ACLU Vs. Prayer
I’m not sure what the ACLU find so threatening about prayer, but they sure do fight it every chance they get. Here is some of the latest:
A divided federal appeals court panel issued a ruling that may allow the Tangipahoa Parish school board to open its meetings with a nonsectarian prayer, and opened up a new chapter in a long dispute between school officials and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the school board should be treated like other elected bodies, which are allowed to invoke nonsectarian and non-proselytizing prayers at their meetings.
But the panel upheld a district judge’s view that the Tangipahoa board’s previous practice of prayer violated the constitutional ban on government promotion of religion. Since that ruling in February, 2005, the school board has not opened its meetings with a devotional.
The ACLU went on a relentless crusade against the Tangipahoa Parish School Board starting in October of 2003. They filed their third lawsuit against the school district in nine years. The first two lawsuits successfully prohibited prayers during football games and prevented biology teachers from teaching creationism. The third one sought to prohibit the board members from opening their meetings with prayer.
In 2005 the ACLU convinced a sympathetic judge to censor the school board’s freedom of expression. The following month, after the ACLU learned of several instances of prayer, Joe Cook, the executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, dubbed the board’s allowance of prayer “un-American and immoral.”
In May of 2005, the ACLU filed a motion to hold various employees of the board in contempt of court for “praying illegally” at school functions. They requested that the prayers “must result in the district employees’ removal from society.” They urged the court to send them to jail. the stated, “Anything short of actual imprisonment would be ineffective to sending that message to these individuals.”
All of this is quite chilling to those of us that believe in freedom of speech and religious expression. Joe Cook exemplified the ACLU’s overzealous hostility towards religious expression in this particular fight, comparing the school board’s desire to pray to terrorists.
“They believe that they answer to a higher power, in my opinion. Which is the kind of thinking that you had with the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings in this country, and the people who did the kind of things in London.â€Â
Now it looks like the outcome is landing somewhere in a murky grey area where they will be allowed to pray a sanitized, watered down and politically correct kind of prayer. While the ACLU may think they are protecting speech, many feel they are being censored.
“If it is like it seems, you can pray, but only generally,” said Sandra Bailey-Simmons, the school board president. “It looks like censorship.”
She said the majority of people in Tangipahoa are Christians and want the board to be able to invoke Christianity at its meetings. She said she was interested in appealing the decision.
Likewise, Joe Cook, the executive director of the Louisiana branch of the ACLU, said the ACLU may seek a rehearing or appeal.
Email This
Posted by Jay on December 17, 2006 1:16 am
» Filed Under Uncategorized
Trackback URL:
- Doug Ross @ Journal: Kofi's Job Interview
Comments
17 Responses to “ACLU Vs. Prayer”
-
-
-
Affiliations
The Giants
Advertise
-
-
Our Store
- Click the design to visit our store and help Stop the ACLU!
-
- More blogs about the ACLU
Syndicate Me
This isn’t a free speech issue. The officials in question are more than welcome to pray in any manner, at any time, and at any place outside of their capacity as public officials.
That is really the core confusion at the heart of most establishment/prayer lawsuits. Think of it along the lines of the blogger that was shut down by his ISP. When you accept public office in this country, part of the Terms of Service is that you won’t use that office to spread religious messages. You’re free to do so in your private capacity, but a public office is not your pulpit.
Congress used to start with prayers.
My great-great-grandpappy owned slaves.
The Constitution has not been repealed.
“This isn’t a free speech issue. The officials in question are more than welcome to pray in any manner, at any time, and at any place outside of their capacity as public officials.” JM
Please quote in the Whole U.S. Constitution where that limit on the Free Expression of Religion exists. Especially hit the parts of the U.S. Constitution which starts out “We the People of the United States” and closes with “In the year of our Lord ….”.
I guess the U.S. Constitution is unconstitutional. Now the Supreme Court will have to strike it down. Shame on our Founders for not separating religion from the state.
While we are at it we had better get that law forbidding the importation of slaves into the United States struck down too as it mentions God.
Yes, I can’t find the part of the Constitution that says Congress shall not prohibit the expression of religion except for public officials. When was an amendment added that allowed censoring religious expression on public officials while they are in the capacity of that job?
