A school in Pennsylvania, an elementary school, decided to celebrate women’s history by hosting a “women’s fashion show” for which compulsory dressing-up was required of all students.  Yep, that’s right.  All students–not just girls.

But don’t worry, says the school.  Your kid can dress up like a woman without wearing a skirt or dress:

“If your child is a young man, he does not have to wear a dress or skirt, as there are many time periods where women wore jeans, pants and trousers,” the letter reads. “However, each child must be able to express what time period their outfit is from. Most of all, your child should have fun creating their outfit and learning about how women’s clothing has changed!”

That’s sparse consolation to people whose conscience requires them not to cross-dress, such as, for example, Jews or Christians who believe Deuteronomy 22:5 applies to us today:

A woman is not to wear what is designed for a man, nor is a man to put on a woman’s clothing–for all who do this are an abomination to Jehovah your God.

Nevertheless, the school was planning compulsory cross-dressing for boys.  And as if to goad the religious with an extra sharp stick, the date of the fashion show just so happened to coincide with a major  “Day of Silence” protest put on annually by supporters of gay, bisexual, and transgendered life-styles that disrupts school classrooms every years.

The disrespect for religious people also showed itself in the hostile tone of supporters of the, um, fashion show:

“Your son is not instantly going to turn gay if he’s involved in a women’s fashion show,” [a fellow-parent] said.

Contrast the narrow views of those who seek to hijack a history class with cross-dressing to the far more balanced tone of the woman who is being attacked as a “moron,” to quote one school father:

“The school doesn’t get it,” she said. “I’m not a right-winger. I’m not a radical, but I believe in the Constitution and I believe in my parental rights.” . . . She said that she’s open to “alternative lifestyles” and has male friends who dress as women, but that it’s not something third- and fourth-grade students can handle, particularly her son, who has Asperger’s syndrome. “I’m not freaked out by alternative lifestyles. It’s just the fact that the school system is trying to introduce alternative lifestyles in a sneaky way,” she said. “At 9 years old, I’m not ready to have the conversation with my son about homosexuals, lesbians and cross-dressing. When he’s ready, he’ll come and ask me.”

The school, in response to pressure from outraged parents, has closed down the fashion show. It’s a good move. But it’s shocking that this nonsense was ever allowed to go on in the first place. Public schools must always remember that they are institutions backed by the full power of the government forcing people’s children to attend, and that for that reason they must stick to actually teaching and not give in to the temptation to attack the vast number of parents who would prefer not to have their children made to cross-dress.

My purpose in this post is not to make an argument for or against allowing gays to adopt. If I were to make an argument, it would be against, but that’s not what I’m here to point out. What I’m here to point out is that one of the arguments used in supporting what is viewed by proponents as the right of gays to adopt is invalid. Just one. I’m not going to deal with other arguments either. If anyone wants to talk about other similar topics, I’m always willing to do that personally, because it’s a part of what I believe as a Christian, and I want to make sure that those who want to know what I think can find out.

My point is this. Frequently, supporters of gay lifestyles often say that outlawing certain activities by gays, such as for example adoption, is a violation of the separation of Church and State as found in the constitution.� Therefore, the reasoning follows, it is only right that we must allow gays to adopt children, even if we personally as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. may disagree with homosexual lifestyles.

The definition of separation of Church and State can be found in the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What the framers of the Constitution were getting at here was that the government of the country should never give any particular religious group an officially preferred status, and that the government should also never stop people from freely exercising their own religion. And, for the United States, this has worked. Not perfectly, but in general it has produced a climate of more than two hundred years of uninterrupted religious freedom and a world where people can make up their minds about God without having a church-state beaurocracy force its opinions on them.

However, what the doctrine of Church and State does not weigh in on the topic of personal ethics. Although it is well established today that the government shall not tell anyone what they have to believe or what religious group if any to belong to, it goes without saying that the government is allowed to regulate some level of family morality. The objection gay rights proponents try to make is that because personal opposition to homosexuality is based on the Bible, therefore opposition to homosexuality cannot legally be expressed in legal form. This argument is wrong in its assumptions and its conclusion.

The first assumption is that opposing homosexuality is a uniquely Christian value. It is not. Although many Christians oppose homosexuality, so do many religious Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and even nonreligious folks. Therefore the fact that the Bible forbids homosexuality does not mean that we are dealing with a Christian issue here. What we are dealing with is an issue that must be addressed, to some extent, by every religion and indeed every philosophy of life: what is a family? Therefore whether the government decides to give children to gays or not to give children to gays, it is not imposing a particular religious view on society.

But even if Christians were the only major religious group to have a problem with gay adoption, this does not mean the government therefore could not legislate against gay marriage. For a long time after the first amendment was passed, businesses in many areas were required to be closed on Sundays. The religious motivation behind these laws is transparent. And yet this was not a violation of the First Amendment, because the government was not giving any establishment of religion any sort of official status, and because the religion was not being suppressed. Jews and Muslims, who do not hold Sunday as religiously special, were allowed under these laws to continue practicing their own religion, and none of them were forced to practice Christianity in any way. They just couldn’t open their businesses on Sunday.

Finally, we have to look at the ridiculous outcomes that would occur if we were to say that any command in the Bible was disqualified from entering into law. If we propose this method of reasoning, we would have to conclude that prohibitions of murder, incest, stealing, arson, and perjury are also not allowed. That’s not to say that the gay adoption issue is the same as murder, incest, stealing, arson, and perjury, but only to point out that there is no problem if the laws of the Bible and the laws and the State happen to overlap.

In order to try to salvage the gay adoptionist argument on gay marriage, some might say that what distinguishes this is that there is religious motivation behind this law. But religious motivation does not even disqualify a policy legally, because then we would put ourselves in the legally ridiculous position of requiring ever law-maker whose religious feelings influence their policy decisions. Can you imagine if, for example, during a congressional debate on the death penalty, someone were to stand up and say: “Would all those whose religion requires executions, and all those whose religion prohibits executions, please leave so that the rest of us can vote on this issue?”

Conclusion: regardless of whether the government allows or does not allow gays to adopt, marry, or what have you, this is not a violation of the separation of Church and State.