Many conservative Christians wish for the government to provide official support for their religious and moral beliefs. Because they feel this way, they assume that this is natural; that any person, given a choice between a government which promotes this person’s views on any topic, including a religious topic, and a government which remains neutral on the subject, would prefer that the government actively support his or her own beliefs.
These conservatives do not understand why someone might see neutrality as desirable in and of itself, for they see it only as an intermediate position between government advocation of their viewpoint and government advocation of an opposing viewpoint. When “lefties” say that their only goal is to obtain a government which remains neutral on religious matters, those conservatives assume they must be lying. They recognize that were the roles reversed, and their variant of Christianity unpopular and in danger of state opposition, they might call for neutrality themselves, but only as a temporary step towards the ultimate goal of active state support.
We are talking about Ann Coulter here, so I’d say that it’s two heaping helpings of both.
Atheist lefty here, and Judge Moore can dance with snakes on top of his huge monument, while singing Onward Christian Soldiers for all I care, as long as he does it on his property, and it’s not past my bedtime when he does it.
John Mace, I’m going to have to second the request for the cite regarding the ACLU, if you are implying that they are fighting religion in cases where it’s not a SOCAS issue.
And Adrienne, you have three posts in this thread and a post count of two. Welcome to the boards! I see you’ve met the hampsters already.
Remove from public life? Yes. From private life? No, of course not. Note public life means done in government/on publicly-owned property. As a rule of thumb, if you can’t put a “we nate niggers” statue there, you can’t put a religious statue there either. You can put both in your house, your church, or your store. Not at a state/federal courthouse or other government building.
Hey, you guys are going to have to define what "simple SOCAS’ is versus innocuous religion in the public sphere. I made a simple observation, and don’t have a dog in this fight. I’d prefer to have all religious references taken out of the public sphere myself. To me it’s very simple: If it’s a tangible reference to any religion, get rid of it.
People have a right to express their religious opinions in public. The issue is: Does opposing government officials expression of religious opinions somehow imply an opposition to an individual citizen doing the same?
A State Supreme Court Justice, in a Courthouse is not a private citizen. A Priest of Baal on the front lawn of his Temple is a private citizen. The former is forbidden to express religious opinions, the later is guaranteed the right to do so.
If the Judge wants to pray, he can leave the courthouse, and pray in the Market Places.
I am a leftist Christian who thinks public prayer is unchristian, but only public prayer by Government officials is unconstitutional.
Didn’t jesus say don’t pray in public and pray to show off the fact that you’re pious? Didn’t jesus say go pray alone in a closet, or something to that extent? I’m not a christian, and I don’t mean to say what jesus would or would not do, but from what I know about jesus I cannot picture him putting christian symbols all over the country. Of course, what’s the point in being religious of nobody sees you doing it? That’s like giving money to charity anonymously and not telling anyone.
That’s the point. Prayer is supposed to be an individual’s means of connecting with God, not showing off your piety to others. Charity is supposed to be for the benefit of others, not yourself. If you take public credit for either here and now, you forfeit credit hereafter. At least that’s what I was taught when I was a child. As an adult I’ve set aside religoious dogma, but, especially with regard to charity, I think keeping it to oneself is a good idea.
I have considered myself a secular humanist for many years. I deplore the use of religious oaths and symbols in any official public context, but I do not advocate removing religion from from all public life. The existence of churches, temples and mosques doesn’t bother me, and individuals can erect icons to Baal if it pleases them, as long as they pay for it and keep it off government property.
Justice Moore and others of his ilk are just so obnoxious. They can pray everywhere BUT government locations and it STILL isn’t enough. This jackass should quit his fucking job and buy himself a pulpit. He’s confused preaching with law. Asshole. And he’s not even smart enough to realize that he’s weakening his own case every time they let one of these jerks co-mingle the law with the religion. Maybe he’ll think twice when a religion that’s not to his liking is the one getting all the air time. Stupid, stupid man.
Simply, I think of the difference as whether the gov’t is involved or not. If the ACLU defended a case where someone wanted to remove a religious reference from a public place not owned or related to the gov’t (like a shopping mall for example), I feel that would count as an example of the ACLU going beyond SOCAS.
OK. So in your OP, you meant the term"public" to apply to non-gov’t buildings and such? Sorry if I misunderstood. I just consider anything non-government to be private, not public.
I don’t recall anything from “lefties” specifically - certainly not from politicians. But certainly there have been many threads and posts in the Pit in which people have expressed irritation at seeing Christians praying in public, or having religious bumper stickers or other paraphernalia. So I would have to think there is at least an undercurrent of support for removing religion from public life.
