Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Rememeber the Summum cases from Utah? Summum is a fringe religious groups that wants to put monuments to their principles, called the Seven Aphorisms, next to Ten Commandments monuments. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor in two cases involving two different cities in Utah, each of which had refused to allow such monuments. One of those cities, Pleasant Grove, has filed cert with the Supreme Court.
Interestingly, the city is being represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, Pat Robertson's legal group. They are defending the notion that a city can choose to put up a monument to the beliefs of one religion while refusing to allow another religion to put up such a display. This flies in the face of a long history of open forum cases that the ACLJ itself has taken advantage of to get Christian groups access to public property and facilities.
The ACLJ's press release says:
This is a critically important case that gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to rectify a lower court's very twisted interpretation of the First Amendment. The lower court's decision misses the crucial distinction between government speech and private speech. The government has to be neutral toward private speech, but it does not have to be neutral in its own speech. For example, a government cannot censor anti-patriotic speech, but that doesn't mean the government itself has to utter unpatriotic messages.
A terrible analogy. The ACLJ ignores the entire analysis of what makes a limited public forum. The Ten Commandments monument in Pleasant Grove was put up by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The city accepted the gift and put it up on public property. That is exactly what the Summum group wants to do, donate a monument to their aphorisms and have the city put it up. If the city can pick and choose which such monuments to accept and decide to put up only Christian monuments, this is, in fact, a clear endorsement of Christianity.
The Tenth Circuit confused this rule when it said private parties have a First Amendment right to put up the monuments of their choosing in a city park, unless the city takes away all other donated monuments. This ruling, if left unchecked, would ultimately force local governments to remove long-standing and well established patriotic, religious and historical displays. The ramifications of this flawed decision go well beyond Utah and affect every American city and town. It's time for the Supreme Court to step in and bring an end to a dangerous interpretation of free speech and equal access.
Funny, the ACLJ didn't find the limited open forum analysis "dangerous" when they were using it to get equal access for Lamb's Chapel or for the Good News Club. Sounds to me like what they really want is exclusive access to public property for Christian groups and no access for anyone else.
Comments
The best way to shut down all of these cases, and stop clogging our judicial system with nonsense, is to remove all religious monuments, plaques, etc., from government property. Then, governments at all levels should be smart enough to refuse all gifts that allude to any religious beliefs. These ridiculous cases are multiplying like bunnies on fertility meds.
Posted by: the chaplain | November 24, 2007 10:27 AM
The theocrats still don't seem to grasp that religious endorsements are treated specially by the Constitution. There's no constitutional separation of government and patriotism, or government and science. There is a constitutional separation of government and religion.
It's one of the issues which the state is specifically not allowed to take a stand on, and the Founders knew full well why that was so important.
Posted by: Ebonmuse | November 24, 2007 11:18 AM
I think Ebonmuse seriously overstates the commitment of the founders themselves to the notion that the government should take no stand on religion at all. George Washington certainly did not believe that, nor did John Adams or most of the others. The non-coercive accommodationism of Washington and Adams was almost certainly the majority stance among that group, believing that the government could and should provide rhetorical support for religion in general without violating anyone's right to believe and worship (or not) as they wish. Only Jefferson and Madison were outspoken advocates of total separation. I personally favor the Jefferson/Madison position and think that it's far more important in today's much more diverse country to follow their position on such matters, but let's not pretend that "the founders" as a group supported the notion that government could take no stand on religion. That simply is not the case, no matter how much we might with it was.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | November 24, 2007 1:00 PM
Simply more corruption masquerading as Judaeo-Christianity.
The real irony is that, when called upon to act out the faith they so enthusiastically impose upon others, the vast majority of these would-be theocrats excuse their own failure to follow any number of the Ten Commandments with complicated explanations of their own special circumstances.
If there is an afterlife, the very book they shove down others' throats doesn't bode well for them.
Posted by: Farb | November 24, 2007 1:37 PM