And we all know what tradition is: Peer pressure from DEAD PEOPLE. It's also the dodge that religion uses to insert itself into secularity, whether welcome or not, and in this case, clearly NOT. Justice Eddins clearly wasn't having any, and I thank and applaud him for his thorough and unforgiving statement on this issue.
It's way past time that SOMEONE stood up to the Roberts court.
Slavery was tradition. Disallowing women and minorities the right to vote was tradition. Also a rascally rabbi on the rafters fiddling around - yep, tradition.
According to historian Candida Moss (author of “The Myth of Persection: How Early Chrisitians Invented a Story of Martyrdom”), the bit about xtians being regularly fed to lions is a gross exaggeration by believers and that it was a later embellishment of the actual suffering Christians endured.
When Nicene Christianity (Catholicism) became the state religion of Rome in 380 CE, xtians who were not Catholics suddenly found themselves accused of heresy, had their rights stripped from them and had their property seized by the state. For them, the Catholics were the lions.
While a corrective to the idea that Christians were being fed to the lions several times a day in ancient times, I think she goes a bit too far in the opposite direction after reading her book. Regardless, it's sad but expected that once Christianity became supported by the state that it embraced persecution as long as they could get away with it.
Tradition was the best way Alito could come up with to stop equal application of the religious parts of the 1st amendment to Christianity, but that is probably the only time they'll honor it. For example, the documented, traditional laws going back to the 1800s of towns outlawing gun carrying in town? That won't get the 'ok because tradition' defense.
"And we all know what tradition is: Peer pressure from DEAD PEOPLE. "
It is also a logical fallacy, the argumentum ad antiquitatem.
(I tried to italicise part of the above text, in that I thought substack allowed one to use markdown, however it doesn't seem to work. Can one use markdown here?)
They don’t read their book. And preserving the parsonage tax exemption is a key part of their alliance with Right libertarians. Real estate investment is what drives the MAGA/Trump cult. Even Erika Kirk, grifting widow, is now into the real estate game. Trump Gaza’s not going to build itself.
Of course if the Rapture really is tomorrow 🤔 who’s going to oversee the Christian Zionist timeshare condo construction? Ah yes, the Dominionists, Dutch Reformed, prosperity gospel, and New Apostolic Reformation I assume will be staying here. And the Opus Dei Catholics will probably be Left Behind as well…. And the Kahanist Israelis. 🙄🤦♀️
If someone in Hawaii appealed this up to SCOTUS, they would swat him down with glee. With their shadow docket, the Supremes are ruling by unexplained edict. We are no longer in a Constitutional Republic. It has been manipulated into an authoritarian dictatorship. We now find ourselves in the unhappy situation of having to fight to regain our former government by rule of law.
This one's a double-edged sword. SCOTUS *could* smack it down by saying "if Hawaii allows secular restrictions on land use, it must also allow religious restrictions on land use like this one." But think about what that entails. The state can just as easily make a land use rule that says "no churches" as they can "only churches."
Though if the landowner is smart, they'll just build whatever it is they want and call it the 'Church of...' SCOTUS would be all over defending that.
IANAL but the interesting thing to me is this seems such an easy case to adjudicate, I'm surprised it even went to Hawaii supreme court. There was a 1922 agreement. In 1959 Hawaii's constitution entered into force, rendering it illegal. So it's just done. This is no different than the way some states had religious restrictions on jury membership etc. that got rendered illegal when the US constitution went into force. Going from a territory to a state changed some laws - duh.
So, standard operating procedure for conservative Christianity. Finally a sitting judge says out loud what we all have been thinking. The Roberts court is actively promoting Christianity above everything.
If land can be permanently “zoned” for religion, then give it back to Native Americans! Get those colonists’ faces off Mt Rushmore and let nature turn it back into the Six Grandfathers. How many religious landmarks also of incredible cultural and historical significance have been sold off for non-religious purposes in this country? Read about Mormons’ massacres of defenseless Native women and children. Shame on them for trying to argue that they can determine what to do with stolen land.
