The point, bozo, is that the speech in these forums isn’t supposed to be religious speech at all in the first fucking place. And if you’re going to draw a line between ‘ceremonial deism’ and actual expressions of religious faith, then “the courts that are asked to decide these cases” are going to have to define that line, to figure out what distinguishes religious speech that violates the Establishment Clause from ‘ceremonial deism’ that doesn’t.
The alternatives are to (a) let religious proselytizing run rampant in governmental meetings and events such as this, which seems to be Justice Kennedy’s choice, or (b) admit that defining the existence of ‘ceremonial deism’ was a fucking mistake.
The latter would have the benefit of taking courts out of the business of being “supervisors and censors of religious speech” in fora where it should be absent to begin with.
Bolding mine (now); italics from the original post. And if you keep reading, yes, I suggest as an alternative that they go back and dump ceremonial deism entirely. ETA: After I’d spoken to Kennedy’s decision to evade the responsibility that adhering to both Marsh and the past fifty years of Establishment Clause jurisprudence saddled this and future courts with.
Now, I leave you to your correspondence course in remedial reading.
I find it amusing that, in order to shoehorn in their precious Christian prayer, it needs to be legally and officially made into a meaningless formula, form without substance. “Ceremonial deism” is Christianity neutered and made meaningless, and they LOVE it that way since it allows them to continue pretending that they’re special snowflakes and tons better than those heathens.
And yet they wonder “why such hatred of religion?” Because they can’t keep it in their pants. Prayer at a city council meeting? Fuck you. And if I want to attend the meeting, I’ve got to suck it up? I don’t go to church for a reason. Now I have to avoid high school graduations and city council meetings.
I agree. Fuck all Christians and any other religious zealots who think like this. When you have to literally force others to listen to you in a public place, you are an asshole. I still can’t quite believe the Obama admin submitted an amicus briefto support this shit. Fuck you, Mr. President. How dare you attempt to give god botherers a sanctified place in the public square!
It’s almost amusing - in order to get their religious practices into the government, the evangelizers are forced to live with a SC ruling that their shit doesn’t really mean anything. To make their case, they’ve even had to make that their* central claim*.
Not sure why you are saying Kennedy wants that when the article you cited quote him stating the exact opposite.
As an atheist, I find the whole bit about ceremonial deism to be rather silly, but also of little consequence. America is a country with lots of religious people in it, and when you have a 1st amendment worded in such a way that 1) The literal wording does not forbid this; and 2) a more expansive reading doesn’t necessarily forbid it; well, I think we’re stuck with it.
I think what RTFirefly means is that having ceremonial deism keeps courts in the middle of this by requiring that the prayers don’t denigrate other religions and remain ceremonial deism. A simpler solution, one that would keep courts completely out of this, would be to stop the silliness altogether. So, Kennedy is concerned that courts will have to decide what’s OK and what’s not, and so sided with Greece. However, they are still in that position, since certain prayers are still out of bounds – I think a “sinners repent, atheists and heathens are damned”-type of opening prayer would be disallowed, for example.
If preachers (including lay preachers) want to denigrate nonbelievers, threaten damnation, preach conversion, or just give a little speech about how God is a great guy and really loves everybody–well, hey, this is a free country, and they have oodles of times and places to do any or all of those things, from the pulpits of their own churches to billboards out on the highway to nationwide cable TV networks, and no judge or government official can “supervise or censor” their religious speech. Meantime, legislatures and city councils and other government bodies should stick to doing the public’s business, and stop putting themselves in the position of having to “supervise or censor” religious speech on account of those legislatures or other government bodies having sponsored or commissioned that religious speech in the first place.
Well, perhaps RTF means something different by “proselytizing” than most people mean, because he said Kennedy wanted it and then quoted where Kennedy explicitly said he didn’t want it. At any rate, the fact of the matter is that the founders didn’t want to eliminate this sort of thing and most people today wouldn’t either, so I guess it sucks to have to live in a country where this exists if it bothers you that much. If we had a constitutional convention today and had to rewrite the 1st amendment, my bet is that it would be written more loosely than the current SCOTUS jurisprudence sets it. Perhaps we can all bow our heads and thank The Lord Jesus Christ, our one and true personal Savior, for that!
That’s the purpose of prayer at city council meetings? Give me a break. How the Hell does it do those things? I thought prayer was talking to god. That might be the most stupid line in a Supreme Court opinion I’ve ever read. And that’s saying something. Also, what MEBuckner said:
I’d be happy to get rid of ceremonial deism and prayers before legislative meetings and all that, but the thing I can’t get around is that Congress has had Chaplains and opened their sessions with a prayer since the First Congress. The Congress that passed the first amendment started with a prayer. So, I’m not really sure that you can reasonably make the argument that legislative prayer is banned by the first amendment. At least there didn’t seem to be any conflict in the minds of the drafters of the first amendment.
As a Theist, I too find the whole thing to be rather silly also. While I am all for separation of church and state, and find the nigh but constant attempts of the right to push their religious beliefs on the entire country to be incredibly inane and frustrating, I just can’t get that worked up over a prayer before a city council meeting. I’m sure there are some people who could try hard to be offended, but I’m not convinced that these kinds of things were ever meant to be outlawed by the Establishment Clause.