Will the Left and ACLU if this happens?

[OriginalShroom]

Interesting... I have to wonder if the "Freedom from Religion", the "Separation of Church and State", and the ACLU people will be suing....

Could Scientology be the thing that turns Flint Michigan around - The Week

Could Scientology be the thing that turns Flint, Michigan, around?

The Flint, Michigan, City Council is contemplating embracing a new way to save the town: Scientology.
"The Way to Happiness" program was written by Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard. A nonreligious moral code, it describes 21 different principles, including "Don't Be Promiscuous," "Be Temperate," and the always-hard-to-remember "Do Not Murder." Scientologist Monika Biddle introduced the council to the book during an Aug. 22 meeting, saying it could really curb the high rates of crime and poverty.
"The moral fiber of our community is so decayed it will take years" to change, Councilwoman Monica Galloway told MLive.com."We need to sow [values] into these children [because these] are things they are not getting."
The Way to Happiness Foundation says it has distributed 100 million copies of the book all over the world. The organization tries to get the book out into communities, and suggests that police officers hand them out to children and neighborhood watch groups. Police Chief James Tolbert thinks it's worth a shot to at least try using the program. "From the information I've seen, apparently it works," he said. "I'm for anything that works."
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[theDoctorisIn]

I'm not familiar with the book, but I'm entirely against anything that comes from L. Ron.

In terms of "separation of church and state", it would depend in the content of the "program".

 

[Moonglow]

Will the Left and ACLU if this happens?

Is there a law about using verbs?

 

[Agit8r]

A violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment.

 

[Rikurzhen]

I'm not familiar with the book, but I'm entirely against anything that comes from L. Ron.

In terms of "separation of church and state", it would depend in the content of the "program".

I read an article from The Daily Beast and it was actually very intelligently written and actually raised some points that I've never seen expressed in the mainstream media in that fashion. (Old news from the right-o-sphere though.) Will wonders never cease. I'm putting this link here because I want to spread the word, to make it easier for me to search for in the future, and because it has a very novel intersection with your concern of separating church from state.

Keyword for my future search: Liberalism is a religion.

To dwell on that for a moment is to get a sharp taste of the overarching issue that Liberty Ridge raises for us. We have a constitutional problem on our hands—one much bigger than gay marriage, the First Amendment, or even religion itself. The more we tie ourselves in knots over the official and unofficial status of homosexuality, the harder it is to realize. But realize we must.

Here’s how the problem works. The Constitution is “biased” in two distinctive, important ways. Although at first blush they may seem obvious, the implications of these biases have not been fully unconcealed until very recently.

To begin with, the First Amendment is flagrantly biased in favor of religion. As we all know, it requires Congress not to make any law “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What this means in practice is profound: If the beliefs you are exercising are not religious, your freedom to exercise them is not as protected by the Constitution as religious beliefs. If you like to trip on peyote because it is fun for you, or because you believe it makes you a better person, you will not receive the same legal protection as someone who trips on peyote because it is an integral part of long-standing religious beliefs to which they subscribe.

For irreligious people, this is a potential outrage of the first order. How dare the government extend special protections to religions for no better reason than that they are religions?

But for civil libertarians, whatever their degree of faith, there is cause for anxiety as well. The First Amendment implicitly requires government itself to make official determinations about what is and what isn’t a religion. No matter how necessary that may be to our constitutional framework, there is always a possibility for abuse, and in times of intense culture war, that possibility is magnified.

Unfortunately, the problem is even worse than that. The First Amendment is also biased against religion in an unexpected way. As we are all familiar, Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Sorry, theocrats! But think more deeply: Congress could make all kinds of laws that aggressively establish an ideology that is not a religion.

To underscore the point: The Constitution strongly protects us against theocrats who would pass religious precepts into law. The Constitution provides us with pretty much no protection against ideologues who want to hardwire specific secular dogmas into our laws and our lives—so long as the attorneys defending this process in court convince judges that due process and equal protection standards are met.​

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

"The Way to Happiness program was written by Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard. A nonreligious moral code, it describes 21 different principles, including Don't Be Promiscuous, Be Temperate"


This from a clown who spent half his life on his giant yacht wearing a tacky captain's suit, while his "crew", scantily clad young babes in white hot pants, paraded around the decks doing his every bidding. I don't for a minute believe that Hubbard believed he was some kind of sage or visionary. Rather he was a decent science fiction writer who continually blew his own mind at how stupid, gullible, and malleable most people actually were. He said as much between the lines several times, if people were smart enough to listen. Of course it was this latter group he had no use for, people he couldn’t sucker.

 

[konradv]

The problem with Scientology is that it isn't even a real religion, but a scam to avoid paying taxes. Unlike other churches, if you want to participate, contributions aren't optional.

You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion. -L.Ron Hubbard

• (Response to a question from the audience during a meeting of the Eastern Science Fiction Association on (7 November 1948), as quoted in a 1994 affidavit by Sam Moskowitz.)
  
  L. Ron Hubbard - Wikiquote