From the Archives: School Voucher Ruling Supports Religious Freedom

(BCN editor’s note: This week is National School Choice Week, so we’re reprinting Star Parker’s column from 2013 on vouchers and religious freedom.)

As the nation has focused on the Supreme Court hearings on the constitutionality of same sex marriage, news from the state of Indiana could prove far more important regarding the nations future.

The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously, 5-0, that the states school voucher program — signed into law in 2011 and the most expansive school voucher program in the nation — does not violate the states constitution.

Those who challenged the law argued that the voucher program is unconstitutional because it allows public funds to be used for religious education.

Not so, said the court. The voucher goes to the families, not the schools. It is the parents who decide how to spend it.

Why do I draw connection between the U.S. Supreme Courts review of same-sex marriage and this voucher decision in Indiana? And why do I suggest that the Indiana decision may be more important to the nations future than whatever the Supreme Court decides on same-sex marriage?

Same-sex marriage sits before the Supreme Court today because of the dramatic change in public opinion over recent years regarding the legitimacy and morality of same-sex marriage and homosexual relations. General public opinion is far more accepting today of both than it has been in the past.

What has driven this change?

One obvious place to look is the direct generational correlation regarding acceptance of same-sex marriage. Younger Americans are far more accepting of these values than older Americans.

According to the latest survey from the Pew Research Center, approval of same-sex marriage among those born between 1928-1945 is 31 percent; 1946-1964, 38 percent; 1965-1980, 49 percent; and after 1980, 70 percent.

So it seems quite reasonable to conclude that the last half century’s systematic purge of religion and traditional values from our public schools has produced a new generation of Americans with values different from those of their parents and grandparents.

In 1962, the Supreme Court found state-sponsored school prayer unconstitutional. Subsequently, the Supreme Court found unconstitutional: posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools (1980), public schools setting aside time for private or voluntary prayer (1985), and performance of religious activity at school promotional and graduation ceremonies (1992).

The rationale behind all these decisions was supposedly to preserve and protect religious liberty in our public schools.

But this is not at all what has been happening. The result has not been value-free public schools that just teach reading, writing and arithmetic. The result has been to purge traditional religious values from our public schools and replace them with different values: secular humanism.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, all states are somehow involved in sex education for public school children.

The National Education Association, the nations largest teachers union, thought it relevant to its mission to issue a press statement about the same-sex marriage cases currently before the Supreme Court. According to the NEAs statement on Californias Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act:

Proposition 8 and DOMA (both of which support traditional marriage) arent just unconstitutional, they contradict American values of fairness, inclusion and freedom for all.

So somehow it is fair and constitutional, in the view of the NEA, that our schools not be permitted to teach right and wrong, as Christians have understood them from the Bible for a few thousand years, while it is fair and free to teach secular humanism in their place.

Thanks to former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who signed into law the Indiana voucher program, and a sane and sober court in Indiana, Indiana helps pave the way for a new birth of education freedom in America, in which parents can choose where to send their children to school.

No longer will kids be captive to left-wing brainwashing in Indiana public schools. Hopefully, soon this will be the case nationwide.