The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

the yeAR of Living dAngeRousLy 193
larity in his regular Saturday morning radio address on Feb. 25, 1984:
“Sometimes I can’t help but feel the First Amendment is being turned on
its head, because ask yourselves, ‘Can it really be true that the First
Amendment can permit Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen to march on public
property, advocate the extermination of people of the Jewish faith and
the subjugation of blacks, while the same amendment forbids our children
from saying a prayer in school?’ . . . (Consider) the case of the kindergarten
class reciting a verse before their milk and cookies. They said,
‘We thank you for the flowers so sweet. We thank you for the food we eat.
We thank you for the birds that sing. We thank you, God, for everything.’
But a Federal court of appeals ordered them to stop. They were supposedly
violating the Constitution of the United States.”
Howard Baker asked Gorton and Rudman—two heavy thinkers, one an
Episcopalian, the other a Jew—to draft an alternative to Reagan’s proposed
constitutional amendment on school prayer, one that might be more acceptable
to Democrats and moderate Republicans. Rudman respectfully
declined. Gorton plunged right in. Believing the Reagan amendment
smacked of state sponsorship of school prayer, his solution was this: “The
accommodation by the United States of the religious speech of any person
. . . shall not constitute an establishment of religion.” The key word was
“accommodation,” Gorton said. “The goal should be to treat religion equally
with other forms of free expression.” His amendment would permit voluntary
prayer, whether spoken or silent, so long as it was not mandated or
otherwise directed by school officials. Religious groups would be permitted
to use public school facilities on an equal extracurricular basis with the
gay and lesbian league or chess club. Neither proposal—Reagan’s or his
own—would have any impact on Washington State, Gorton pointed out,
since the state constitution bans “virtually any kind of religious activity in
public schools.” Evans was opposed to a constitutional amendment, as were
Lowry, Pritchard and Bonker, a devout Christian who said that when prayer
becomes institutionalized “it loses its spiritual meaning and it is in danger
of becoming a mockery.” 12
Reagan’s amendment made it to the Senate floor where it was rejected
56-44, eleven votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority. Gorton,
Evans, Hatfield, Packwood, Rudman, Goldwater, Kassebaum and Boschwitz
were among the 18 Republicans voting no. Jerry Falwell, president
of the Moral Majority, prophesized, “Like those in ancient Israel who
cried out to their oppressors, ‘Let my people go!’ those of us who are oppressed
by our political leadership today are also crying for them to let us
go or we plan to let them go in November.” 13