George Takei Schools Kim Davis On The First Amendment

“The simplest way to think about this is to agree that all of us have a right to worship, but that right ends at the tips of our noses.”
–George Takei

George Takei is on a roll. 

The 78-year old actor, activist, author, and director who can boast nearly nine million Facebook fans has published two op-eds over the past 24 hours, in The Daily Beast and at MSNBC, both slamming Kim Davis and her anti-gay supporters.

“To her supporters, she is the Rosa Parks of religious liberty, someone who finally said, ‘Enough is enough, I have rights, and I will fight for them,'” Takei writes at MSNBC. “When I view her behavior, however, I am reminded of a different character from the early civil rights era: Gov. George Wallace of Alabama.”

Takei notes that for the racist Gov. Wallace, “the federal government’s plans to integrate public education in the South amounted to a surrender of the state to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his friends in Washington.”

“There are echoes of this in the Davis case, as once again, a ruling from the Supreme Court in D.C. trickles down to the state and local levels. The people are reminded that unelected judges are ‘making law’ just as they have before, that these laws are wrong and are contrary to God’s will, and that the good people are only doing what is right by standing up to this threat to their way of life.”

LOOK: Gay Couple Gets Marriage License In Kim Davis’ Office Amid Shouts Of ‘Homosexual Sodomy’ And ‘Sin’

Over at The Daily Beast, Takei explains “How Kim Davis Violated the First Amendment.”

Takei, who as a 5-year old boy during World War II was imprisoned in an American internment camp for Japanese people in the U.S., suggests we “go back to high-school civics.”

“When discussing the religious freedom portion of the First Amendment, there are not one but two clauses we must consider. The commonly understood and cited part, and the one Ms. Davis trumpets, is the Freedom to Worship guarantee. Under that clause, the government isn’t allowed to pass any law, or take any action, “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. Simply put, the government can’t do anything to stop you or anyone else from worshipping God or Buddha or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if that’s what your conscience or faith tells you.”

And he notes that Davis and her supporters’ “argument falls apart, however, once you take into account the other, less commonly understood clause.”

“The ‘Establishment Clause’ prohibits the government from aiding or assisting any religion, or religious viewpoint, over any others. This was a key point for the founders of our country, who were of diverse faiths and did not want a state religion, or even any state-endorsed religions. When people talk about ‘separation of church and state,’ this is the part of the Constitution that embodies it. The separation has worked well over the past two and a quarter centuries; today, the Baptists have no more right to have their particular beliefs elevated over the Methodists, or the Druids for that matter, by any government official.”

“Everyone’s perfectly free to worship as they please,” Takei concludes, “but this freedom also includes not having other people’s beliefs interfere with our own participation in civil society.”

Indeed.

 

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license