Thor's Day: Keep your theocracy

Off our democracy

By Morris Dean

It was too good to be just a fish. A correspondent this week wrote about last week's Thor's Day column ["King City, Texas," by Stone Arnold] that it was "interesting that your blog should bring up the topic of invocations in public meetings. I followed the Supreme Court's discussion of a very similar situation in Greece, NY last fall, and they are expected to rule on the matter in a couple of months."
    I googled the topic and found a November article in the New York Times: "Justices Weigh Constitutionality of New York Town’s Prayers." Excerpt:

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy seemed frustrated with an argument [of Thomas G. Hungar, a lawyer for the town]...“The essence of the argument is that we’ve always done it this way, which has some force to it,” Justice Kennedy said. “But it seems to me that your argument begins and ends there.”
    At the same time, Justice Kennedy appeared reluctant to have judges or other government officials decide what prayers are acceptable. Such a practice. he said, “involves the state very heavily in the censorship and the approval or disapproval of prayer.”
    Justice Antonin Scalia said prayers in a legislative setting were different from the hypothetical ones in court that Justice Kagan had asked about. “People who have religious beliefs,” he said, “ought to be able to invoke the deity when they are acting as citizens and not as judges.”
    Douglas Laycock, representing two women who challenged the prayers in New York as a violation of the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, said...the prayers in New York were often explicitly sectarian...and town residents were forced to listen to them in order to participate in local government.
    Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked Mr. Laycock for an example of a prayer that would be acceptable to people of all faiths.
    Mr. Laycock said “prayers to the Almighty” and “prayers to the Creator” would be all right.
    “What about devil worshipers?” Justice Scalia asked.
    Mr. Hungar said that “if devil worshipers believe the devil is the almighty, they might be O.K.”....
    Some justices worried that any ruling from the court could do more harm than good. “It’s hard,” Justice Kagan said, “because the court lays down these rules and everybody thinks that the court is being hostile to religion and people get unhappy and angry and agitated in various kinds of ways.”
    Justice Scalia wondered where a ruling from the court would leave nonbelievers. “What is the equivalent of prayer for somebody who is not religious?” he asked Mr. Hungar, who had no answer.

    As my correspondent concluded, "I imagine, regardless of the outcome, it will be big news."
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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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