The combination of proposed Constitutional Amendments 2, 7 and 9 constitutes the most serious threat to civil liberties in Florida in our era. Proposed Constitutional Amendment #2 will appear on the ballot labeled the “Florida Marriage Protection Amendment.” It is sometimes referred to by proponents as the “gay marriage ban,” though same-sex marriage is already banned in Florida under both federal and state law. The vagueness of the proposed Amendment reveals the problem. ("Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.") The inclusion of the language “or the substantial equivalent thereof” exposes that the real purpose of the proposal is to create legal ammunition to challenge and roll-back any recognition of the rights of same-sex partners. If approved by the voters, the main impact of the proposed amendment will not be on marriage, but in areas such as hospital visitation and medical decision-making and domestic partner health and other employer provided benefits. Most of those exercising these rights and receiving these benefits are non-gay citizens. Proposed Amendment #7 will appear on the ballot labeled “Religious Freedom,” which is the title of the section of the Florida Constitution that is proposed to be amended. But religious discrimination, not religious freedom, is what would be achieved. The proposal would delete from the Florida Constitution of the 140+ year-old provision barring the use of tax dollars for religious programs. The “no aid to religion” provision, which also appears in the constitutions of approximately 36 other states, is a more explicit requirement of separation of church and state than that contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Proposed Constitutional Amendment 7 would put in place of the “no aid to religion” provision the following sentence: “An individual or entity may not be barred from participating in any public program because of religion.” This benign sounding new language would have the practical effect -- especially due to the words “or entity” – of mandating the use of tax dollars for proselytizing religious programs that engage in religious discrimination. Proposed Amendment #9 insults the intelligence of voters by not even mentioning the word “vouchers,” but it is all about undermining public education by authorizing private/parochial school vouchers. The proposal, which will appear on the ballot under the label “Requiring 65 Percent of School Funding For Classroom Instruction; State’s Duty For Children’s Education,” attempts to use the 65% funding measure to deceive voters into approving school vouchers without knowing it. The measure essentially says that, since the education of children is a fundamental value of the people of Florida and, therefore, the paramount duty of the state is to make provision for the education of all children, this duty shall be fulfilled “at a minimum and not exclusively” through provision for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools. By very clever wording, this proposal constitutionalizes the very situation the Florida Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in the voucher case and, as a result, threatens the state’s commitment to building quality public schools. The “at a minimum and not exclusively” language reverses the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling we helped to secure in Bush v. Holmes that declared Jeb Bush’s school voucher program unconstitutional. The amended language authorizes the Legislature to create two parallel education systems: a public school system operating under state standards, and a system of unaccountable private and parochial schools supported by publicly-funded vouchers that operate without a state-approved curriculum, without certified teachers and without standardized student performance testing. It must be understood how proposed Amendments 7 and 9 work together to understand both the extent to which this issue is about school vouchers, but also how radical their effect would be. The main intent of 9 is to amend the portion of the constitution that was used by the Florida Supreme Court to strike down the OSP/voucher program (namely, the requirement that the state maintain a system of uniform public schools). The main intent of 7 is to preemptively strip the “no aid to religion” provision from the Florida Constitution since that provision might be used in the future to strike down a voucher program even if the state no longer has a constitutional charge to maintain a uniform system of public schools. However, in order to protect private/parochial school vouchers from some future challenge, should Amendment 9 pass, proponents need proposed Amendment 7, which goes well beyond vouchers to essentially mandate government-funded religious programs. The proposal Floridians will vote on this November is a radical departure from the contractual relationship between government and religiously affiliated charities that have served the needy for decades. Religiously-affiliated charitable organizations such as Catholic adoption agencies, Lutheran Refugee Relief, Jewish Vocational Services, and many others, have served the needs of the community without proselytizing and without discriminating in whom they hire and serve, and do not have as their primary purpose or effect the advancement of religion. The argument for repeal of the traditional “no aid to religion” provision at the TBRC was based on the lie, and you will hear that lie repeated during the fall election campaign to scare the public that the “no aid to religion” requirement threatens to shut down numerous religiously-affiliated charitable institutions from schools to hospitals. A government contract to provide services to the needy have not been threatened, and would not be, by a requirement that government funds not be used to support religious programs. What the proponents of proposed Amendment #7 want is government funding while maintaining the right to require participation in religious activities, and the right to restrict services and hiring on religious (and possibly other) grounds.