Kansas Free From Religious Establishment

I'll get to the second part of my Seattle adventure shortly.

It's now ripe news that Kansas recently passed a law banning Sharia Law (more or less Islamic religious codes) from being used by "courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals," in an apparent attempt to prevent foreign laws from taking over the Kansas democratic system.

This law has been made fun of its fair share of times - one headline reads "Governor Brownback Turns Attention to Non-Problem of Sharia Law." Indeed, the law seems intended to solve a problem that isn't there, as the New York Times iterates:

There are no known cases in which a Kansas judge has based a ruling on Islamic law. But the new law’s supporters have cited a pending divorce case in Sedgwick County in which a man has asked for property to be divided in line with Shariah.

Beyond the obvious fun that can be poked at this new law and its 20 siblings still in state legislatures around the country (including in Arizona, Michigan, and Tennessee, surprise surprise), there is something valuable to be gained from the xenophobia, chiefly in the way the law's writers worded it in order to appear non-discriminatory. The law specifically forbids "courts, administrative agencies and state tribunals [from basing] rulings on any foreign law or legal system that would not grant the same rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions." Still, the bill's supporters made it very clear the intention is to stave off the non-existent "infiltration" of Sharia Law.

I wish we could take this law at face value. Forgetting the veiled racism of the intention, I believe the country and each state really should be governed and managed exclusively by the federal and state constitutions. What I see in the law's wording is an attempt to prevent religious establishment, aimed primarily at Islamic establishment but, in its effort to seem non-discriminatory can and should apply to all religious doctrine.

For religiously based doctrine has fed much law making that has deprived American citizens of many rights guaranteed them in the constitution (I'm thinking of women's rights and LGBT rights specifically, among others). After all, what explanation besides a religiously-based one is there for abstinence-only sex education, especially considering that the research that suggests that not only does abstinence-only sex education not prevent teen pregnancies but actually the opposite? What explanation besides a religious one defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, not to mention all the other rights homosexuals have been deprived of thanks largely to bible passages?

But the juicy thing I really love about this legislation is that in fighting against foreign religious doctrine it also fights against most Christian doctrine. To claim Christianity as American would be amazing folly - the bible is a translated document. Only American-based sects such as Mormonism could legally pass under this law's nose (did Mitt Romney dream up this legislation?). Legal arguments against marriage equality would crumble since equal protection is a protection given the American people under the federal constitution, so revoking one demographic's right to marry would be illegal discrimination. Abstinence-only sex education, the withholding of important health information, would disintegrate as its purpose, to prevent premarital sex (and teen pregnancies, but we've already seen how well that's worked out), has no basis in the constitution and is a biblical-based value - plus, as I've argued before, it's sexist and can therefore be construed, once again, as discrimination.

Now, a supporter of the Kansas law might say that Christianity is not foreign in order to extricate it from the law's grasp. How come it's not foreign? It's explicitly not established as a national religion in the first amendment in the Bill of Rights. If that supporter says it's not foreign because the vast majority of Americans are Christian, then we have yet another case of disenfranchisement of a minority in favor of a majority, the kind of mob rule the federal constitution was expressly designed to protect against. And of course, the constitution does not allow for the establishment of religion even in the event that the majority of its citizens share that religion. In my mind there is no way Kansas courts can allow disturbingly prejudiced legislation fashioned with Christian values in mind to remain legal, thanks to this new law.

Now, I'm getting a little ahead of myself with excitement. This law only applies to "courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals," so it does not prevent the enactment of laws based upon Christian theology. But maybe it will come, a law preventing the enactment of legislation with any basis on "foreign law or legal system that would not grant the same rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions." And then Christian lawmakers would be miffed as their destructive pet bills with no constitutional basis get struck down, rightly and legally, for having violated the very law they had championed thanks to their own bigotry.

Oh, their own flaws would be their downfall! It's so poetic! I can't wait!