Gold makes a drive-by reference to the U.S. Supreme Court, without mentioning any case or decision, and then argues, voilÀ, this proscribes any personal freedom of choice in public education, thus ruling out Utah vouchers.

Yet, without facts, it is all just yelling in print. Citing the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law . . ." he risibly misinterprets an explicit curb upon the powers of Congress, thereby to discover a heretofore-unknown limitation upon citizens.

How does this view reconcile with a Bill of Rights that universally does the opposite, reserving rights for individuals, "the people," and for individuals collectively, as "the states," while denying them to the federal government?

Remember, only citizens have rights; the government has powers. Gold would negate our moral agency that we know as conscience, resulting in freedom from religion, an institutionalized secularism that is hostile to people of faith and the absence of that very diversity he praises through imposed conformity.

This is certainly not individual freedom of religion, expressed through voluntary choice, as our fathers intended by the First Amendment. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has already repudiated Gold and resolved our constitutional, First Amendment debate in favor of vouchers paid to students, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 US 639 (2002). Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority, "a religious message, (if one finds any at all) is reasonably attributable to the individual aid recipients, not the government."

Thus, vouchers (for students, not schools) are not banned by our Constitution, and to oppose student vouchers is to oppose religious liberty that finds expression in freedom to choose a school, even if it happens to be a "private, religious, educational institution."

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* STEPHEN KOBSA is a metals group chemist at Tooele Chemical Demilitarization Facility residing in Lehi.