This evening, while voting, I noticed a very prominent sign in the public Elementary school which said “In God We Trust”, right next to the principal’s office.
While I am concerned about this, I also noticed a much more prominent sign, i.e. “God Bless America” on the official school sign in the front yard of the school.
My question is if either or both of these is allowable, or a violation that I can reasonably argue against.
I can probably get a picture of the outside sign this weekend, if it would help.
You could probably fight against it. Of course if they don’t give in right away, you need some high powered attorneys (maybe the ACLU will sponsor you), a few years, and you may need to move and assume another identity after the publicity kicks up.
I am only partially kidding. There have been other lawsuits like that and they were quite high-profile. Community response from some is likely to be unkind to say the least.
Fun Guy (absolutely wonderful choice for a name, by the way!), to discuss whether this is legally appropriate gets us into Great Debates territory.
As a GQ answer, let me say this: The Supremes have to date distinguished between open promotion of a religious belief (municipal display of a creche or the Ten Commandments, for example) and what’s termed “ceremonial deism” in their writings: recognition that a fair proportion of the country does acknowledge a God of some sort, and that some public institutions (the Pledge, “In God We Trust” as a national motto, the patriotic song “God Bless America” for example) do make reference to that acknowledgement. By a twist of reasoning, they assert that such recognition is not a constitutionally prohibited “establishment of religion.”
Do the school’s displays come under that head or violate it? That’s quite debatable, and not suitable for address here in GQ.
For anything further than that, we’d have to take this topic next door.
You could always go here http://www.aclu.org/, find your state’s email addy and ask them if they would like to become involved. I would think a call from the aclu would be more likely to get results than a call from FunGuy from Yuggoth regardless of the legality of the sign in question.
Had I been attending that elementary school, I would have gone to the principal’s office and insisted on putting up a sign next to it reading, “THERE ARE NO GODS–RELIGION IS NONSENSE.”
