A liberal learns “The Blaine Game”

by David Safier
I had some other items I wanted to blog about today, but Matthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institute has kept me pinned down on this voucher thing. As Al Pacino said in Godfather 3, "Just when I thought I was out . . ."

When I wrote about the State Supreme Court ruling that vouchers violate the State Constitution, Ladner got all Civil Rights on me:

What he's referring to here is The Blaine Amendment. A number of states including Arizona have a version of it in their constitutions. It says, basically, that the state can't pay for religious education. And Ladner is correct, its original intent when it was crafted in the 19th century was to stop public funding of Catholic schools.

Who knew the Blaine Amendment is a huge deal with the voucher crowd? Not many liberals, I imagine, myself included. Now I know.

So, here's some reasonably objective historical background on The Blaine Amendment.

The first thing you need to know is that, in the 19th century, U.S. public schools had a distinctly Protestant religious tone. The Protestant version of the Bible was part of the curriculum, and Protestant prayers were said on school time.

A large Catholic immigration began in the late 19th century, creating a strong anti-Catholic backlash in the country. But even without consideration of the backlash, Catholic immigrants refused to let their children be deluged with Protestant theology in the public schools. That's the main reason we have the large, longstanding network of Catholic Schools in this country.

What would have happened if the public schools didn't have religious instruction at the time? Possibly, there would be far fewer Catholic schools right now (That, by the way, is a historical supposition, not a statement of preference).

The public didn't want Catholic schools to get public funding, and a politician named James Blaine figured he could score some political points using the nation's anti-Catholic bigotry, so he proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prohibit states from funding religious education (Of course, Protestant prayers and Bible readings in the public schools were perfectly fine). The amendment failed, but versions of the wording of the amendment went into 36 state constitutions, including Arizona's.

And that's why the pro voucher crowd is so intent on demonizing the Blaine Amendment, because it blocks their attempts to push vouchers, since vouchers always include religious schools — which, by the way, make up about 70-80% of the private schools in the U.S.

So, yes, the Blaine Amendment was founded on religious bigotry, because it was targeted at Catholics while ignoring the Protestant teachings in public schools. If it had eliminated religious teaching from public schools as well, it possibly would have created a more equitable arrangement that would have benefited the country, since it would have treated all religions equally and separated religious teaching from public education.

Most of the websites about the Blaine Amendment are pro voucher, so they couch the argument in similar terms to the ones Ladner uses, an argument that has been brought up in court cases, usually unsuccessfully. Here's why the anti-Blaine arguments have been unsuccessful, according to The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:

The Pew Forum believes the fight will continue, unsuccessfully:

As a final note, the anti-Blaine amendment argument is problematic in regards to the Arizona constitution for another reason. The constitution forbids public money for any private school, religious or non-religious. Here's Article 9, Section 10. I'm going to cross out anything that has to do with religion:

Take out the religious references, and you still can't give public money to private schools.