The Test Acts

The political crisis caused by the death of “Lord Protector” of England Oliver Cromwell in 1658 led to Parliament inviting Charles II, then in exile across the Channel, to return as the sovereign of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The revolution that had deposed his father, Charles I, and established the “Commonwealth” had given the English Parliament great power. It sought to strengthen the role of the Church of England as the preeminent religion of the country. In the ensuing decades that followed, Parliament passed a series of laws referred to as “The Test Acts.”

These laws served as a religious litmus test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Catholics and nonconformist Protestants, collectively referred to as “recusants,” people who refused to worship as members of the Church of England or take its sanctioned communion.

They upheld the establishment of the Church of England against Catholicism and Protestant nonconformists by imposing forfeitures and penalties on dissenters. Anyone seeking government employment or political office had to make a pledge demonstrating their fealty to the official religion.

Charles II attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 “Royal Declaration of Indulgence,” but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. Mindful that Parliament had executed his father, Charles I, thirteen years earlier, Charles II obliged Parliament.

These penal laws, only loosely enforced for the most part as the decades passed, in general were repealed in the early 19th century during the process of the Catholic Emancipation.

It was these abuses of power and intolerances against minorities by a state religion that led the architects of our Declaration of Independence and subsequent Constitution to separate religion and government. No one religion was to be held as the official, sacrosanct national authority on religion.

The struggle for true universal enfranchisement has been a slow, agonizing undertaking, even for a country as dedicated as ours to every citizen’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Virtually every non-British, non-Protestant immigrant suffered the prejudices of “not belonging here” when first arriving, Emma Lazarus and The Statue of Liberty notwithstanding.

Even today the people who had lived here for centuries, true Native Americans, and the people brought here against their will and in chains, African-Americans, have to contend for their rightful place at the table.

As an enlightened people we have striven to ensure that anyone acting lawfully in his/her pursuit of “life, liberty, and happiness” has that as an inviolable entitlement of being a citizen of the United States.

Yet we have politicians who try to appeal to our basest fears and prejudices by seeking to limit the rights of people whose lifestyles make them vulnerable to the intolerant and those easily incited to hate what they don’t understand.

Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and announced candidate for the Republican nomination for president, has made the L.G.B.T.Q. community a target for some 21st century “Test Acts” to determine if this group of Americans is entitled to the same protections as every other citizen.

He has said that Florida is where the idea of being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” come to die.

Actually, he just said the word “woke.” I’ve used the Merriam-Webster definition of the term so that we can see what he means.

He’s declared war on Disney’s resistance to the stigma he wishes to attach to the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

(Amusingly, he’s been out-lawyered and out-maneuvered so far by Mickey Mouse!)

What is the threat that this group poses to our democracy? They haven’t violently stormed the Capitol. They don’t spread conspiracy lies. I haven’t heard anyone claiming that their social status allows them to grope someone. As a group they aren’t deadbeats who won’t pay their bills.

They’re not continually trying to game the system to their advantage at the expense of others.

If Ron DeSantis is afraid of same sex marriage what’s the threat? Is he offended by what he imagines goes on behind close doors? How is that any of his, or anyone else’s business?

Shouldn’t we be allowed to pick our own best friend? Shouldn’t we be allowed to share our lives and assets with whomever we love?

Is it up to the government, or the likes of Ron DeSantis, to tell any of us whom we can chose as a lifetime partner?

If it’s all based on what goes on behind closed doors, is that any of their business?

It’s no one’s business what goes on behind the closed doors of a heterosexual couple.

I doubt that anyone really wants to share this aspect of his or her own personal life with others.

If it offends you, do the same thing you did about your parents. Don’t think about it.

Let’s elect men and women who are concerned with more pressing issues: gun violence, the national debt, infrastructure repair, Russian aggression, poverty, and global warming to name a few.

It’s only office seekers with no real solutions who rely on cozening the voter.