A successful suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State against the Dover PA School Board for their selection of a text book title, “Of Pandas and People,” that taught the theory of Intelligent Design.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violates the constitutional separation of church and state…

But the judge said: “We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom.” – MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.com

The ACLU was able to show that the proposed text actually had religious beginnings. In a similar fashion, someone might be able to claim that Utah’s private club or “Zion Curtain” laws which exist nowhere else are a similar attempt by the church to establish a religious bias in Utah. While this certainly would be a difficult case to prove, it does open the door to questions about the constitutionality of some of the more bizarre liquor laws in the state.

Such a suit would only be fueled by public statements similar to the one made by UDABC Director, Kellen,

“Leaders of the LDS Church have publicly said that they want all distilled liquors, no matter what the alcohol content, to be sold by the state and not sold to the general public in grocery stores – a stand that the state has taken for years. The church’s public statement gives the legislation almost guaranteed passage, since approximately 80 percent of the legislators are Mormon.”

Essentially, it seems that there is a constitutional line that a Church can cross in dealing with legislation. I cannot say whether that line is crossed in the case of Utah Liquor laws, personally. Of course nothing in this ruling prohibits members of any religion meeting with public officials as you have said.

Normally I enjoy columnists/pundits who push buttons (secretly I enjoy watching Bill O’Reilly) even if they aren’t always logical.

There’s is just something more deeply flawed than poor logic in throwing out the words “unconstitutional” every time we don’t like something. It just makes it harder to defend the times you use it when it’s actually the right word to use.

Pretty irresponsible of Walsh.

Apparently law school is going well;)

The meeting itself isn’t a big deal to me. Definitely not “unconstitutional”. While we’re at it, she also throws around “separation of church and state” quite a bit. I think that’s also overused by those on my side of the religion argument. And I don’t care how many signs Dan Barker puts next to state capital nativity scenes, I’ll never wish anyone a “happy winter solstice”.

Regarding that quote, later in the article she says that the LDS spokesmen says “the elders didn’t take a stance on any particular pieces of legislation”. Both statements can’t be true. Either way I still don’t see anything unconstitutional.

I am confused as well regarding that quote.

I am a little reluctant to say that a meeting between Church leaders and elected officials is absolutely wrong as that seems to violate the principle of pluralism which I believe in, however, like you I would be against elected officials meeting with and giving complete deference to leaders of any religious organization (mine included).

But that’s not really the point of my post. I am really irritated that Rebecca Walsh so carelessly throws around the phrase “unconstitutional” as if it were some kind of magical liberal talisman. Clearly, it is not a Constitutional matter.

While I think some people have gone a little too extreme with what this means. It was all about a state (by state I don’t mean a single state, I mean the federal gov) sponsored religion. Think about what was happening at the time this was wirtten. Who were we breaking away from? England. What did England have? The church of England – a state sponsored religion, this is what they didn’t want.
People seem to think there should be no religion anywhere in politics, I don’t know how that would work. How do you separate the religion from a man (well those who are religious)? You can’t…
It was all about religious/political clout and the power of a single church under the direction of the government.