Senate Redraws State Board of Education District Boundaries

Yes, because of the 2010 Census, all the district boundaries are set to be redrawn by a Republican majority Texas legislature. Today I saw where they decided to change my district from District 10 to District 7.

You can see if you are affected by going here.

So, I lose representation by one Republican, and gain representation by another one. Arguably a more conservative one if the stories I hear about David Bradley are accurate.

In commenting on his attitudes toward the constitution and religion during the board’s recent adoption of social studies standards, Bradley is famously known for saying this:

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation between church and state. I have $1000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the constitution.”

Now the words separation between church and state do not appear anywhere in the constitution. But neither do the words homosexual, gay or lesbian appear in the constitution. Yet the constitution has been used as a basis for the argument that discrimination on account of sexual orientation is illegal.

You see, the constitution was written to be overly general in some areas, and overly specific in others. Guidance in figuring out what the Framers had in mind in the general areas is usually provided by examination of what the Framers wrote separately, in personal letters and in The Federalist Papers.

So when the Establishment Clause of the 1^st Amendment was written, what was on the mind of the Framers? What was on the mind of the Framers when they added this little beauty to the constitution?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”

Look no further than Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. In it he wrote this:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

Quod Erat Demonstratum.

So Mr. Bradley, you can cut a check for the Fort Bend County Women’s Center. They could use a break from a man, and not the kind of breaks that they usually receive from men.