To a point that has been raised here, I think the argument that you can distinguish SOCAS from “public life” is just a bit disingenuous, since the government increasingly controls so much of public life. Like high school football games, or “institutions that take money from the government”. If society is structured in such a manner that the government is a minimalist presence in people’s lives, you can validly argue that you merely support SOCAS. But if society is structured in such a manner that a large portion of it’s activities and institutions are intertwined with the government, that argument loses quite a bit of force, IMHO.
Oh, Izzy…there’s a huge difference between irritated and OUTRAGED. No, I don’t enjoy people preaching gospel any old place, and I hate their obnoxious bumper stickers. But it’s their RIGHT to be obnoxious. It’s NOT their right to do it on government property with government money. I LOVE the fact that they put screens around the monument so it can’t be viewed, even though it still sits there post-deadline. Justice Bible-Thumper raced back from a family funeral to kick up more of a stink. Utterly pathetic.
Well, sure there are people, like IzzyR mentions, who seem to take offense at ANY "public display"of religion or ANY form of proselytizing, anywhere where they can see it, rather than limited to the Public as in government-related. But they seem to be people with a beef with religion in and of itself, rather than being part of any generalized “lefty” agenda.
And yes, we should have had definitions earlier. In everyday life we have “public” being used to refer to directly-government-owned-and-controlled space (the courthouse, the classroom), government-maintained-but-available-to-all space (the park), common space (the sidewalk), privately-owned “public accommodations” (the diner, the Mall), private activity financed with “public money”, and the common phrase “in public” (anywhere the people can see you).
I guess that in my perfect world there’d be no religion, because, it’s essentially something I see as fantasy and it can get awfully annoying.
But, that said, I don’t want to remove it from public life at a practical level, beyond that of seperating church and state. Sure, a secular society might be preferable to me, but there is no possible way of achieving that isn’t horrifying and a gross violation of human rights.
So, basically, I agree with Diogenes the Cynic’s post above. I’m only saying it’d be nice to live in a hypothetical world where nobody was concerned with religion.
It’s a classic strawman. The argument is not removing religion from public view, and never was. But by characterizing the opponent’s argument as something different than it actually is, and defeating it, you invite the listener to infer your argument is superior.
Nothing to be sorry for; I should have been clear in my definition up front.
Now I wonder if what the people who accuse the left mean by “public”. If they mean public=government, then they are correct; a lot of people on the left (and the right) do want to remove religion from the gov’t. I’m one of them.
But have I been misunderstanding the accusations? I assumed it was a misrepresentation; and they were saying we eventually want to ban religion from any public (non-gov’t) place.
This is not a case of what the ACLU did, but how a State government responds to a perceived threat of what the ACLU may do. This is what happened during my Junior class in High School. The various clubs get their pictures in the yearbook. The bible club wanted a sign that said “God Bless You” to be in their picture. Many of the other clubs had signs in their pictures (ranging from ‘Blue Devils #1’ to the Latin translation of “Latin is a language as dead as dead can be, first it killed the Romans now its killing me”). The bible club could not have the sign because the school was afraid of an ACLU lawsuit. Glee club also could not sing Christmas carols in the Winter Pageant, same reason.
These are, I feel, not legitimate expressions of the SOCAS. They are intrusions into the lives of citizens (the students) by the government trying to stop any form of religion expression in public. I was in the glee club. We were much better singing “I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In” than we were “Winter Wonderland”.
But the US government adds considerably to the cofusion by specifically injecting a certain amount of religiosity into the public (government) sphere. It’s almost hard to blame folks like the judge in Alabama (who displayed the 10 comandments in his courthouse entry) when you look at how much government sanctioned religion there actually is. I said this in another thread, but the current situation of relgion in the government just invites lawsuit after lawsuit trying to find that perfect line between what is acceptable and what is not. That might not necessarily be such a bad thing, given the feeling about religion that so many people in this country have.
I deplore the use of religious oaths and symbols in any official public context, but I do not advocate removing religion from from all public life. The existence of churches, temples and mosques doesn’t bother me, and individuals can erect icons to Baal if it pleases them, as long as they pay for it and keep it off government property.
I could not agree with you more. I’d fight for anyone’s right to erect an icon of whatever religious figure on their own private property. But it cannot be on public property.
John Mace: Yes indeed, the big problem is the mixed signals the SCOTUS sends to inbred hicks like those in Alabama. These people need clear boundaries, and what is given to them is far from clear. For example, the SCOTUS has the 10 commandments right behind Rehnquist’s chair. The Capital has an official Chaplain. The Boy Scouts have Federal statutes giving them money (and yes, they are a religious organization). Our national motto is “in god we trust” and the national pledge of allegiance says we are officially “one nation under god.” With mixed signals like this, it’s no wonder simple minded country folk like Judge Moore get confused. Also confusing is the fact that our country has separation of church and state but those exact words, while used by all the founding fathers, are not explicitly in the constitution (even though it’s quite clear what the 1st Amendment establishment clause means).