Heretics Need Not Apply.
Aug. 29th, 2014 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogYou might remember me mentioning last month that some nearby atheists made a rather tasty lemonade out of the lemons tossed at them in June by the U.S. Supreme Court. A Rochester suburb was allowed to continue its "tradition" of opening town board meetings with a religious representative's invocation, as long as the town also opened the podium to members of all faiths, or even of no faith. Within a month, a proclaimed atheist took his turn, with only one obvious Jesus nut in attendance to protest.
The thing about wingnuts, though? You have to watch what they're doing even when you CAN'T see them. For the town has now whisked away that near-new welcome mat for everyone, making clear who can and cannot participate:
The policy says that now, speakers will represent "assemblies with an established presence in the town of Greece that regularly meet for the primary purpose of sharing a religious perspective." Assemblies outside the town can participate too if at least one Greece resident attends them regularly and specifically asks in writing for them to be included.
Those rules fly in the face of what the town told the U.S. Supreme Court, which was that people of any persuasion, including lay people and atheists, could give invocations, said Gregory M. Lipper, senior litigation counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Even worse is the source of this face-flying:
The rules mirror a model policy from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization that represented the town in the Supreme Court case. Brett Harvey, the group's senior counsel, said allowing anyone to speak "made sense when the town had a manageable number of people making a request." Now Greece needed a neutral way to select speakers, he said.
The alliance's model policy has been adopted by municipalities across the country and has passed muster with federal courts, he said.
"The question is not, 'Is this the only way to do it?' " Harvey said. "The question is, 'Is this a discriminatory way to do this?' The answer is no."
Let's take this real. Slow. Lee. Your town was sued, and took you all the way to the Supremes, over a policy that was alleged to be exclusionary. You won, but with an express condition that you be inclusive. After one pesky unvocation by an atheist, you adopt a policy written by the side hell-bent on excluding any views but their own. That's not letting a fox into the henhouse; it's setting a table for it with knives and forks and a big bottle of Chiavetta's barbecue sauce.
It's just a continuation of the ignore-ance of the oppressed Christian supermajority in this country, determined to arglebargle its way out of what the Constitution actually says. Just ask Bryan Fischer- the American Family Association honk who has proclaimed that "freedom of religion" only applies to Christians:
Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.
(Because, yeah, Christians never slay mass quantities of Muslims, ever. That Crusade stuff was just a bigggg misunderstanding.)
So no doubt there will now be more challenges to the policy, and another suit, and by the time Chief Justice Scalia gets the case after President Horrible puts four more wingnuts on the Court? There had better BE a God, because only He will be able to help us:P
The thing about wingnuts, though? You have to watch what they're doing even when you CAN'T see them. For the town has now whisked away that near-new welcome mat for everyone, making clear who can and cannot participate:
The policy says that now, speakers will represent "assemblies with an established presence in the town of Greece that regularly meet for the primary purpose of sharing a religious perspective." Assemblies outside the town can participate too if at least one Greece resident attends them regularly and specifically asks in writing for them to be included.
Those rules fly in the face of what the town told the U.S. Supreme Court, which was that people of any persuasion, including lay people and atheists, could give invocations, said Gregory M. Lipper, senior litigation counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Even worse is the source of this face-flying:
The rules mirror a model policy from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization that represented the town in the Supreme Court case. Brett Harvey, the group's senior counsel, said allowing anyone to speak "made sense when the town had a manageable number of people making a request." Now Greece needed a neutral way to select speakers, he said.
The alliance's model policy has been adopted by municipalities across the country and has passed muster with federal courts, he said.
"The question is not, 'Is this the only way to do it?' " Harvey said. "The question is, 'Is this a discriminatory way to do this?' The answer is no."
Let's take this real. Slow. Lee. Your town was sued, and took you all the way to the Supremes, over a policy that was alleged to be exclusionary. You won, but with an express condition that you be inclusive. After one pesky unvocation by an atheist, you adopt a policy written by the side hell-bent on excluding any views but their own. That's not letting a fox into the henhouse; it's setting a table for it with knives and forks and a big bottle of Chiavetta's barbecue sauce.
It's just a continuation of the ignore-ance of the oppressed Christian supermajority in this country, determined to arglebargle its way out of what the Constitution actually says. Just ask Bryan Fischer- the American Family Association honk who has proclaimed that "freedom of religion" only applies to Christians:
Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.
(Because, yeah, Christians never slay mass quantities of Muslims, ever. That Crusade stuff was just a bigggg misunderstanding.)
So no doubt there will now be more challenges to the policy, and another suit, and by the time Chief Justice Scalia gets the case after President Horrible puts four more wingnuts on the Court? There had better BE a God, because only He will be able to help us:P
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no subject
Date: 2014-08-29 01:32 pm (UTC)And given his actions in recent years, when his turn comes up at the Pearly Gate, he'd better be packing some four-million-factor sunblock. Or maybe a bottle of that barbecue sauce.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-29 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-29 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-29 10:24 pm (UTC)Funny story: I went to high school with one of the Chiavettas.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-30 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-30 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-30 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-30 10:48 pm (UTC)yes they want equality, so long as equality means the privileged get what they want, and screw everyone else.