Look, surely you see that if you scream loudly about, say, NFL coaches sending videocam-armed spies to opponent’s practices because such action is wrong, and then defend the practice when your favorite NBA team does it, it’s relevant to ask if your real issue is with surreptitious taping of team practices.
Here, there’s some outrage over a legal piece of reasoning. If you truly oppose that type of legal analysis, then your outrage is genuine. If you oppose it only when it generates results you don’t like, then it;s clear you don’t care at all about the legal analysis; you care about the results in this particular case, and the ensuing debate should more honestly focus on that.
I pick abortion here for two reasons: first, Roe is about the clearest example of judicial making-shit-up we’re all reasonably familiar with. I could mention Lochner v. New York, or Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States. But those aren’t as well-known, except to law students.
Secondly, most people who come down one way as a matter of personal preference on ceremonial deism seem to come down the other way when the issue is abortion.
So this isn’t an attempt to draw a parallel between “In God We Trust” and abortion. It’s drawing a parallel between the judicial methods used to reach a result in Roe v. Wade and its progeny with those used in the line cases that Newdow et al vs. Rio Linda Union School District has just joined.
For the second, it looks like there were a series of Acts of Congress in the middle 1800s that established the “In God We Trust” motto on the currency:
For example, the Coinage Act of 1873 that said the Secretary may cause the motto to appear on the currency.
The Pledge was amended through a joint resolution of Congress in 1954 amending the flag code:
Fun fact: the Pledge was written by a Christian Socialist!
ETA: This thread is moving too quickly for me, so I’m leaving my post as is, even it it is redundant.
I disagree. I think ceremonial deism is about the clearest example of judicial making-shit-up.
And, of course the same is true the other way (or something). In other words, I don’t see the opponents of abortion rights coming out in favor of striking words from the pledge or the currency.
Pretty much everybody mostly cares about the results, not the method.
Is a lack of a position a legitimate position? Because that’s pretty much mine. I regard “ceremonial deism” as a civil compromise, a gesture of respect towards the beliefs of others given in the strict constraint that my respect for their belief in no sense suggests an obligation to agree or to comply. For my two bits, that is the essence of an “established religion”, and applies equally well to its Soviet opposite, the establishment of atheism, I hold both positions obnoxious.
I hold ceremonial deism to be a polite and civil gesture, entirely appropriate to a democracy. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and we blame the Creator, thats just as good as saying we give these rights to each other as a mutual gift. A case could be made that this sort of mutual generosity and respect may be as close to God as any of us are likely to get.
Sometimes, not often, but some times, the best response to such a compelling issue is a polite shrug. I believe this is one of those times.
Personally ceremonial deism pings pretty low on my outrageometer - I don’t exhibit my protest by boycotting money or anything. (I haven’t had occasion to say the pledge of allegience in years but I usually just keep mum on the “under God” part. Though I think I may have said “under Satan” once…)
However, it remains a fact that ceremonial deism is indeed a load of crap - entirely inappropriate for any democracy that has enshrined a separation of church and state in their constitution. It’s actually kind of unique in this respect; Roe vs. Wade may be judicial activism but it’s not judicial urinating-on-the-plain-text-of-the-constitution; nobody can possibly compare the two without first completely succumbing to partisan bias. (Comparisons with restrictions on gun ownership might on the other hand be applicable, assuming the arguments are as obviously bullshit as the arguments for ceremonial deism are.)
The best response would, of course, to be to quietly restore the original text, and then ignore it when people obstinantly keep saying the pledge the old way, or when they hang onto and frame diety-labeled currency currently in circulation. This avenue would balance the desire not to needlessly harass the pious populace with the semi-important need not to treat the constitution like a mere suggestion.
If someone wants to argue that textualists are hypocritical on this subject, they should not use non-textualist arguments to do so. The text doesn’t say “separation of church and state”. That term was common currency at the time of the writing of the constitution, and if the framers wanted it in there, they should’ve put those words in there. But they didn’t.
So, we’re left with something much more vague; wording that is much more prescribed than it would be had the “separation” phrase been used.
The truth is that the majority of vocal Americans happen to be religious, specifically Christian. Many of them are fundamentalist Christian. It doesn’t matter what the Constitution says, they refuse to tolerate any move towards secularism. They already feel like they’re losing a so-called culture war. Every step towards secularism is seen as a step towards hell (almost in a literal sense) in their eyes.
Well, the Rapture will take care of that problem, any day now. It has to be soon, since we already have a colored guy named Hussein as President, of all things. That’s a portent if there ever was one.
Meanwhile, yes, ceremonial deism is a polite lie. And the establishment clause is not “vague”.
You want to get some mileage out of that, convince me that the pledge and the currency say “a god” and not “God”. The latter is a proper name and specific reference to a specific diety believed in by a specific limited group of establishments of religion, which the ceremonial deism is overtly and explicitly extending respect to.
It is more vague than the “wall of separation” phrase in terms of what it allows the government to do. The “wall of separation” is more restrictive. It would be hard to argue that the “wall of separation” phrase simply disallowed the government from establishing a state church.
Remember, at the time when the constitution was written, many states had established churches. There is an argument to be made that all the establishment clause did was to forbid the feds from interfering with the states on this matter by establishing a church at the federal level.
Now, that needn’t be the “modern” view of that clause, but a textualist or originalist view is perfectly consistent with allowing “ceremonial deism” and then some.
Again, I’m really not interested in getting into a discussion about whether textualism or originalism is the correct way to interpret the constitution. But a textualis or originalist interpretation is not in the least inconsistent with allowing ceremonial deism. In fact, it would allow much more.
Actually, the hand waving we are seeing is on the side of the living constitutionalists in this case, not the originalists. The former have to perform some legal gymnastics to put severe limits on what the federal government can and cannot do without literally erecting that wall of separation. And so we get “ceremonial deism”.
You ignored my point - that the problem is that some instances of ceremonial deism are obviously and clearly explicitly Christian in both current interpretation and original intent. These smack into the more limited interpretations of the establisment clause too - you can’t fudge and say that “under God” is for polythiests too. Heck, it’s complete hooey to say it applies to Hindus. There is no vagueness here: it’s Christian, and always was.
I hold it to be possible that different things can be in contradiction to the establisment clause in different ways and degrees - some protests require one to take a more general wall of separation approach (which I believe is perfectly appropriate). However, there are some clear and obvious instances of ceremonial deism that fall afoul of the more restrictive interpretations -all more restrictive interpretations- as well. Putting the ten commandments on your federal courthouse and “in God we trust” on your federal currency being two clear examples.