Right to Use School Extends to Other Groups

Re “Justices Allow Church Club to Meet in School,” June 12: Although an advocate of separation of church and state, I have no objection to allowing the use of public school facilities by religious groups, as long as the court’s decision in this case (Good News Club vs. Milford Central School, 99-2036) is properly understood.

Under the informal “no hypocrisy” rule, groups that demand the right to use school facilities must also be willing to extend that right to other groups, even groups whose ideologies--religious or secular--they rebuke. Under the U.S. Constitution, a group cannot claim a right for itself that it is unwilling to extend to others. That means, in this case, that religious groups that claim the right to meet on public school grounds must now also respect the right of gay and lesbian student clubs to use the same facilities, a practice conservative groups have historically tried to block. Now they do so at the risk of losing the right to use public school facilities themselves.

The Constitution protects rights but prohibits privileges. As soon as these conservative Christian groups attempt to block gay and lesbian student groups from using public school facilities, they will have ceased advocating a right and begun to claim a privilege, which the “no establishment” clause of the 1st Amendment clearly prohibits.

Perhaps, therefore, advocates of gay and lesbian rights in America owe a debt of gratitude to the Christian right for opening the doors of public schools to gay and lesbian student groups.

David W. Machacek

Santa Barbara

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The 1st Amendment to our Constitution made the whole question moot from the beginning: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Enough said!

The people who wrote our Constitution knew how to use the English language, so if they had meant to say the government “shall not establish a religion,” they would have said that.

James T. Humberd

La Quinta