that are diametrically opposed to the policies of the GOP.  Here are some highlights:

Current approaches to addressing rising inequality—raising the minimum wage, expanding higher education, increasing the power of unions, widening the national focus on high technology, aiming for a national renaissance in manufacturing—have not shown any evidence of reversing the concentration of income and wealth. There is one potential solution that could appeal to both pro-labor liberals and free-market conservatives, which has its roots in the philosophies of the Founding Fathers, and is already being practiced in parts of the economy today: employee shares in companies. The idea is to make every citizen a capitalist through citizen shares of corporations.  A story from President George Washington points the way.

On February 16, 1792, Washington signed into law a bill from the U.S. Congress that cut taxes for ship owners and sailors in the American cod fishery, in an effort to revive the failing industry. However, the tax cut was conditioned on a broad-based profit sharing arrangement between shipowners and the crews—a centuries-long custom of sharing the profits made from every catch. The legislation was supported by two politicians who typically agreed on very little: Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was responsible for negotiating America’s interests in the fisheries.

Hamilton’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Tench Coxe. Coxe supplied Jefferson with evidence from the leading Philadelphia shipper, Joseph Anthony, that the cod ships with profit sharing were more productive than those with fixed wages.  In the end, Washington’s law not only required a written contract between captain and crew to practice broad-based profit sharing as a condition to receive the tax cuts, and it also said that the tax credits would be paid five-eighths to the crew and three-eighths to the shipowners. The credits relieved the sailors and owners of tariffs, essentially tax payments they had to make on supplies for the fishery.  This is the first documented case in American history where the government made citizen shares—a form of inclusive capitalism—a condition for receiving a tax break.

The cod fishery law reflected the beliefs of many of the Founders that a representative republic required broad-based property ownership—typically land, or, in the case of the cod fishery, shares of profits—and a thriving middle class if the nation was to have a future based on real political liberty.

John Adams repeatedly sounded the alarm on inequality—specifically that he believed the concentration of wealth in property ownership would lead to the concentration of political power, which would undo a republic.

Washington asked Jefferson to draft a liberal approach to the sale of public lands to citizens which commenced, albeit with some complications. They moved against the institution of primogeniture, a key plank of European feudalism, and with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, they all agreed to abolish servitude in what would become Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, so that citizens could easily acquire land in that part of the young country (though slavery would remain a terrible evil for many decades to come in other parts of the nation).

For more than a half-century, up to the Civil War, federal leaders’ approach to land sales generally allowed low prices, installments, and credits in order to facilitate the wide sale of public land shares to citizens. Homesteads were the most popular economic policy of the 19^th century across the political spectrum after being pushed by senior Democrats. Politicians who argued for selling land to the highest bidder and using the funds for the federal budget were drowned out. Finally, in 1862, after definitively accepting the position that land capital was for the people, Republican President Abraham Lincoln said he was for “the greatest good for the greatest number” and he signed The Homestead Act into law.

[I]t is time for our leaders to develop a hopeful and positive agenda to address the future of the American middle class. What better way than to go back to the American egalitarian tradition of broad-based property ownership of capital in a private market economy? Middle class families have faced relatively flat household incomes for decades and have little access to capital ownership, capital income, and capital gains to expand their wealth.

It is time for new thinking on how to democratize access to capital in ways that remain consistent with our principles. Both progressives and conservatives can turn to their respective icons among America’s leaders to light their way forward.

Madison did not favor redistribution of wealth. His proposed plan, as spelled out in a 1792 article in the National Gazette, was to “withhold unnecessary opportunities from the few to increase the inequality of property” in order to avoid an “unmerited accumulation of riches.” He wanted laws that, “without violating the rights of property,” would “reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity”—meaning a robust middle class. 

Using Washington’s cod fishery legislation as a model and Madison’s ideas as a guide, we can explore a restructuring of the tax code to condition any business tax incentive on having some type of share plan for all employees—whether it’s broad-based profit sharing or an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. No business would be required to implement shares, but every business would at least have a serious incentive to consider the idea and decide if it made sense for their organization. Another proposal could involve a tax credit for any corporation that provides broad-based stock options or grants of stock to all of its workers. Silicon Valley would jump at such a proposal.

Would that today's GOP would remember the concepts of the Founders rather than supporting a return to the Gilded Age.

Justice Clarence Thomas - Mental Midget and Religious Extremist

I have frequently made the case as to why Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is unfit for the Supreme Court bench - or in reality, any other judicial position given his utter inability to separate his own religious beliefs and religious based prejudices from his rulings.  As shockingly horrible as the conservative majority opinion was in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, which focused on whether or not it is constitutionally acceptable to begin the meetings of legislative bodies with prayer, Thomas went on to suggest that under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government probably could not establish an official religion, the states could perhaps do so.  For non-Christians, the message is clear: go f*ck yourselves.   A piece in the Washington Post looks at Thomas' dangerous and frightening views.  Here are excerpts:

The majority opinion pointed out that the town made a good-faith effort to bring in prayer leaders from a variety of religious backgrounds and that there is a long tradition of legislative prayer — even sectarian legislative prayer — not being deemed coercive or unconstitutional.

But Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion, went even further on the subject of the establishment of religion. That whole clause is just a federalism thing, he argued. States might well be able to establish religion, if they really wanted to.

“The Establishment Clause provides that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.’ ” Justice Thomas quoted in his concurring-but-wishing-they’d-gone-further opinion. “As I have explained before, the text and history of the Clause ‘resis[t] incorporation’ against the States. … If the Establishment Clause is not incorporated, then it has no application here, where only municipal action is at issue. As an initial matter, the Clause probably prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion.”

Probably.

Sure, James Madison’s original draft of the First Amendment was a good deal stronger: “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship … nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.”

