Brian Barnard, JD spoke about religious freedom and the freedom from religion in the state of Utah. Mr. Barnard has litigated many suits in Utah dealing with separation of church and state issues. Two of the main premises of his presentation are that separation of church and state is not a goal in and of itself. Rather, the separation is necessary to protect another more important right to assure religious protection found in the First Amendment. People must be free to protect their own religions (or lack thereof) without government interference. When government supports one religion to the exclusion of others, or when government supports religion to the exclusion of non-religion, the peoples' right to free exercise of their beliefs is in jeopardy.

Second, people and officials often falsely claim that they are generally in favor of government involvement in religion and in support of religious ideals. In fact, they only support their own religious principles.

To illustrate the first situation Mr. Barnard recalled past litigation with the city of St. George concerning the lighting of the LDS temple. The city provided free electricity to the facility claiming that it was a tourist attraction that benefited the whole city. The case never came to a conclusion in the court system because the LDS church decided that the publicity being generated was undesirable and had the power company install a meter and begin charging for the used current.

The second was illustrated by recalling court proceedings involving Ogden City and a stone monolith in front of the Municipal Building with the biblical "Ten Commandments" inscribed. Mr. Barnard represented a religious organization known as the Summum who have "Seven Aphorisms" as a statement of their core beliefs. They were not allowed to place a stone monument with these principles inscribed in the same park. While denied in court, other municipalities have been reticent to post Moses' injunctions. A second example of this point was a case involving prayer at the beginning of the Murray City Council meetings. While they claimed to be open to all prayers, they refused to allow a prayer that included, "Our Mother in Heaven, please give these government leaders enough wisdom to see the need for separation of church and state so that they will stop having prayers before government meetings."

Unfortunately for us (but perhaps fortunately for Mr. Barnard and his family) there is plenty of unfinished business in Utah and the rest of the country in making sure that the religious freedom portion of the First Amendment is enforced.

--Wayne Wilson