The excerpts from this decision, especially the concurrence, are so delicious I'm going to make time today to read the whole thing. But first, standing O to the Hawai'i Supreme Court and Justice Eddins for saying what too many have been afraid to say: the US Supreme Court has made a mockery of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause with their stupid, partisan decision. 🙌 👏👏. And, gawd!, you gotta love how Justice Eddins strips the hide off the Red Court for its decision in Kennedy v Bremerton where they openly relied on made-up facts.
Second, John Roberts is steaming right now, but the one to watch will Sammy Thin Skin who even now is probably phoning around for an 'invitation' to speak at some right-wing legal venue so he can vent his spleen about these uppity justices in Hawaii.
Thanks for starting off my week with on a high note, Hemant!
"The current Court shrinks, alters, and discards historical facts that don’t fit… It “handpicks history to make its own rules,” missing the broader context of a constitutional provision’s original and contemporary purposes."
This opinion is excellent and a decent defense of the first amendment and wall of separation.
Not to undermine it, though it might sound like that, but requiring the Mormons to use their land for religious purposes (any religious group really) is probably a good idea. Since the LDS church is one of (if not the) largest landowners in the USA and they are profiting off the land by outrageous proportions. They own most of the farmland, and a great deal of malls and retail spaces. They use this land and the profits to manipulate the local community and governments, while at the same time avoiding fair taxes. My non-expert opinion is that there should be rules about how religious groups use the land they buy, and get tax exemptions for. I may be wrong, but I can see a future of religious organizations owning people’s homes and requiring church attendance to keep them, or worse consequences of the religious greed.
I do see how this case is unconstitutional and I support the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision. I just don’t think that churches and religions like the LDS and RCC should be buying up property for profit as they do. At least not without proper taxation. Of course I am opposed to corporations getting most of the tax incentives they get as well.
Yeah it sounded to me like the 1922 agreement was to limit what they could do, not to give them some special privilege. I'm guessing protestant groups who wanted to purchase land from the territorial government weren't given "for church only" restrictions.
Before its well-deserved collapse, that empire destroyed indigenous cultures, societies and economies via exploitation and brutal, violent suppresion of resistance. It also led to the implementing of colonial policies that caused famine and widespread death.
We have visited a number of long-haul destinations. Of all of these, the one I wouldn't go back to is Madagascar. Incredible poverty, and the destruction of 80% of its rain forest. In the towns, the only buildings that seem well maintained are the churches.
I don’t even need to read the article. Destroyed the language and destroyed the culture. I was there in the in the late 60s and early 70s when the Hawaiians made some effort to recover both of these..
Not everything appreciates nor depreciates equally.
The island of Manhattan was purchased from the Lanape by the Dutch for around $1000 in 1626. Good luck finding any parcel of land there now at that price.....per square foot.
At the time of casting, the pinnacle of the Washington Monument was the largest piece of aluminum in the world. Weighing 100 ounces, it was valued at over $110 in 1884 - $3,300 today. 100 ounces of aluminum today costs about $7.63.
I'm happy the religious favoritism was overturned. Can't say I'm happy to see another piece of the ecosystem turned into tract housing and strip malls.
Striking down the religious-use clause, invalidates the original contract and makes the sale non-existent. That plot of land must immediately return to the state and the $20 must be restituted to the current owner.
This is very interesting case, because this is not what the Hawaii Supreme Court was saying 50 odd years ago.
Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, one of the Hawaiian Ali’i, and if I remember properly, one of the last of the Kamehameha’s that ruled Hawaii— a long fascinating story all by itself— owned a huge amount of land. The bishop estate is still I think the largest land owner in Hawaii. The sole beneficiary of the estate— again, I am remembering this from decades ago— either Kamehameha schools, established to make sure that Hawaiian children got educated and didn’t just work for people’s jobs. One of the clauses of the estate was that teachers “shall forever be of the protestant faith.” I had to become a make believe Protestant to teach there, so I became a Unitarian because they will embrace any heresy. This particular clause of the estate was challenged all the way to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which rule that it was in fact legal to do this.
