What "Separation of Church and State" Really Means to Liberals & Leftists

Ok, this isn't hard.  In fact, it is quite easy.  It comes down to a very basic question:  Does a group have a right to its own leadership?  In this case the question came down to a religious group, a church, and whether it had a right under the constitution to determine its own leadership. This concern was not onlyin regard to hiring but also firing.  This is known as the "ministerial exception" and has been recognized since the 1964 Civil Rights Act went into place.  (Read the Supreme Court case syllabus and opinion here.) 
The court said clearly:

Since the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964and other employment discrimination laws, the Courts of Appeals have uniformly recognized the existence of a “ministerial exception,” grounded in the First Amendment, that precludes application of such legislation to claims concerning the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers. The Court agrees that there is such a ministerial exception. Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs. By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According the state the power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions.

That's good.  No, that's great!  This unanimous decision by the court upholds the authority of the Constitution over the Obama administration.

The Obama people believe that churches are just businesses of another type.  As reported in openmarket.org:

The Obama administration unsuccessfully argued that the government can dictate who churches hire, as long as it also subjects secular employers to the same dictates regarding who they hire (so-called rules of general applicability). So it can ban a church or synagogue from hiring based on religion (defeating the whole purpose of religious freedom, which is to allow churches to promote their own religion) or sex (preventing the Catholic Church from having a male priesthood). No Supreme Court justice bought the administration’s argument, made on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Supreme Court unanimously found that such government control over who churches can hire would violate the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

So much for the capacity of homosexuals to move in and take church leadership positions based on the threat of a lawsuit, should that ever happen.  But now that potential has been precluded.

The question is -- why would the Obama administration, or the EEOC before the Obama administration, have any desire to invade church life?  That is the substance of the lawsuit.

Now this argument must be extended.  Church speech must not be impinged upon.  The 501(c)(3) rules that restrict speech should be removed based on the "free exercise" clause -- something that IS in the Constitution and to which Congress must subject itself.

One principle to keep in mind is that "separation" for the left is merely a cliche.  It's not separation that they want; control is their concern.  Were they actually favoring separation then the 501(c)(3) rules would be done away.

Also, I must give due honor to the liberals on the Court who voted with the plain reading of the Constitution.  All of you did well and we thank you.

Reading the opinion of Roberts, one is struck by his appeal to early precedent, not recent precedent.  The EEOC, as noted, cited recent material.  But Roberts cites the origins of the First Amendment and from there makes his argument.  It is not the place of the government to seat or unseat church leaders.  This is a right reserved to the people and the efforts of the EEOC and Obama administration sit in direct violation of the Constitution.

As one might expect, the Huffington Post opinion of Mike Sacks opposes this liberty.  He allows for government intrusion with this comment:

The concurrences touch upon a fault line that some of the justices exposed during the case's oral argument last year: To what extent can religious organizations shield themselves from employment laws by simply deeming all of their employees to be ministers?

Sacks notes some of the language problems of Kagan and Alito.

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, took the opposite approach, attempting to define what a minister is. The ministerial exception, Alito wrote, should apply to any person "who leads a religious organization, conducts worship services or important religious ceremonies or rituals, or serves as a messenger or teacher of its faith."

Though they voted for the maintenance of liberty they left the door open for government definitions of what goes on in a church.  Theirs remains an intrusive opinion with a destructive potential which is evident as his post continued.

This time, the other justices seemed satisfied by their chief's language pointing to "the formal title given Perich by the Church, the substance reflected in that title, her own use of that title, and the important religious functions she performed for the Church," leading them to conclude that "Perich was a minister covered by the ministerial exception."
That holistic assessment, said professor Sally Gordon of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, "left open enough wiggle room" for lower courts to refuse to apply the ministerial exception where an ordination is blatantly fraudulent or a mere pretext. 

Religious liberty remains at risk, and even more so with Obama at the helm.

All of this reflects on something important about our liberty.  Our liberty has little to do with the structure of our government.  We still live in a representative system, a "republic" as it is known.  But there have been many destructive republics over the years.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  The Peoples Republic of China.  The Deutsche Democratic Republic.  The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  The USSR, communist China, East Germany, and North Korea all proved themselves the enemies of liberty.  Having the mere right to vote is not what our system is about.  Our system is about liberty -- economic, religious, speech, and travel.  If you trade one then you will likely trade away all.