The false church-state argument

Its latest rendering is over the results of the California vote on Proposition 8.

Bench Memos has an interesting post on it. The key words here are “properly understood.”

Prof. Stone and I (and Pope Benedict XVI) agree entirely regarding the importance of the principle of “separation of church and state”, properly understood.

Follow Garnett’s thought here…

To invoke this principle’s importance though, and even to point to the fact that religious believers were much more likely to support Proposition 8 than were non-believers, does not, in my view, establish the point that Prop. 8 is (putting aside other questions about its merits) an effort to (in his words) “conscript the authority of the state to compel those who do not share their religious beliefs to act as if they do.”

To say it does is tendentious.

As Stone himself writes, “[l]ike other citizens, [religious believers] are free in our society to support laws because they believe those laws serve legitimate ends, including such values as tradition, general conceptions of morality, and family stability.”

Right. Furthermore… 

I do not see why we should think that this is not what Prop. 8’s supporters believe.

Seems like it’s political and intellectual dishonesty to ascribe other motives to those voters.

Stone insists that religious believers “are not free — not if they are to act as faithful American citizens — to impose their religious views on others”, but again, it does not follow from the fact that most of Prop. 8’s supporters are religious believers that they are trying to “impose their religious views on others.”

Exactly. [emphasis added] 

(There are all kinds of issues, I would think, where it can be said that substantial support for the position enshrined in law comes or came from religious believers. After all, lots of Americans are religious believers.)

But have you noticed how the separation argument is never invoked when their public support and votes go to liberal causes and candidates?