Religious Liberty & Civil Rights

The American Solidarity Party calls upon all levels of government to live out the God-given ideals of human dignity, equality, and fraternity. The Bill of Rights and later constitutional amendments have recognized rights stemming from these ideals, including the free exercise of religion, freedom of conscience and expression, a fair justice system, and equal protection under the law.

• We advocate for laws that allow people of all faiths to practice their religion without intimidation, and we deplore secularism that seeks to remove religion from the public sphere. We are committed to the “free exercise of religion” guaranteed by the First Amendment, which should not be limited to “freedom of worship” that merely exists in private and within a house of worship. Faith is a public expression. Federal and state governments must safeguard laws that protect religious institutions, small businesses, and private individuals from civil or criminal liability for choosing to follow their conscience in matters regarding life, healthcare, morality, sexuality, and marriage.

• Federal and state governments must safeguard conscience protections for employers and charities in health, education, and welfare that do not wish to participate in activities that contradict their sincerely-held convictions. In particular, we are in solidarity with religiously-affiliated institutions such as colleges, adoption agencies, and hospitals, which are facing pressure in some states to compromise on principles central to their doctrines.

• The First Amendment prohibition against an establishment of religion does not require the eradication of religious symbols from community events and property. So long as nobody is compelled to endorse or participate in an activity, communities should have the freedom to celebrate religious events and express religious values, without artificial distinctions that force religious believers to check their faith at the public door.

• All levels of government must defend the rights of public assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, understood through the tradition of ordered liberty.

• We acknowledge the persistence of discrimination based on religion, race, ethnicity, and sex, and support laws favoring equal access to the polls, the courts, housing, and education.

• Throughout our nation’s history, racial discrimination has stripped ethnic minorities of their wealth and limited their eligibility to work, ability to own property, educational access, and voting rights at the individual and community levels. We recognize the particular forms of exclusion suffered by African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. These historic injustices should be addressed through reparative and restorative means, such as economic grants and policies which incentivize investment, job-training, and hiring in minority communities, and by continuing dialogue between communities and local governments regarding minority concerns.

• Disability rights remain a significant concern throughout the United States. Government agencies working with the disabled must ensure that financial benefits are applied fairly and consistently. They must also make more efforts to incorporate the disabled into work or volunteer programs, depending on individual circumstances.

• Unjust employment discrimination and poor working conditions hinder career advancement and financial stability. We insist on legal protection for occupational safety and compensation, good faith in hiring and retention, and paid leave for illness and child-rearing.

• We oppose conscription into the armed services and other forms of compulsory government service, except in cases of clear and present necessity during declared war, as described in our Foreign Policy section. We also oppose the mandatory registration of women in the Selective Service system.

• The government should not use “national security” to justify expanded censorship and secrecy. In addition to concerns about online censorship to be discussed in the Civics section, our commitment to civil liberties includes the repeal of the Patriot Act and the reinstatement of basic civil rights, including the right of citizens to a speedy trial in civilian courts. Secret tribunals (such as the FISA court) must be abolished, and military courts must be returned to their proper role. Foreign non-combatants must not be detained in American facilities or remanded by agents of the federal government to foreign prisons.

Criminal Justice

Maintaining public peace and order is a fundamental responsibility of government. However, in too many cases our justice system is both harsh and ineffective. Despite having the largest incarcerated population in the world, we have failed to make communities safe or adequately address economic and racial disparities in arrests, convictions, and sentencing. We support reforms to simultaneously ensure public safety, secure individual justice, and reduce the excessively penal nature of the system.

• Criminality is complex, the result of a culture that does not respect human life, the breakdown of traditional social institutions, institutionalized racism, and a prison system that promotes social alienation, recidivism, and deprivation. Federal and state governments must seek to address the causes as well as the effects of criminal behavior. We believe that preventing and punishing crime is an essential public service. We oppose the privatization of law-enforcement and penal institutions.

• As public servants, law enforcement officers should be supported and held to the highest standards of professionalism. We support strict accountability for the use of lethal force.

• We are alarmed at the increasing rates of conflict between police and communities, and call for local governments to institute measures that will increase transparency and trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve, including the use of body cameras, civilian review boards, and expansion of community policing.

• We believe that our court system systematically disfavors the poor. We call for an increase in state-level funding for our public defender system, and an end to cash bail, court fees, and programs that allow records to be expunged in exchange for paying higher fees.

• Mandatory sentencing requirements, especially for non-violent criminals, must be overturned.

• We believe that prisons are designed for dangerous criminals. We oppose the imprisonment of those who are simply mentally ill, homeless, or too poor to pay fines.

• We believe that our prison system should be focused on restoring lawbreakers to their community. We support increased funding of programs meant to prepare prisoners for life outside the prison.

• We call for an end to the use of prisoners as slave labor. Prisoners must be remunerated at the minimum wage for work performed.

• Drug addiction remains a social harm. It is vital to find ways of ending mass incarceration while not removing all laws against drugs and other vices. Drug enforcement should focus on distribution and production. Funds currently expended on the “war on drugs” should be directed toward prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation.

• Laws against prostitution should focus on removing those participating from the cycle of exploitation, mandating penalties primarily on those who buy sex or arrange for its purchase. Closely tied to this is the need to aggressively combat human trafficking. It is also vital to recognize the social costs of pornography, which is inseparable from human trafficking, the promotion of pedophilia, and rape. We therefore support laws which criminalize the production and sale of pornography and deny categorically that pornography is protected speech.