# How far is the gap between what D's/R's say and what they really want?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-is-the-gap-between-what-ds-rs-say-and-what-they-really-want/836914>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [July 11, 2019, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-is-the-gap-between-what-ds-rs-say-and-what-they-really-want/836914 "2019-07-11T16:55:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2019, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-is-the-gap-between-what-ds-rs-say-and-what-they-really-want/836914/41 "2019-07-22T17:39:55Z")

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> [@Shodan](#):
>
> The most famous lawsuit over school prayer was filed by Madyln Murray O’Hair, who was certainly an atheist. Don’t know about most of the rest - my impression is that it is mostly from the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and groups like that, who I don’t think follow any particular religion.

Those groups may represent the people making complaints, but I was talking about the actual people with complaints. For example, the ACLU represented the plaintiffs in _Engel v. Vitale_\* , but the five parents listed as plaintiffs included two who were Jewish, a Unitarian , a member of the Society for Ethical Culture and a person who was listed in the court papers as an atheist but later described himself as “religious but not a churchgoer”.

- a landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1962 , before O’Hair’s lawsuit was filed

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