Three important notes about this file

Church/State Links

Seperating individual conduct from political stances is k/t separation of church and state

Audi 89- professor of philosophy at Notre Dame (Robert, “The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizenship,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer, 1989), pp. 259-296//MGD)

The issue of separation of church and state has great moral, legal, and political importance, and the subject currently holds special interest. An unprecedented number of people are injecting religion into politics; pressures are mounting both to have religious observances in public schools and to support sectarian education through tax revenues; and the United States Supreme Court may soon be reinterpreting constitutional constraints on the relation between religion and public life. In this article I approach the separation of church and state from a conceptual and moral standpoint. My broadest aim is to build a framework that clarifies certain moral, legal, and political questions about religion and civil life. My specific purpose is to develop a theory of separation of church and state that serves two major ends. The first is to clarify the traditional separation doctrine as usually understood-as addressed above all to governmental institutions. The second aim is wider and has not so far received substantial treatment in the literature: it is to ascertain what restrictions on individual conduct should, in a free and democratic society, accompany a commitment to separation of church and state. I Part I interprets the separation doctrine. Part II considers its basis. Part III applies the doc- trine to some important current issues. Parts IV and V introduce the second phase of my theory, concerning the obligations of citizens in a free and democratic society; here I propose principles of separation for individual conduct. The concluding sections apply the principles of individual conduct and explore the connections among religion, morality, and democracy.
The “personal is political” mentality allows religious views to infiltrate politics- the abortion debate proves

Sahar and Karasawa 05- *PhD from UCLA, professor of psychology at Wheaton College, **Professor of Psychology Nagoya University, Japan (Gail and Kaori, “Is the Personal Always Political? A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Abortion Attitudes,” BASIC AND APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, 27(4), 285–296//MGD)

“The personal is political,” a phrase used frequently during the women’s liberation movement, seems to capture the nature of the abortion issue very well in the United States. It is difficult to conceive of a deeply personal issue as politically charged as abortion. Certainly, it is among the most politically divisive domestic legal issues of our time. One predominant explanation for the contentiousness of the issue in the United States is that contrasting beliefs about abortion represent entirely different worldviews or value systems (Luker, 1984). Luker argued that the pro-life and pro-choice activists, who define the nature of the conflict in the United States, differ strongly in many deeply held values regarding sexuality, gender roles, and even the meaning of life. The abortion debate calls these values into question and causes individuals to “feel that their entireworld viewis under assault” (p. 158). In terms of psychological theories, this worldview approach to abortion attitudes brings to mind the symbolic politics model, which holds that individuals acquire learned affective responses or symbolic predispositions toward particular symbols during early socialization (Sears, Lau, Tyler, & Allen, 1980). These predispositions are activated by political symbols encountered later in life and influence attitudes toward such symbols. Political ideology, morality, and religiosity are examples of potent symbolic predispositions that have been shown to influence attitudes and policy preferences (e.g., see Sears & Huddy, 1990) and are linked to abortion attitudes in the United States. For example, in the United States, abortion approval is negatively related to religiosity (Cook, Jelen,&Wilcox, 1992; Hall&Ferree, 1986; Harris& Mills, 1985; Szafran & Clagett, 1988;Wilcox, 1990; Zucker, 1999), as well as moral traditionalism and political conservatism (Granberg & Granberg, 1980; Zucker, 1999). That is, the more religious, morally traditional, and politically conservative individuals are, the less they approve of abortion. In addition, the pro-life position has been associated with endorsement of traditional gender roles (Luker, 1984).
Seperating the personal and political is k/t fair governance

Farney 09- Political Studies Department, Queen’s University (James, “The Personal Is Not Political: The Progressive Conservative Response to Social Issues,” American Review of Canadian Studies Vol. 39, No. 3, September 2009, 242–252//MGD)

The central claim of this article is that the response of Canadian conservatives to the extension of same-sex rights and the liberalization of abortion during the late 1960s to the early 1990s – while deeply conservative – was not socially conservative, as the term is now understood. Social conservatism accepts that the personal has become politicized and seeks to use political means to promote traditionalist notions of correct sexual behavior and family structure. Progressive Conservatives, on the other hand, consistently portrayed such issues as moral, rather than political, and sought to minimize the linkage between the conservative position on social issues and conservative positions on other issues. This buffering was portrayed not merely as an electoral necessity but as a necessary implication of the party’s ideology. One can characterize this response as a refusal to acknowledge the extension of politics: the personal was not, and should not become, politicized.