The problem with this analogy is that the snowman-builder is the only person involved. When I built the snowman, everything that happened subsequently was due to predictable natural forces. Holding me responsible makes sense, because nobody else had a chance to stop it.
If I sue a district for arguably legitimate reasons, and then other districts respond unreasonably to the lawsuit to quash religious expression, that’s not natural forces. There are other moral agents involved after me, and much more directly involved in the injustice. Blaming me for the actions of others is usually a bad idea.
You CAN blame me for their actions if you can demonstrate that I coerced them or threatened them or misled them. But if I did none of these things, and they acted incorrectly due to their own ignorance or due to the deceit of a third party (I dunno, say, Focus on the Family stirring up hysteria about my legitimate actions), then I am completely blameless in this case. Blame the folks acting in ignorance; blame the folks preying on their ignorance. Don’t blame the person filing a legitimate lawsuit.
After One Cut’s post just above, and LHoD’s follow up, can we agree that litigious overraction is a feature of our society that has chilling effects on a wide range of activities, including Christmas - in other words Christmas is not a special case of such chilling effects?
Not overruled. So, yes good law. Not the way I would have decided the case, but not an absue of discretion… not that the Supremes ever abuse their discretion,because who exists to decide that they have?
Good grief. The law in this area is not what you might want to call rock-solid. Nothing about, say, distribution of religious materials by students during the day would suggest a lack of neutrality between religion and non-religion. Neutrality means just that; if “neutrality” meant non-religion, the phrase “neutrality between religion and non-religion” would not exist.
Good grief yourself. Do you agree that, given the current state of constitutional law, the Establishment Clause mandates neutrality as between religion and non-religion, whatever “neutrality” itself means? Yes or no?
Fair enough, but the way I see it the ACLU situation would be more like this: I build a snowman. Ten minutes later some moron decides it would be fun to throw a few hand grenades at my snowman. Avalanche.
You could say that snowman-building has a destablising effect on snowdrifts and that would technically be accurate, but I think it unfair to equate the snowman-builders in any way with the grenade-throwers.
I doubt there’s any meaningful way to debate which analogy is appropriate, so I just wanted to say thanks for starting this thread. I’m glad that in the future I’ll have some clue what all those “War on Christmas” people are talking about!
Sadly, the “War on Christmas” guys like O’Reilly and Gibson are talking about something almost completely different; there is but a thin sliver of intersection between my incidents and theirs.
Pretty sure that wasn’t the case when we started.