7 ms·

Hypothetical question. Suppose I love calculus so much, I want to share it with the whole world. So I rent a building and announce free food to the homeless on

by xamuel 7y ago

Hypothetical question. Suppose I love calculus so much, I want to share it with the whole world. So I rent a building and announce free food to the homeless on condition that they attend my lectures on calculus. Would you bar me from ejecting people who want to come in for the free food but refuse to attend the lectures?

StavrosK 7y ago
No, but the main tenet of calculus isn't selflessly loving your fellow man.
- leptoniscool 7y ago
  You haven't been introduced to my new religion: Calculove
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    Is that the one that teaches you to love your fellow man like an algebro?
shmageggy 7y ago
There is no constitutional principal of separation of math and state, so the analogy doesn't hold
- brink 7y ago
  These shelters aren't state.
  - slg 7y ago
    Plenty of these shelters, including the faith-based ones, receive state funds.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      Plenty don’t. And in this example there was no mention of state funds.
  - shmageggy 7y ago
    I was referring to the act of arresting and jailing someone, something carried out by the state
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    No, they're religious. And the City of Boise will threaten to put you in jail if you would rather sleep outside than listen to mandatory religious sermons and participate in mandatory religious activities to have access to the shelter. That was one of the keys - "the City said it wouldn't cite people when shelters weren't open", but the plaintiffs said that one of the religious shelters had an "always open" policy, even if they didn't actually have beds, and they did require religious participation, so the city's point was effectively moot.
- rayiner 7y ago
  There is no constitutional principle of separation of church and state either. The Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The "separation" concept was manufactured a century after the Bill of Rights was enacted: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythical-wall-separation-how-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythic.... At the time Massachusetts ratified the First Amendment, everyone was required to belong to a church and State tax money was used to support those churches: http://www.statelegalhistory.com/home/1-new-england-legal-history/1-2-new-england-1787-1833-the-early-national-era/1-2-1-new-england-1787-1833-the-end-of-state-supported-religion http://www.statelegalhistory.com/home/1-new-england-legal-hi.... Several New England states had government-supported churches well into the 1800s.
  - pcwalton 7y ago
    > The "separation" concept was manufactured a century after the Bill of Rights was enacted: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythical-wall-separation-how-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythic... And the opposite view: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constitutional-myth-4-the-constitution-doesnt-separate-church-and-state/240481/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constit...
    - rayiner 7y ago
      Yes, there is an opposite view. I will add a few observations about the opposite view: 1) It's full of invective and straw-man arguments. It accuses Christine O'Donnell of not having read the Establishment Clause, for example. And it makes a completely irrelevant reference to "old antebellum slave oligarchies," even though it was the free New England states that were the ones that had state-supported churches. 2) It makes tenuous arguments. The "words 'separation of church and state' are not in the text," the article concedes. But "the idea of separation is" present. Of course! In support of that view, it points to the fact that the Constitution prohibits religious tests for office. "If government can't require its officials to support a church," it reasons, "is there a serious argument that church and state are not separate?" Of course, the prohibition on religious tests is entirely consistent with the existence of a plurality of public religions. It also pulls a "??? Profit!" over the most significant issue: what does "no law respecting an establishment of religion" mean? The article states that it "mean[s] that not only no church but no 'religion' could be made the official faith of the United States." That reads the phrase as "no law establish[ing] [a] religion." But if that's what the Framers meant, they would have written that. That's how they wrote the rest of the first amendment "no law ... prohibiting ... or abridging ...." 3) As with the present Supreme Court precedent on the subject, the article rests almost entirely on the letter of Thomas Jefferson. But Jefferson (a) was not a Framer; and (b) was a radical wingnut. What he thought about things carries some weight, but not all that much. (I would add that almost everyone who invokes Jefferson's view to interpret the First Amendment would recoil in horror at invoking his views to interpret the Second.)
DoreenMichele 7y ago
If the point is calculus, you can give away free food to anyone. That additional condition of "for the homeless" gives the lie to the claim that the goal is merely to share your love of calculus. There is, in fact, a church in northern San Diego county that has a free meal open to anyone on Friday nights, no questions asked. It does involve listening to a sermon. It's one of the best free meals I attended while homeless and I wrote it up on one of my websites as a model program that should be copied because it was so well done.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  That sounds benign on the face of it, but one wonders how high pressure sales the sermon is. I like the Sikh approach in providing meals at every Gurdwara. A free meal is available to anyone of any wealth, race, or religion with the only conditions that you eat with everyone else, remove your shoes and cover your hair. No sermon, no lecture, just unconditional -- and very good -- food as part of a deeply held sense of community. They have leapt to help in disasters, kept going through riots a few years back, and keep sticking to those principles as numbers keep rising. Rising because the UK government created a need for food banks out of nowhere over ten years, and more and more now need free food... I keep hearing of quiet Sikh efforts across the country as our government deconstructs the benefits system and safety net. I'm life-long atheist, but I feel much warmer toward our Sikh communities than the UK's formerly christian heritage - where charity so often seems to come with a catch, or a sales pitch, or worse is conspicuously absent. The Sikh sense of community feels far stronger, and more of a true belief as a result.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    A different comment by me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805859 I think the Sikh community probably was the source of the absolute best homeless meal I ever got, but I wasn't offended at listening to them share their Christian faith at the program mentioned above and it was a good meal, far better than most homeless meals. There is zero contradiction in saying "Don't hold homeless people hostage for a meal" and saying "Offering a free meal as part of sharing something you love -- be it Calculus or Christianity -- with whomever wishes to join you is not the same as holding homeless people hostage." They are entirely different points and they in no way conflict.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
munk-a 7y ago
I'd have no qualms of barring you from ejecting people who refuse to attend the lectures if you are offering food and shelter conditional on a lecture to the homeless - but it wouldn't be defensible for me to do so under separation of religion - I just think it's annoying that you'd feel entitled to control people's time like that, it's essentially reinforcing a devaluation of their lives and opportunities. But that's a darn good example because free food with a lecture (or timeshare opportunity, or conference on industry tool) is a really common occurrence marketing wise and it raises a question that I can't answer in terms of legal and moral right - those lunch and learn conferences, do some people feel pressured to attend because it's subsidizing the cost of their lunch that day? How much time do they lose to engaging in such things and how many of them missed better job opportunities because of it.
- datashow 7y ago
  > but it wouldn't be defensible for me to do so under separation of religion I don't understand your sentence. "separation of religion" with what? Is there a law stating religion needs to be separated from everything else?
  - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
    It's the first amendment of the US Constitution.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    The Constitution. But, that only applies to charities receiving state funding. If you want to self-fund a dinner-for-calculus program, you are free to do so.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      Unless, like in the case of this specific article - you are getting the government to jail people for not attending.
      - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deogeo 7y ago
I don't think the poster was implying the shelters shouldn't be allowed to eject people. Merely that it would, hypothetically, be very unfortunate if someone were compelled to agree to a shelter's demands, because being ejected would mean they are jailed for sleeping outdoors.
henryfjordan 7y ago
The ruling doesn't say that you cannot do exactly what you describe. You can still deny the homeless a room if they don't want to listen to your lecture on Calculus or Jesus. What the ruling says is that you cannot prosecute a person for sleeping on the street if they have nowhere to go, and that a room that comes attached with a lecture about your life choices doesn't count as a place to go.
- xamuel 7y ago
  It's a very interesting question. I suppose the logic of the ruling shouldn't be restricted to "official" religions at all. Even in the calculus example, we can imagine there could be homeless people who are religiously opposed to calculus, and I agree that the calculus shelter shouldn't be counted as a place to go, for such people.
Tyr42 7y ago
I mean, have you seen how many more college students show up to our for fun cs lectures when we offer free food?