Thomas went on to note that, when the Founders were Founding, plenty of states had established religions. It was the done thing.

But that wasn’t for want of opposition — some of that from the Founders themselves. In fact, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were both heavily involved in the battle for religious freedom in Virginia. Discounting Jefferson as someone who liked to go through his Bible excising passages he considered impractical, it still seems fair to consider what Madison had to say on the issue. And he felt quite strongly.

He offered up some fiery words on the subject during a debate over a “a Bill establishing a provision for teachers of the Episcopal religion” in Virginia, noting: “If ‘all men are by nature equally free and independent,’ all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience. Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man…”

Freedom of religion, as the Founders experienced it, was definitely “of” and not “from.” To live out one’s religious beliefs undisturbed was the reason many had come to America in the first place. Madison wished for the vigorous establishment of freedom of religion because he thought this would benefit both Church and State. He wrote to Edward Livingston on July 10, 1822, that “Religion Flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”

There's more, but the take away is that "originalists" like Thomas and Scalia seek to willingly do violence against the freedom of religion that the Founding Fathers wanted for ALL citizens, not just Bible thumping Christians.

Albert Mohler's Spittle Flecked Response to Call for SBC Military Chaplains Resign

As noted earlier, the Southern Baptist Convention has adopted rules for SBC military chaplains to refuse to fraternize or cooperate with chaplains from other denominations which do not demonize and seek to make gay service members inferior in their rights and recognition.  This divisive approach prompted a Presbyterian official to suggest that if the SBC chaplains could not or would not follow military rules including those recognizing gay service members and denominations recognizing gay marriage, they should resign from the military.  After all, military chaplains are paid not by their denominations but by rather American taxpayers.  This suggestion caused SBC mullah Albert Mohler to erupt in a spittle flecked shit storm.  Like most Christofascists, Mohler believes his religious beliefs trump the civil laws and the U.S. Constitution.  Mohler fumed in part as follows:

Can chaplains committed to historic biblical Christianity serve in the United States military? That question, though inconceivable to our nation’s founders, is now front and center.

The irony, as blogger friend Bob Felton points out, is that the Founding Fathers did not uniformly support having military chaplains in the first place.   But, it is par for the course that religious extremists like Mohler ignore actual history and prefer to spread the myth that the Founding Fathers were pro-religion and were all too happy to allow it to subsume the civil laws.  Such was not the case and James Madison (the principal author of the U. S. Constitution) was very wary of religion and allowing preachers to gain a role in civil government not to mention the military.  Here are highlights from his writings in 1817:

The danger of silent accumulations & encroachments by Ecclesiastical Bodies have not sufficiently engaged attention in the U. S.

[T]here is one State at least, Virginia, where religious liberty is placed on its true foundation and is defined in its full latitude. The general principle is contained in her declaration of rights, prefixed to her Constitution: but it is unfolded and defined, in its precise extent, in the act of the Legislature, usually named the Religious Bill, which passed into a law in the year 1786. Here the separation between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of Man excepted from the grant on which all political authority is founded . . .

Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles
If Religion consist in voluntary acts of individuals, singly, or voluntarily associated, and it be proper that public functionaries, as well as their Constituents shd discharge their religious duties, let them like their Constituents, do so at their own expence. 

Better also to disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect them into a political authority in matters of religion. The object of this establishment is seducing; the motive to it is laudable. But is it not safer to adhere to a right pinciple, and trust to its consequences, than confide in the reasoning however specious in favor of a wrong one. Look thro' the armies & navies of the world, and say whether in the appointment of their ministers of religion, the spiritual interest of the flocks or the temporal interest of the Shepherds, be most in view . . .

As I have argued before, the military chaplain corps needs to be defunded and, if denominations desire to provided chaplains, allow them to foot the entire bill.  And they should do so off site from military bases and establishments.  As for Mohler, the best rule of thumb is to assume that if his lips are moving, he's likely lying.

A Founding Father's Take on Religion - And Today's Christian Right

David Barton and other crackpots within the Christofascist circles continue to disseminate the myth that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation."  Like most of what comes out of the mouths of these folks it is a blatant lie that seeks to take advantage of the ignorance of accurate history which is so pervasive within the American public.  This bog has noted before the Founding Fathers' pointed suspicion of religion and the fact that most could best be described as deists - e.g., Thomas Jefferson.  Civil Commotion makes note of James Madison’s Memorial And Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.  Here is a pertinent quote:

The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.

Because experience witnesseth that eccelsiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks, many of them predict its downfall. On which Side ought their testimony to have greatest weight, when for or when against their interest?

These views sound like Madison could be talking about the state of religion in America today where the Christofascists and their puppets and political whores in the GOP seek to inflict their poisonous beliefs on all citizens.  The Christianist agenda is the direct opposite of what Madison espoused.  

VIRGINIA STATUTE FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Bob Felton posted this statute on Civil Commotion (http://civilcommotion.com/index.php) and I thought it was worth re-posting here. Knowing the real history of this country is the best defense against Christianist lies and attempts at rewritings of history. No one has said it better than Thomas Jefferson:

Drafted by Thomas Jefferson and one of only 3 accomplishments he wished listed on his tombstone, and of which James Madison, the chief author of the United States Constitution, said: “This act is a true standard of Religious liberty: its principle the great barrier against usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected & no longer, these will be safe.”

VIRGINIA STATUTE FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
[Sec. 1] Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow-citizens he has a natural right; that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

[Sec. 2] Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

[Sec. 3] And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.

Sadly, Virginia's "Marriage Amendment" specifically infringed the natural rights of gay Virginians. The Mike Huckabees of this country who seek to impose their religious beliefs on all have utterly betrayed the intent of the nation's founders.