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# Separation of church and state is crucial to democracy
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/separation-of-church-and-state-is-crucial-to-democracy/
- Published: 2005-05-10T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:02:25.000Z
- Author: David Pisarra
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

America is under attack. Again. This time though, the terrorists are not the Muslims, the Japanese or the Godless Communists. In fact it is the God-fearing, Bible-waving, pontificating pupils of totalitarianism. Our most dangerous enemy is not North Korea — even though they scare the heck out of me — nor is it a man in a cave. It’s those nicely dressed, overly polite people who always seem to be carrying a casserole dish.

Our republic is under attack from the church lady. Well, really it’s her husband, who as the head of their biblically-run household, is the one to fear. He is the man who, in his abdication of his duty as a rational thinking man, has let others do his thinking for him. He just blindly follows, and brings his dutiful wife and their two tow-headed children along for the ride down bigotry boulevard.

The Republicans have figured this out and are using it to their advantage to reconfigure our republic. With the federal government and most of the state governments firmly in the hands of the Republicans, they are quickly, and not quietly, turning our country into a theocracy.

President Bush is the head of the Republican party, and as such, his FaithBased Initiatives; his position on the death penalty and abortion debate; his force feeding of Jesus Christ by way of programs that the federal government is supporting; his miserable AIDS policies and contraception policies; his outright intolerance for people whose lives don’t precisely mirror his own amoral, soulless life and his pontifications of being “needed by his country and chosen by God,” are all direct corollaries to the totalitarianism that we put away 60 years ago in Germany, and that our forefathers fled from in 1620.

The dangers of totalitarianism are well known in this world. One quick trip through a history book and one can see that any society that has let religion become ensconced in its laws leads quickly to terror, torture, abuse of the minority by the religious majority, and the wholesale destruction of the fabric of that society.

Religion does not create a fabric of society. Religion creates a communal touchstone for arrogance, bigotry, intolerance, hatred, and creating “otherness.” Religion creates a mechanism for people who are all abdicating their thought-life to others, to feel commonality, one-ness, and “part of.”

Religious teaching blinds people to the wonders of the true fabric of our society: The warp and weave of the people who comprise our America. The differences that make us a strong country. There is a reason why inbreeding is bad for a species and the same rule applies to society. When we all think, act, and dress the same, breakdown is near.

There are people who think I am wrong. They believe that the Republicans are only doing the “right” thing and that they are bringing America back to morality. I can only surmise that they lost no member of their family, extended or otherwise in the Holocaust, or possibly, they don’t believe the Holocaust happened. There are such people in this world who refuse to believe that such a thing happened.

There are still others who believe that it couldn’t happen again. They don’t read much.

It takes but a cursory examination of the first section of any large metropolitan newspaper to see that the atrocities continue, on the African continent, Central America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

If you feel that in America we do not have atrocities, and we never will, I would like to point out to you the fact that in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, we used black men in Tuskegee, Ala., to study the long term effects of syphilis on the human body, without their knowing it and without their consent.

Some will say that, “it was a different time,” and “we’ve learned from then, not to do that.” They would be wrong. This past week, the Associated Press reported that children in foster care have been used by our government as guinea pigs for drug tests.

These would be the same children who are trotted out when the religious Republicans want to spout off about the value of life, and the importance of two heterosexual parents in a household.

The Republicans like to talk about their culture of life and their “Traditional Family Values.” President Bush may state unequivocally his understanding of the separation of church and state, but his actions do not support it. He took an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. But his actions show clearly that he is a man who is willing to blur the lines between the Constitution and the rhetoric of religion to achieve his goals. And once the lines become blurry, all bets are off.

America has a history of being a place of tolerance on the one hand, and deep seated bigotry and hatred on the other. Usually the bigots and haters cloak themselves, (sometimes literally a’la the KKK) as people of Christ, and hide behind the Bible as justification for the “rightness” of their position.

The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they instituted a separation of church and state — they just didn’t go far enough. There needs to be a Great Wall between the religious zealots on the one hand, and the leaders of our country on the other.

I believe there should be a religious test of faith for anyone who wants to be a leader. It should be that anyone who is a regular church member is barred from a position of leadership.

I’ll take a Godless heathen over a religious zealot judging me any day. (David Pisarra is a partner in the Santa Monica law firm of Pisarra & Grist. He (310) 664- 9969 or by e-mail at )

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 10, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/051005.pdf?ref=smdp.com)