I certainly did not mean to suggest that government subsidies are necessarily good for religion. My point was that the situation in Europe is far more complicated than Scalia suggests. Indeed, I think one of the failings of Scalia's jurisprudence regarding the religion clauses is that he tends to generalize about and oversimplify complex constitutional questions.
Alan Brownstein From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marc Stern Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 10:41 AM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Drift of the Court on religion But based on those subsidies, the UK has forbidden religious schools receiving government aid to tell students that homosexual behavior is sinful (although they can teach that the church is opposed to homosexual behavior). And under its laws regarding sexual orientation equality, it has forbidden a Catholic school to fire a headmaster (a lovely English term) who had a same sex partner. Moreover, the British have at least proposed that religious schools be required to accept a portion of students of differ faiths to avoid religious segregation.( I don't know off hand whether the proposal was adopted.)Thus, the question of whether the religious subsidies advance religious freedom is more complicated than Alan's post suggests-even before we get to the questioned of whether the nominal Christianity of public schools in England is itself any boon to religion. Marc Stern ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brownstein, Alan Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 1:35 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Drift of the Court on religion Sorry, Eugene. I can't help you on the question you asked about Justice White. But on the question of whether Justice Scalia's arguments about the Establishment clause are sound, I am somewhat perplexed by his apparent belief that Europe is committed to the separation of church and state and that religious expression is excluded from the public square throughout the continent. I'm not an expert on comparative law - but, to cite just one example, it certainly seems to me that European countries are far more likely to permit government subsidies of religious schools and far more willing to permit religious teaching and prayer in the public schools than the United States. Alan Brownstein
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