I don’t know if this was ever relitigated, or what the current status may be. But a lot of people were disappointed those many years ago because of this.
But back to the present. Good on the court, and extremely good on Justice Eddins. If we survive the current nightmare as a country, and are able to rewrite our constitution, that is my sincere hope that we have among many other things, a definitive and strictly defined separation of church and state. There are a lot of other things that I hope to see as well, but this is one that must occur, like removing an unrestricted right to own as many guns of whatever type and lethality that somebody’s buddy wishes.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏.
And we all know what tradition is: Peer pressure from DEAD PEOPLE. It's also the dodge that religion uses to insert itself into secularity, whether welcome or not, and in this case, clearly NOT. Justice Eddins clearly wasn't having any, and I thank and applaud him for his thorough and unforgiving statement on this issue.
It's way past time that SOMEONE stood up to the Roberts court.
Slavery was tradition. Disallowing women and minorities the right to vote was tradition. Also a rascally rabbi on the rafters fiddling around - yep, tradition.
Feeding christians to the lions was once also a tradition.
According to historian Candida Moss (author of “The Myth of Persection: How Early Chrisitians Invented a Story of Martyrdom”), the bit about xtians being regularly fed to lions is a gross exaggeration by believers and that it was a later embellishment of the actual suffering Christians endured.
When Nicene Christianity (Catholicism) became the state religion of Rome in 380 CE, xtians who were not Catholics suddenly found themselves accused of heresy, had their rights stripped from them and had their property seized by the state. For them, the Catholics were the lions.
While a corrective to the idea that Christians were being fed to the lions several times a day in ancient times, I think she goes a bit too far in the opposite direction after reading her book. Regardless, it's sad but expected that once Christianity became supported by the state that it embraced persecution as long as they could get away with it.
Tradition was the best way Alito could come up with to stop equal application of the religious parts of the 1st amendment to Christianity, but that is probably the only time they'll honor it. For example, the documented, traditional laws going back to the 1800s of towns outlawing gun carrying in town? That won't get the 'ok because tradition' defense.
"rascally rabbi on the rafters fiddling.." Oh now you have gone and done it! Now I can't get that tune out of my head. Thanks Tevya! Oy!!
"And we all know what tradition is: Peer pressure from DEAD PEOPLE. "
It is also a logical fallacy, the argumentum ad antiquitatem.
(I tried to italicise part of the above text, in that I thought substack allowed one to use markdown, however it doesn't seem to work. Can one use markdown here?)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," "That's the way we've ALWAYS done it!" strikes me as the attitude of tradition. Thing is, ain't broke for WHOM?
And for italics and other font alterations, have a look at yaytext.com. I suspect you'll LIKE it! 😁
Um, what do xtians of any stripe need with land? Their book tells them to set their sights on things above, not earthly things.
They don’t read their book. And preserving the parsonage tax exemption is a key part of their alliance with Right libertarians. Real estate investment is what drives the MAGA/Trump cult. Even Erika Kirk, grifting widow, is now into the real estate game. Trump Gaza’s not going to build itself.
Of course if the Rapture really is tomorrow 🤔 who’s going to oversee the Christian Zionist timeshare condo construction? Ah yes, the Dominionists, Dutch Reformed, prosperity gospel, and New Apostolic Reformation I assume will be staying here. And the Opus Dei Catholics will probably be Left Behind as well…. And the Kahanist Israelis. 🙄🤦♀️
A ponzi scheme pyramid needs a foundation.
Hey, two days in a row. Is the world ending ?
It helps that Hemant's back on his schedule and all my weekend business is done. ;)
No, twice in a row that we beat Oraxx.
Ah!
Wasn't it Jesus-loving sugar warriors that came into Hawai'i and took it over? Look what happened to the native population and its land.