by xamuel 7y ago

StavrosK 7y ago

No, but the main tenet of calculus isn't selflessly loving your fellow man.

leptoniscool 7y ago
You haven't been introduced to my new religion: Calculove
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Is that the one that teaches you to love your fellow man like an algebro?

shmageggy 7y ago

There is no constitutional principal of separation of math and state, so the analogy doesn't hold

brink 7y ago
These shelters aren't state.
- slg 7y ago
  Plenty of these shelters, including the faith-based ones, receive state funds.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Plenty don’t. And in this example there was no mention of state funds.
- shmageggy 7y ago
  I was referring to the act of arresting and jailing someone, something carried out by the state
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  No, they're religious. And the City of Boise will threaten to put you in jail if you would rather sleep outside than listen to mandatory religious sermons and participate in mandatory religious activities to have access to the shelter. That was one of the keys - "the City said it wouldn't cite people when shelters weren't open", but the plaintiffs said that one of the religious shelters had an "always open" policy, even if they didn't actually have beds, and they did require religious participation, so the city's point was effectively moot.
rayiner 7y ago
There is no constitutional principle of separation of church and state either. The Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The "separation" concept was manufactured a century after the Bill of Rights was enacted: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythical-wall-separation-how-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythic.... At the time Massachusetts ratified the First Amendment, everyone was required to belong to a church and State tax money was used to support those churches: http://www.statelegalhistory.com/home/1-new-england-legal-history/1-2-new-england-1787-1833-the-early-national-era/1-2-1-new-england-1787-1833-the-end-of-state-supported-religion http://www.statelegalhistory.com/home/1-new-england-legal-hi.... Several New England states had government-supported churches well into the 1800s.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  > The "separation" concept was manufactured a century after the Bill of Rights was enacted: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythical-wall-separation-how-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythic... And the opposite view: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constitutional-myth-4-the-constitution-doesnt-separate-church-and-state/240481/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constit...
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Yes, there is an opposite view. I will add a few observations about the opposite view: 1) It's full of invective and straw-man arguments. It accuses Christine O'Donnell of not having read the Establishment Clause, for example. And it makes a completely irrelevant reference to "old antebellum slave oligarchies," even though it was the free New England states that were the ones that had state-supported churches. 2) It makes tenuous arguments. The "words 'separation of church and state' are not in the text," the article concedes. But "the idea of separation is" present. Of course! In support of that view, it points to the fact that the Constitution prohibits religious tests for office. "If government can't require its officials to support a church," it reasons, "is there a serious argument that church and state are not separate?" Of course, the prohibition on religious tests is entirely consistent with the existence of a plurality of public religions. It also pulls a "??? Profit!" over the most significant issue: what does "no law respecting an establishment of religion" mean? The article states that it "mean[s] that not only no church but no 'religion' could be made the official faith of the United States." That reads the phrase as "no law establish[ing] [a] religion." But if that's what the Framers meant, they would have written that. That's how they wrote the rest of the first amendment "no law ... prohibiting ... or abridging ...." 3) As with the present Supreme Court precedent on the subject, the article rests almost entirely on the letter of Thomas Jefferson. But Jefferson (a) was not a Framer; and (b) was a radical wingnut. What he thought about things carries some weight, but not all that much. (I would add that almost everyone who invokes Jefferson's view to interpret the First Amendment would recoil in horror at invoking his views to interpret the Second.)

