Mayor Adams: Don’t Mess with Separation of Church and State

By DONNA LIEBERMAN Executive Director of New York Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of NY

Guest Editorial

Mayor Eric Adams’s outlandish comments during an interfaith breakfast Tuesday criticizing the nation’s constitutionally mandated separation of church and state were playing with fire.

“Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body, church is the heart,” Adams said during Tuesday’s event.

“You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”

The mayor also asserted, “When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”

Adams made these statements after his chief advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin introduced him at the breakfast by saying that the Adams administration “doesn’t believe” in the separation of church and state.

Let’s be clear: Religion is a fundamental part of millions of New Yorkers’ lives and faith has played a crucial role in many of our nation’s achievements, including the Civil Rights Movement. That’s why freedom of religion is so important.

But we are a nation and a city filled with people of many faiths and no faith. If government is going to represent all of us, it can’t favor any religious belief over another. That includes non-belief.

It isn’t like Adams should need to be reminded of what the First Amendment requires. He has sworn to uphold the Constitution more than once, first as a police officer, later as a state senator, and then last year upon becoming mayor. The very opening passage of the Bill of Rights makes clear that in matters of religion, the government must remain a neutral non-participant.

The dangers of the government favoring religion are not theoretical. When the government prefers one religion over another, it undermines the religious freedom of all of us. There are numerous examples from our city’s recent history alone when public officials or institutions have discriminated against New Yorkers because of their faith, or tried to use government power to ad- vance religious causes. Here are two that stand out.

In 1999, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to shut down the Brooklyn Museum over the “Sensation” exhibition, which featured a painting depicting the Virgin Mary in a way that offended the mayor’s religious sensibilities. Giuliani tried to pull city funding from the museum and terminate its city-issued lease, but he lost his case in court.

We at the NYCLU argued, in a brief in support of the museum, that Giuliani flagrantly violated the well-established First Amendment prohibition against viewpoint discrimination.

Then, a little over a decade ago, the Associated Press broke the news that, since at least 2002, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division had engaged in the religious profiling and suspicionless surveillance of Muslims in New York City and beyond. The unit singled out Muslim religious and community leaders, mosques, student associations, organizations, and businesses for pervasive, discriminatory surveillance that was exclusively focused on Muslims.

The NYCLU successfully sued the police department over these disturbing and illegal practices. The lawsuit resulted in the creation of a position for an independent civilian representative in the NYPD who now acts as a check against surveillance abuses.

In addition to our recent past, there is, of course, a much longer story to tell, stretching back to colonial New York, in which Catholics were denied religious and civil rights. And so on. Adams’s team is now claiming that those New Yorkers expressing concern over his comments are distorting his meaning—that he was making a point about what animates his leadership.

But, without even considering what goes on in theocracies around the world, our city’s history alone shows why Adams is playing a dangerous game by casually dismissing the well-established partition between religion and public policy.

On matters of faith, Mayor Adams is entitled to his own beliefs. On the Constitution, he must uphold his oath.

Black history isn’t “controversial,” it’s real life

By SVANTE MYRICK

caught in the crosshairs.

Member

Alliance for Audited Media

Elinor R. Tatum: Publisher and Editor in Chief

Kristin Fayne-Mulroy: Managing Editor

Nayaba Arinde: Editor

Cyril Josh Barker: Digital Editor

Damaso Reyes: Investigative Editor

Siobhan

"Sam" Bennett: Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Advertising

Wilbert A. Tatum (1984-2009): Chairman of the Board, CEO and Publisher Emeritus

Black history is the undeniable history of this country—its people, actions, triumphs, and atrocities. Yet, Black history is deemed “controversial” by people like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, institutions like the College Board that attempt to water down curricula, and those who press for outright bans on teaching about the contributions and experiences of African Americans in public schools. A battle is raging right now against terms like “intersectional” and “systemic marginalization.” Meanwhile, the freedom to learn, the future of education, and the brilliance of our children are

The context of historical events, and things many of us have directly experienced, are being called concepts too complex or challenging for high school students to appreciate.

First, this is an obvious smokescreen. But to these critics, the response should be clear: How can the lived and daily experiences of millions of people be “too controversial” to teach in school? The answer: They can’t, and it’s our moral duty to ensure our children understand that.

Attempts to ban history are inherently malicious

When I say Black history is American history, I know it’s true, you know it’s true, and the people who think Black history shouldn’t be taught in schools know it’s true. That’s why they want it banned. Hiding our history is an attempt to rob us of our historic voice, erase our contributions, and make our justified outrage look unreasonable.

The attacks are also designed to further divide us as a nation. When Black history is taught prominently in schools, students learn to see Blackness and Americanness as one and the same. That’s precisely what opponents don’t want.

If you’re banning history, you’re on the wrong side of it

Throughout all of world history, the people attempting to limit, rewrite, or ban history have had one thing in common: They were the bad guys. We’ve seen the tactic used to oppress any number of groups around the globe, the most obvious of which was Nazi Germany banning and burning books about everything from Judaism to human sexuality. With such abundant historical evidence that banning the teaching of history is morally abhorrent, it’s even more shocking that we’re still having to defend against it today.

Attacks on education are attacks on the past, present, and future History deserves to be taught authenSee BLACK HISTORY on page 31