Christianity destroys everything it touches. Especially native cultures (as indigenous people of this country can attest).
Comment deserves an upvote just for the words "Jesus-loving sugar warriors."
Wish I could take credit for the phrase. Somebody else came up with that genius observation. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIB9Y4OFPs
Was going to post “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies but then thought better of it.
You mean like the Dole pineapple folks.
Indeed
If someone in Hawaii appealed this up to SCOTUS, they would swat him down with glee. With their shadow docket, the Supremes are ruling by unexplained edict. We are no longer in a Constitutional Republic. It has been manipulated into an authoritarian dictatorship. We now find ourselves in the unhappy situation of having to fight to regain our former government by rule of law.
This one's a double-edged sword. SCOTUS *could* smack it down by saying "if Hawaii allows secular restrictions on land use, it must also allow religious restrictions on land use like this one." But think about what that entails. The state can just as easily make a land use rule that says "no churches" as they can "only churches."
Though if the landowner is smart, they'll just build whatever it is they want and call it the 'Church of...' SCOTUS would be all over defending that.
IANAL but the interesting thing to me is this seems such an easy case to adjudicate, I'm surprised it even went to Hawaii supreme court. There was a 1922 agreement. In 1959 Hawaii's constitution entered into force, rendering it illegal. So it's just done. This is no different than the way some states had religious restrictions on jury membership etc. that got rendered illegal when the US constitution went into force. Going from a territory to a state changed some laws - duh.
Yep. Sadistic SCOTUS is beyond compromised. I think boycott and strike is the most meaningful tool left at our disposal.
I didn't phrase this very well - by 'him' I mean Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins.
Dictator for a Day
Dictatorforadayshow.com
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑠, 𝑎𝑙𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑓𝑖𝑡… 𝐼𝑡 “ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑝𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑒𝑠,” 𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛’𝑠 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑝𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑠.
So, standard operating procedure for conservative Christianity. Finally a sitting judge says out loud what we all have been thinking. The Roberts court is actively promoting Christianity above everything.
If land can be permanently “zoned” for religion, then give it back to Native Americans! Get those colonists’ faces off Mt Rushmore and let nature turn it back into the Six Grandfathers. How many religious landmarks also of incredible cultural and historical significance have been sold off for non-religious purposes in this country? Read about Mormons’ massacres of defenseless Native women and children. Shame on them for trying to argue that they can determine what to do with stolen land.
The excerpts from this decision, especially the concurrence, are so delicious I'm going to make time today to read the whole thing. But first, standing O to the Hawai'i Supreme Court and Justice Eddins for saying what too many have been afraid to say: the US Supreme Court has made a mockery of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause with their stupid, partisan decision. 🙌 👏👏. And, gawd!, you gotta love how Justice Eddins strips the hide off the Red Court for its decision in Kennedy v Bremerton where they openly relied on made-up facts.
Second, John Roberts is steaming right now, but the one to watch will Sammy Thin Skin who even now is probably phoning around for an 'invitation' to speak at some right-wing legal venue so he can vent his spleen about these uppity justices in Hawaii.
Thanks for starting off my week with on a high note, Hemant!
"History is prone to misuse."
So does Science.
"The current Court shrinks, alters, and discards historical facts that don’t fit… It “handpicks history to make its own rules,” missing the broader context of a constitutional provision’s original and contemporary purposes."
Just like creationists.
This opinion is excellent and a decent defense of the first amendment and wall of separation.
Not to undermine it, though it might sound like that, but requiring the Mormons to use their land for religious purposes (any religious group really) is probably a good idea. Since the LDS church is one of (if not the) largest landowners in the USA and they are profiting off the land by outrageous proportions. They own most of the farmland, and a great deal of malls and retail spaces. They use this land and the profits to manipulate the local community and governments, while at the same time avoiding fair taxes. My non-expert opinion is that there should be rules about how religious groups use the land they buy, and get tax exemptions for. I may be wrong, but I can see a future of religious organizations owning people’s homes and requiring church attendance to keep them, or worse consequences of the religious greed.
