Calif. schools shouldn't punish peacemongers

It's difficult to digest that religious beliefs should stand in the way of one's ability to work in California, but they can. If a teacher refuses to swear she or he will grab a weapon to defend the "Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," they don't teach - period.

What planet is this?

Wendy Gonaver, a once soon-to-be professor of American history and women's studies at Cal State Fullerton, is the latest victim of a McCarthy-era anti-communist oath.

Gonaver found out the hard way that the First Amendment doesn't cover her fundamental adherence to pacifism; not in the eyes of the state, anyway. The "State Oath of Allegiance" seemingly predetermines that the Quaker faith is an unsavory religion, undeserving of constitutional protection. Gonaver was fired for refusing to sign it.

This isn't the first instance of religious persecution for refusing to take the pledge.

In February, Cal State East Bay fired Marianne Kearney-Brown (a grad student teaching remedial math to undergrads) for amending the oath by inserting "nonviolently" to reflect her pacifist tenets. Kearney-Brown's "crime" also stemmed from her Quaker upbringing.

The pledge was a fear-based reaction to communism constructed by the University of California Board of Regents in 1949. An academic uprising in the UC system in 1950 saw 31 professors and scores of other employees fired for refusing to sign. In 1951, "the California Supreme Court invalidated the regents' oath and reinstated the fired professors," according to the Associated Press.

The court decision came too late to help other wannabe public employees, though.

A bastardized version called the "Levering Act" had already been passed into state law in 1949, with near identical demands. Signing was made a mandatory hiring condition for every state employee. The requirement continues to haunt potential employees, though most sign without questioning.

Hey, a job's a job on planet California, right?

But signing without believing can be hazardous, too. Section 3108 of the California Government Code threatens that a person who makes promises she or he "knows to be false, is guilty of perjury, and is punishable by imprisonment . not less than one nor more than 14 years."

Not only is the oath perhaps unconstitutional, but contains the fallacious statement: "I take this obligation freely.." The truth is that the pledge explicitly forces an employee to either sign or hit the bricks.

"Freely" fled the scene when the pledge was created. In fact, the hiring requisite states that all employees "must sign the oath."

The California State University system sends a mixed message by allowing its employees to be coerced into signing this anachronistic oath.

The CSU professes to nurture academic freedom, yet it counters by allowing the existence of the Cold War pre-emptive tactics of terminating and blacklisting potential employees. The state applies a circular reasoning that if they don't sign, they must be communists.

Communism is hardly the "Red Menace" against all things patriotic and virtuous in the U.S. it was once perceived to be prior to the demise of the Soviet Union.

By keeping this relic on the books in its current form, California is continuing the witch-hunt mentality of a bygone era, prohibiting talented current and future teachers from drawing paychecks.

Until the CSU system resists this employment obligation, it will continue to partner with the state as a domestic threat to freedom and democracy - at least for Quakers and other peacemongers.