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From: tvlampboy@...
Date: Fri Apr 29, 2005 5:15 pm
Subject: Proof Positive of Why Strict Separation is Called For
tvlampboy@...
A Wiccan invocation and the Fourth Circuit ruling
By TIM GORDINIER, Ph.D. -- 27 April, 2005
A panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia ruled last
Thursday that the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors could deny
Cynthia Simpson, a Wiccan spiritual leader, permission to deliver a
religious invocation before the start of their board meetings.
In the past, the board had approved and heard invocations from ministers,
priests, rabbis and even Muslim imams, but it drew the line at witches,
enforcing a time-honored policy that restricts "acceptable" clergy to
monotheistic faiths.
So for the record, Chesterfield does make some effort to be
religiously-inclusive, (and it does not compensate those who offer their
services for the privilege to intone.)
But rather than congratulate the board for their big-minded inclusiveness,
we should reprimand them instead for the perniciousness of its effects. It
is exactly this kind of division between favored and non-favored religions
that demonstrates why the practice of religious invocations before
government bodies, whether paid or not, ought to be abolished altogether.
It's precisely what the Establishment Clause is meant to prevent.
To be fair, the Fourth Circuit was only following in the wake of a tired
old Supreme Court precedent, Marsh v. Chambers, that not only allows
legislatures to pay chaplains with taxpayer dollars, but to have only one
chaplain on staff representing a single denomination. The argument here was
that it was not the identity of the clergy that mattered, so long as the
message he delivered before opening a legislative session was restricted to
vague, monotheistic mumblings.
And that's important. In a decision in South Carolina last year, a Wiccan
won her challenge because the town board closed its invocation by
referencing Jesus. (Not that she really won -- since the court ruling her
pets have been viciously butchered, her house vandalized, and she herself
shunned for taking on the predominantly Christian community.)
The three judge panel tried to justify its holding with the lame
explanation that there was a sufficient amount of inclusiveness to avoid
the divisiveness that sectarian favoritism often engenders. But the only
thing that the court did with this ruling was repudiate and replace old
prejudices with new groupings of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" religions.
After all, it was not so long ago that Islam would not have made the cut
and if you go back just a bit further you’ll find Judaism and even
Catholicism missing from the list of approved religions.
To paraphrase a line from the great George Orwell --I hesitate to say
Orwellian -- classic Animal Farm, it simply is wrong to allow government to
establish policies that makes some religions "more equal than others." No
matter how big the tent or the "umbrella" is, as the court characterized it
in this case, if you leave someone out you've missed the whole point of the
First Amendment.
The stingiest interpretation of the Establishment Clause -- one we do not
subscribe to, but which would satisfy the likes of conservative justices
like Scalia and Thomas -- is that government can not favor one religion
over another.
But does that mean that it's OK for government to favor two or three
religious groups over all the rest? That logic doesn't compute.
Of course, you could always try to justify invocations on the basis of
freedom of speech, rather than religion. But it you are going to do that,
why place limits on that speech at all -- which the Supreme Court has done
-- by saying that clergy cannot recite sectarian prayers? If it's a matter
of free speech, then chaplains should be able to champion Christ or a
single Protestant denomination if they so please.
Another argument used to justify this ruling was that invocations were not
meant "for the people," but simply for the edification of board members,
which the court said allowed for some relaxation of its usual strictness in
Establishment Clause cases. Puh-leeease. These meetings were open to the
public, who could ask questions and inject themselves into the policy
debates when they had proposals. There are, of course, other arguments made
by the folks at the Rutherford Institute who claim the speech becomes
private, not government speech, when you invite clergy. One of the more
indefensible arguments advanced was that legislative prayers must be okay
because the First Congress allowed it. Well, the First Congress also
allowed slavery. Or try this one on for size: non-sectarian invocations
have a long tradition of solemnizing public events in ways that secular
language cannot. I could go on, but I find these arguments unconvincing
when you actually get down to the facts of the case.
And there is more to this story that meets the eye. The majority opinion
maintained that the board had made "a serious effort" to consider Simpson's
request before they turned her down, even though it also conceded that some
of the members had been heard to utter such mocking comments as "There's
always Halloween," or "I hope that she's a good witch like Glenda."
Forget about protecting the rights of atheists and agnostics for a moment
-- we're talking about a bona fide case of intra-religious discrimination
here, now sanctioned by a court one level below that of the U.S. Supreme
Court.
It supremely ironic, too, that this egregious ruling would be made in
Virginia, the birth state of the nation's constitutional ban on religious
establishments.
Why continue this unprincipled approach to Establishment Clause
jurisprudence when the most sensible solution is to cut the Gordian knot
and get rid of all invocations, benedictions and prayers at government
events? That's the best and cleanest solution to this sorry compromised
area of constitutional jurisprudence.
Barring that, everyone should be eligible -- and I mean everyone. Not so
long ago Herb Silverman, president of Secular Coalition of America, gave a
non-religious invocation at a local city board meeting in Charleston, South
Carolina. Some councilpersons walked out, but at least they allowed it.
.
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