Simple test: Imagine that the school board was opening every meeting with a reading from the Koran. Jay, Kerwin, et al would be instantly screaming for the board members to be strung up. Refer to the case of Dennis Prager.
It’s about certain so-called Christians desperately needing to see the power of government being used to proselytize for their religion, and no other. It’s as simple as that.
Yeah, why don’t you look up what I had to say about Dennis Prager before assuming so much. Here is the simple test…if the school board were reading from the Koran voluntarily they would be exercising their freedom of religion. I would have the same opinion as I do now.
We all know the bill of rights isn’t particularly specific. We also know that the prevailing interpretation of the establishment clause places clear limits on the actions of public officials in their public capacity.
You’re welcome to disagree with that interpretation, but don’t act as if the courts are making stuff up as they go along.
Why not? Thats exactly what they are doing.
You’re smarter than that. As in any job, there are bad apples, but by and large, our judges are very intelligent and very well-intentioned. The system also has a complex appeals process to minimize the effect of the bad apples.
I’m not particularly well-versed on matters of law, so we can discuss the basic stuff all you want, but if you’re going to challenge the opinions of decades of court cases, you better bring more to the table than “it doesn’t say so in the constitution.”
It’s about certain so-called Christians desperately needing to see the power of government being used to proselytize for their religion, and no other. It’s as simple as that.
Christians are desperate to utilize the power of a government that is hostile to God and religion, to proselytize for their religion?
Riiight… try putting both oars in the water… you’ll go further.
“I would have the same opinion as I do now.”
I really don’t believe you, Jay. Your writings on this blog depict you as a fanatical Christian partisan. Whether you have the courage to admit it publicly or not, government-sponsored observance of any religion other than Christianity would enrage you.
Lobo, as usual, has no argument, only a gratuitous insult. There is no monolithic “government” in this country that is uniformly “hostile to God and religion”. The Tangipahoa Parish school board certainly exhibits no such hostility. Where so-called Christians can get government to proselytize for them, they do.
“Imagine that the school board was opening every meeting with a reading from the Koran. ” Golan Treviz
I can not speak for the others by I see no problem as the sin is what I do and not what someone else does. According to my religion I can observe others worshipping their God as long as I do not participate.
If you know the story of Shadrack, Meshach and Abed-Nego then will know what I am speaking of.
‘you better bring more to the table than “it doesn’t say so in the constitution.†‘ JM
According to the rule of law, the law must be clear and understandable to all than just the legal profession. In the United States the, U.S. Constitution and not a court’s decision is the high law of the land. So what is important is what the U.S. Constitution states and what those who made it law intended it to say and not what the Supreme Court states it says. This is true because only Congress and the legislatures of the states have the legal authority to change or alter the U.S. Constitution.
“You’re welcome to disagree with that interpretation, but don’t act as if the courts are making stuff up as they go along. “ JM
The living constitution theory is a theory that the courts do have the power to make up stuff as they go along. It is based on an unsound interpretation of the Ninth Amendment which may sound reasonable to anyone that is not somewhat informed of what inalienable rights are.
A couple of obvious errors by the federal courts are to assume the words “Congress shall make no law†refers to the “Tangipahoa Parish school board†and not to Congress only. They try to get around that obvious misinterpretation by claiming the “Due process†clause of the Fourteenth Amendment makes parts of the Bill of Rights apply to the states. The flaw in that “interpretation” is that the same “due process†is in the Fifth Amendment and merely means that a person can not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law and the Fourteenth is applying it to the state while the Fourth applied it to federal government. It does not even mean the same due process as the Federal government uses a different due process for military and for non military.
“… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one MAKES them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ……just pass the the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”- p.411, Ayn Rand, ATLAS SHRUGGED, Signet Books, NY, 1957 “…
I agree with both sentiments wholeheartedly. I’m all for returning to a small, well-defined government, but you have to recognize that we are well over a century removed from such a thing and our leading parties are continuing the trend at a breakneck pace.
As for the rest of your post, I’m not blowing you off, kerwin. I just need to get some work done tonight. I’m sure we’ll have many more opportunities to discuss your strict constructionist viewpoint.