DoreenMichele 7y ago

If the point is calculus, you can give away free food to anyone. That additional condition of "for the homeless" gives the lie to the claim that the goal is merely to share your love of calculus. There is, in fact, a church in northern San Diego county that has a free meal open to anyone on Friday nights, no questions asked. It does involve listening to a sermon. It's one of the best free meals I attended while homeless and I wrote it up on one of my websites as a model program that should be copied because it was so well done.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
That sounds benign on the face of it, but one wonders how high pressure sales the sermon is. I like the Sikh approach in providing meals at every Gurdwara. A free meal is available to anyone of any wealth, race, or religion with the only conditions that you eat with everyone else, remove your shoes and cover your hair. No sermon, no lecture, just unconditional -- and very good -- food as part of a deeply held sense of community. They have leapt to help in disasters, kept going through riots a few years back, and keep sticking to those principles as numbers keep rising. Rising because the UK government created a need for food banks out of nowhere over ten years, and more and more now need free food... I keep hearing of quiet Sikh efforts across the country as our government deconstructs the benefits system and safety net. I'm life-long atheist, but I feel much warmer toward our Sikh communities than the UK's formerly christian heritage - where charity so often seems to come with a catch, or a sales pitch, or worse is conspicuously absent. The Sikh sense of community feels far stronger, and more of a true belief as a result.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  A different comment by me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805859 I think the Sikh community probably was the source of the absolute best homeless meal I ever got, but I wasn't offended at listening to them share their Christian faith at the program mentioned above and it was a good meal, far better than most homeless meals. There is zero contradiction in saying "Don't hold homeless people hostage for a meal" and saying "Offering a free meal as part of sharing something you love -- be it Calculus or Christianity -- with whomever wishes to join you is not the same as holding homeless people hostage." They are entirely different points and they in no way conflict.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

munk-a 7y ago

I'd have no qualms of barring you from ejecting people who refuse to attend the lectures if you are offering food and shelter conditional on a lecture to the homeless - but it wouldn't be defensible for me to do so under separation of religion - I just think it's annoying that you'd feel entitled to control people's time like that, it's essentially reinforcing a devaluation of their lives and opportunities. But that's a darn good example because free food with a lecture (or timeshare opportunity, or conference on industry tool) is a really common occurrence marketing wise and it raises a question that I can't answer in terms of legal and moral right - those lunch and learn conferences, do some people feel pressured to attend because it's subsidizing the cost of their lunch that day? How much time do they lose to engaging in such things and how many of them missed better job opportunities because of it.

datashow 7y ago
> but it wouldn't be defensible for me to do so under separation of religion I don't understand your sentence. "separation of religion" with what? Is there a law stating religion needs to be separated from everything else?
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago
  It's the first amendment of the US Constitution.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  The Constitution. But, that only applies to charities receiving state funding. If you want to self-fund a dinner-for-calculus program, you are free to do so.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Unless, like in the case of this specific article - you are getting the government to jail people for not attending.
    - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deogeo 7y ago

I don't think the poster was implying the shelters shouldn't be allowed to eject people. Merely that it would, hypothetically, be very unfortunate if someone were compelled to agree to a shelter's demands, because being ejected would mean they are jailed for sleeping outdoors.

henryfjordan 7y ago

The ruling doesn't say that you cannot do exactly what you describe. You can still deny the homeless a room if they don't want to listen to your lecture on Calculus or Jesus. What the ruling says is that you cannot prosecute a person for sleeping on the street if they have nowhere to go, and that a room that comes attached with a lecture about your life choices doesn't count as a place to go.

xamuel 7y ago
It's a very interesting question. I suppose the logic of the ruling shouldn't be restricted to "official" religions at all. Even in the calculus example, we can imagine there could be homeless people who are religiously opposed to calculus, and I agree that the calculus shelter shouldn't be counted as a place to go, for such people.

Tyr42 7y ago

I mean, have you seen how many more college students show up to our for fun cs lectures when we offer free food?