I do see how this case is unconstitutional and I support the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision. I just don’t think that churches and religions like the LDS and RCC should be buying up property for profit as they do. At least not without proper taxation. Of course I am opposed to corporations getting most of the tax incentives they get as well.
Yeah it sounded to me like the 1922 agreement was to limit what they could do, not to give them some special privilege. I'm guessing protestant groups who wanted to purchase land from the territorial government weren't given "for church only" restrictions.
Speaking of history...
"What U.S. Occupation Did to Hawai'i"
youtu.be/NO83K8s8dnk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Madagascar
And then there's the very xtian British Empire.
Before its well-deserved collapse, that empire destroyed indigenous cultures, societies and economies via exploitation and brutal, violent suppresion of resistance. It also led to the implementing of colonial policies that caused famine and widespread death.
And made ever more destruction when they were kicked out. The partition of the ex Moghol empire still has consequences today.
We have visited a number of long-haul destinations. Of all of these, the one I wouldn't go back to is Madagascar. Incredible poverty, and the destruction of 80% of its rain forest. In the towns, the only buildings that seem well maintained are the churches.
I don’t even need to read the article. Destroyed the language and destroyed the culture. I was there in the in the late 60s and early 70s when the Hawaiians made some effort to recover both of these..
Ouch ! Dans les dents john bobhead.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1922?amount=20
"$20 in 1922 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $385.69 today"
That seems a very good deal, actually a little too good.
Not everything appreciates nor depreciates equally.
The island of Manhattan was purchased from the Lanape by the Dutch for around $1000 in 1626. Good luck finding any parcel of land there now at that price.....per square foot.
At the time of casting, the pinnacle of the Washington Monument was the largest piece of aluminum in the world. Weighing 100 ounces, it was valued at over $110 in 1884 - $3,300 today. 100 ounces of aluminum today costs about $7.63.
I bet some of Trump's property is less than that. Except when it isn't.
I'm happy the religious favoritism was overturned. Can't say I'm happy to see another piece of the ecosystem turned into tract housing and strip malls.
Striking down the religious-use clause, invalidates the original contract and makes the sale non-existent. That plot of land must immediately return to the state and the $20 must be restituted to the current owner.
$ 385.69.
Sounds like Justice Eddins didn't get his free $250,000 RV and he's pissed!
Superb summary and analysis, Hemant. Kudos again to your valuable perspective and insights.
This is very interesting case, because this is not what the Hawaii Supreme Court was saying 50 odd years ago.
Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, one of the Hawaiian Ali’i, and if I remember properly, one of the last of the Kamehameha’s that ruled Hawaii— a long fascinating story all by itself— owned a huge amount of land. The bishop estate is still I think the largest land owner in Hawaii. The sole beneficiary of the estate— again, I am remembering this from decades ago— either Kamehameha schools, established to make sure that Hawaiian children got educated and didn’t just work for people’s jobs. One of the clauses of the estate was that teachers “shall forever be of the protestant faith.” I had to become a make believe Protestant to teach there, so I became a Unitarian because they will embrace any heresy. This particular clause of the estate was challenged all the way to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which rule that it was in fact legal to do this.
I don’t know if this was ever relitigated, or what the current status may be. But a lot of people were disappointed those many years ago because of this.
But back to the present. Good on the court, and extremely good on Justice Eddins. If we survive the current nightmare as a country, and are able to rewrite our constitution, that is my sincere hope that we have among many other things, a definitive and strictly defined separation of church and state. There are a lot of other things that I hope to see as well, but this is one that must occur, like removing an unrestricted right to own as many guns of whatever type and lethality that somebody’s buddy wishes.
I am nitpicking but is that estate a public or private entity and does it funds public or private schools ?
Only the Kamehameha Schools, if I recall. I dont know its public-private status.
Private with a very exclusive admissions process, mostly for those of hawaiian descent.