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Vail Daily letter: Just a proselytizer

Keith Spero
Edwards, CO Colorado
letters@vaildaily.com

I have no trouble with Jim Taylor believing in Jesus Christ – after all this is a free country. If he wants to hold the religious beliefs he has expressed in his various letters, that is his right.

What he doesn’t seem to acknowledge is that everyone else has the same right – to believe or not to believe, to worship or not worship as he or she pleases. Mr. Taylor is a Christian proselytizer, masquerading as a legal scholar. He tries to make a legal argument by citing from cases that were decided by state supreme courts at a time when they were not bound by the U.S. Constitution.

Mr. Taylor probably knows (or should know) that when this country was founded, the Constitution applied only to the federal government and not to the states. This means that the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) and all the rest of the Constitution did not limit the power of the states because none of it applied to the states as written. During this period a few state supreme courts ruled in a manner alleged by Mr. Taylor (although not quite as Mr. Taylor describes, as I am sure Mr. Bornstein can point out).



This all changed when the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by the states. That amendment made the states and their political subdivisions bound by the U.S. Constitution, whereas before they were not. Thereafter, we have case after case affirming the principle of separation of church and state, much to the chagrin of people who hold beliefs similar to Mr. Taylor’s.

Mr. Taylor asserts that this country was founded as a Christian nation. Mr. Bornstein has gone to great lengths to demonstrate that this statement is not true. While many of the original citizens of this country were Protestant Christians, many were not, including some of the “founding fathers”. And today all are now protected by law from being legally forced to believe and act as Mr. Taylor does.


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