It seems to me that taxpayers routinely subsidize speech the
majority disapproves of:
1. Saudi-funded madrasas, like other religious schools - and
other nonprofits - get a subsidy through tax exemptions. The same goes, of
course, for educational nonprofits that distribute secular ideas that many
people find repulsive. If the government sought to exclude pernicious
doctrines from these benefits, I take it that this would violate the First
Amendment, yes?
2. Saudi-funded pernicious Wahabi materials get the same post
office subsidies (media mail, the old second-class mailing rate) that any other
media materials do.
3. Pernicious Wahabi speech can't be excluded from benefit
programs such as the one in Rosenberger - and I take it that even the
dissenters would have agreed that an exclusion of funding for pernicious
viewpoints (as opposed to all religious viewpoints) would have violated the
First Amendment.
If a Wahabi school is getting pretty massive tax benefits
(property tax exemptions, income tax deductibility of contributions), why
should we balk at the Wahabi school getting funding to keep its - however
perniciously taught - children from injuring themselves on gravel playgrounds?
Eugene
From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Levinson, Sanford V
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2016 4:31 PM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics <religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: Cert Granted in Blaine Amendment case
Why does the particular subsidy matter? It obviously frees up funds that can
be used for sectarian purposes.
Sandy ...
Sent from my iPhone
To what extent is it either required or ethically questionable to point out, if
one is objecting to conclusion "a" above, to point out that any such doctrine
would require "sovereign states" to pony money up to Moslem schools, including,
say, madrasas funded by Saudi Arabia in order to teach various pernicious
Wahabi doctrines? As Donald Trump might put it, I'm just asking, though, as
with Trump, I'm confident that a lot of Evangelical Christians who will not be
happy with an argument that their tax dollars have to go to fund Islamic
schools.
sandy ...
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