Even as all eyes are on Louisiana for daring to display the Ten Commandments in schools, the left’s paganism is getting a shot in the arm in Massachusetts. That’s because the state has proudly unveiled a taxpayer-funded campaign of Public Service Announcements (“PSAs”) aimed at destroying pregnancy centers that oppose abortion.

When the Founders wrote and ratified the First Amendment, they did so in the context of a Christian world. They were fond of Jews and were beginning to recognize that people such as atheists and deists (e.g., Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson) existed. And that was it. Everything, especially in America, was bounded by the idea of the Christian church and the Bible. Those two concepts defined people’s understanding of the world and their obligations to that world.

Many of the original settlers in the North American colonies came because they wanted to escape the religions that their home states imposed, as well as the corollary punishments for those who did not follow the state religions. By the 18th century in Europe, these punishments did not include death but did include paying taxes to fund state churches and being banned from participating in civic life.

This was the backdrop to the Establishment Clause. The federal government could not establish a religion, nor could it prevent others from practicing their faiths: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...”

Image: YouTube screen grab.

However, even that last clause had a caveat that we would do well to remember today; namely that, at least as late as 1879, the Supreme Court still recognized that Biblical values could inform societal values. Thus, just because a state law was derived from Britain’s Christian tradition, that didn’t mean the law was automatically invalid, even if it infringed on religious practices.

In the case of Reynolds v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld federal laws against polygamy, something the Court wrote “has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people.” To the extent it offended British law at the time of the Constitution—law that the Supreme Court made clear derived from Christian tradition—it reasonably offended American law after the Constitution.

Strikingly, as an example of the type of anti-Biblical law the United States does not have to recognize, the Supreme Court asked, “Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship; would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice?” The answer, of course, is no. The U.S. does not (or, at least, did not) recognize non-Biblical, pagan practices.

But we’ve come a long way since 1879, and child sacrifice is an embedded principle on the left. They dress it up as “health care,” but the reality is that it’s done to placate Gaia, the amoral, capricious, and unreasonable Earth goddess, a divine personage that the left believes opposes the proliferation of humankind.

At a more pragmatic level, the abortion sacrament is also done to remove women from their core biological purpose, something that, for many, has the magical effect of turning them into lonely, neurotic ladies or blue-haired “it” people. (So maybe there really is some pagan magic at work there.)

In thrall to their faith, leftists work hard to violate the First Amendment by using the instruments of the state to establish their leftist religion (e.g., Pride flags, not the Ten Commandments in classrooms) and to stamp out heretics. In Massachusetts, stamping out anti-abortion heretics means using government funds to broadcast PSA’s warning women about from heretical churches, aka pregnancy crisis centers that offer pregnant women alternatives to abortion:

The Healey-Driscoll Administration today launched a first-in-the-nation public education campaign highlighting the dangers and potential harm of anti-abortion centers, also called “crisis pregnancy centers.” Anti-abortion centers often look like medical facilities and purport to offer the full spectrum of reproductive health care while, in reality, they often mislead people about their options if they are pregnant and dissuade them from accessing abortions.  

The campaign ads, which began running June 10 across Massachusetts in both English and Spanish, amplify how anti-abortion centers provide misinformation about abortion services to prevent people from making an informed choice about their care. The campaign is designed to help people understand their full range of options, directing them to mass.gov/GetTrustedCare with information about how to recognize anti-abortion centers and where to access unbiased, full-spectrum reproductive health care in Massachusetts.  

Using taxpayer funds to push a pagan belief system and aggressively punish those who oppose it violates the First Amendment as the Founders envisioned it and the Supreme Court understood it.