Word: draft
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Park has his entire infield returning intact this spring. Behind the plate is co-captain Varney who has been drafted every year in the pro-baseball draft and is presently the number one selection of the Atlanta Braves...
...seems to me an insult to all of the young American men who have bravely and not always willingly fought in our armed forces to have Cassius Clay's picture on the cover of TIME. As the mother of two draft-age young men, it makes me sick to my stomach...
According to the draft law enacted by Congress in 1967, no person shall be "subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the U.S. who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form...
Behind this language lies a steady expansion of the scope of conscientious objection. In World War 1, the draft law exempted from combat only members of "peace churches" like the Quakers. By 1940, conscientious objectors no longer had to belong to a church or other religious organization. In 1965, the Supreme Court held that objectors need not believe in a "Supreme Being." Last June, the court ruled that the 1967 law exempts "all those whose consciences, spurred by deeply held moral, ethical or religious beliefs, would give them no rest or peace if they allowed themselves to become a part...
Gillette and Negre claimed, among other things, that the draft law violates the First Amendment ban against governmental "establishment of religion." It does so, they said, by favoring denominations that preach total pacifism while penalizing others that oppose only unjust wars. Speaking for the court majority, Justice Thurgood Marshall noted that the establishment clause requires that "when government activities touch on the religious sphere, they must be secular in purpose, evenhanded in operation and neutral in primary impact." By exempting objectors to all wars, Marshall held, Congress properly focused on individual consciences, not sectarian affiliations. It also avoided administrative chaos...