This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

After I wrote two weeks ago that the power of The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints to kill legislation was inconsistent with the section in the Utah Constitution that forbids church domination over government, I was taken to task in an op-ed Tuesday by attorney Alexander Dushku, whose law firm represents the church.

His logic was so confused and his lecture on the history of church and state so full of mish-mash, I'm compelled to take another shot at this.

What triggered my earlier column was the foregone conclusion made by most legislative observers that the church's opposition to a medical marijuana bill and a hate crimes bill that would have protected gays and lesbians effectively killed both bills.

I noted that Article I, Section 4, of the Utah Constitution says "There shall be no union of Church and State, nor shall any church dominate the State or interfere with its functions."

Dushku, apparently protective of his client's right to tell the Legislature what to do, questioned my sense of history and constitutional law by noting the First Amendment "grants churches the same right as ordinary citizens, newspaper columnists and the PTA to express their views about legislation or anything else."

Of course it does. Dushku must have missed the sentence in my column that said the church has every right to express its opinion and take a stand on pending legislation.

But I don't recall a statement from the PTA that automatically killed a bill in the Legislature. And I can assure you, legislators have never rushed to their voting pads to defeat or pass a bill based on anything I wrote in my column.

My point wasn't that the church couldn't weigh in on the issues, it was the Legislature's genuflecting on a bill based simply on a statement by the LDS Church defies the spirit of the section in the state constitution that says churches cannot dominate government policy, which exactly is what's happening.

Dushku then attempts to summarize history in a way that is silly.

He points out the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements were heavily influenced by religion.

That's true. They were heavily influenced by other factors as well, but that has nothing to do with the point of my column.

No state legislature suddenly gave women the right to vote because a church told it to. Those causes were achieved through groundswell movements that eventually were embraced by popular opinion and demands, not by one church saying "pass this bill."

Dushku then cites Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, which was aided by sermons throughout the black churches in the South.

But that's where his logic gets really weird.

The civil rights movement was about protecting the rights of all citizens, no matter their color, race, religion, ethnicity or gender.

The church opposed the bill that was about protecting the rights of all citizens. And the Legislature obeyed.

Dushku's last argument is my favorite.

"Churches were a driving force behind the American Revolution," he says. "The pulpits of Boston had as much to do with 1776 as anything the Sons of Liberty had to say."

But the Patriots who fled England for the American colonies were heavily motivated by the one-church domination of government and their lives. That's why the First Amendment strongly holds to a separation of church and state.

I wonder if Dushku's time spent writing that op-ed was chalked up as billable hours. If it was, the church should ask for its money back. —