Supreme court Approves Council Prayers

[Dissolution]

I think the really disturbing question is: Why do we have only Catholics and Jews in The Supreme Court? Is there something in the vetting process that demands you must either be Catholic or Jewish? Is it surprising that a court with this sort of a lack of diversity votes against protecting diversity?

It must be tradition.

Catholics and Jews make up a little under a quarter of the population of the US, if Wikipedia is to be believed.
25% of the people and 100% of the SCOTUS?

 

[d4m10n]

How long do you think it will take to unwind all the damage this SCOTUS is doing?

Probably at least 15-20 years, and that is assuming Scalia walks in front of a bus tomorrow morning.

 

[turingtest]

Probably at least 15-20 years, and that is assuming Scalia walks in front of a bus tomorrow morning.

That might be a little optimistic (the "15-20 years" part, not the "Scalia walks in front of a bus" thing- "wishful thinking" might cover that better ). Law is ruled so much by the inertia of precedent (not "tradition"- legal precedent), and there's so much of both here, that's it's going to take a pretty drastic sea-change in the country's overall political and religious outlook to overcome it. I'd guess closer to (and possibly more than) fifty years or so.

 

[d4m10n]

Less than 20 years from Bowers v. Hardwick until Lawrence v. Texas.

Optimistic? Yeah, but judicial sea changes are not wholly unprecedented.

 

[mutile]

The supreme law of the land isn't used to determine what's legal or not?

Yes as I said it determines what is legal, not what ought to be legal.

 

[arthwollipot]

Probably at least 15-20 years, and that is assuming Scalia walks in front of a bus tomorrow morning.

Someone really needs to locate and destroy that guy's phylactery already.

 

[Beerina]

Thank you; that better expresses the point I was struggling to make above with my "ceremonial deism" reference- that it can't be meaningless ceremony and meaningful prayer at the same time. And it's certainly a little hypocritical (at best) for these folks to pretend to others that it's the one just so they can maintain for themselves the privilege to politically proclaim the other.

I've often felt this, too. In the "In God We Trust" case on money, the Supreme Court said essentially the same thing, that it was meaningless socio-cultural-traditional something or other. Which is, of course, in direct contradiction to the reason Congress added it in the 1950s, to make a statement that the nation was not, in fact, godless.


George Will has a good column this week describing the only way they can actually get away with it -- by pointing out the Founding Fathers did this in Congress before, during, and after sending out the Bill of Rights for ratification.


I'm also no fan of, well, let George explain it better:

The majority held that ceremonial prayer — an encouragement to gravity and sobriety — is not harmful to the plaintiffs, who felt somehow coerced when present at public prayers, and who said such prayers are necessarily divisive. The court should have told them: If you feel coerced, you are flimsy people, and it is a choice — an unattractive one — to feel divided from your neighbors by their affection for brief and mild occasional expressions of religiosity.

And

Taking offense has become America’s national pastime; being theatrically offended supposedly signifies the exquisitely refined moral delicacy of people who feel entitled to pass through life without encountering ideas or practices that annoy them.

Taking offense as memetic power-seizing vector to shut down other people I find a thoroughly disgusting development. However, it was perhaps inevitable in a nation with absolute, unencroachable freedoms -- weasel arguments of injury to the mind now try to get around the prohibition on Congress interfering in speech, religion, etc.

This trend will, sadly, only get worse in the coming decades as better brain studies will tempt those who would override the First Amendment for their own political gain to point to brain studies, "See? Real, physical damage therefore I silence thee using men with guns."

 

[turingtest]

Less than 20 years from Bowers v. Hardwick until Lawrence v. Texas.

Optimistic? Yeah, but judicial sea changes are not wholly unprecedented.

You could be right- I hope you are, since that would mean I could reasonably hope to see it myself. I guess living, as I do, in Mississippi- the kind of place where the usual response to hearing you're an atheist (or even just agnostic) is "so...you worship the devil then?" [insert facepalm here]- inclines me more to possibly unjustified pessimism.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Well, it's a pretty Catholic group; but not really very catholic, if you see what I mean.

Darn it, I was trying to figure out how to word this! Well said! You win again, Dr. test!

Someday...

(DISCLAIMER: I have been avoiding this thread out of cowardice...so I am late to the party.)

 

[Slowvehicle]

Absolutely agreed. I think the intent of the decision is an attempt at even-handedness; I think the effect will be to arm folks whose basic ideology excludes even-handedness. It'll have to be dealt with again at some point.

The extreme always drives out the moderate.

 

[Slowvehicle]

This ought not be a surprise to anyone. That is, it ought not to be a surprise to anyone who has been reading the idiocy that seems to flow from Justice Thomas in religious cases. Thomas has taken this position for nearly ten years now. As I wrote in the Pledge case from 2004:In a later case, Thomas acknowledged that he had taken some flak for this position, but he did not expressly renounce it. But he stands alone in his bird-brained position:Even in today's decision, Justice Scalia refused to join in the part of Thomas's opinion that adhered to this foolish analysis.

As for the bit about the 14th Amendment, it has been observed that Justice Thomas MIGHT have had a point ... had the case been decided before the Civil War.

In his dissent in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005), Justice Stevens addressed Thomas's absurd position:Anyway, you can read today's opinion here. There will be lots of commentators commenting on the opinion without having read it; I recommend reading it first, but not if you have recently eaten.

Now, let me put out some red-meat commentary that you might see elsewhere: Prayers are traditional, prayers are ceremonial, say the boys in black, which may of course be true. But that rather spectacularly misses the point. Prayers are also religious, and if that is not so, then so-called houses of prayer ought to lose their religious status and start paying their damned taxes.

Or how about this one: There is a lot of talk about privatizing things. Well, perhaps we ought to privatize religion. Get government out of the religion business!

Also well said.

There is also the issue that, if a prayer is "neutral" enough to be inoffensive to all religions, it is so wishy-washy as to be anathema to the fervid.

Consider the Hypocritical Hippocratic Oath...

 

[Slowvehicle]

,snip.
If you like football, you join a local football club, pay your fees, and go to the weekly meeting (game).
If you like science, you join the local science club, pay your fees, and go to the weekly meeting.
If you like religion, you join a local church, pay your fees, and go to the weekly meeting.

Indeed, what is special about religion compared to other clubs?

When will you be running? Where do I have to move to vote for you?

(I will, by the way, be shamelessly stealing um, quoting this...)

 

[Slowvehicle]

How long do you think it will take to unwind all the damage this SCOTUS is doing?

And how much baby will get thrown out while trying to dispose of the bathwater?

 

[Mister Agenda]

I don't know, Please describe the asserted endangered baby.

 

[pgwenthold]

I don't know, Please describe the asserted endangered baby.

My first response was the beloved "moment of silence." But then again, who cares about that?

 

[pgwenthold]

I've often felt this, too. In the "In God We Trust" case on money, the Supreme Court said essentially the same thing, that it was meaningless socio-cultural-traditional something or other. Which is, of course, in direct contradiction to the reason Congress added it in the 1950s, to make a statement that the nation was not, in fact, godless.


George Will has a good column this week describing the only way they can actually get away with it -- by pointing out the Founding Fathers did this in Congress before, during, and after sending out the Bill of Rights for ratification.


I'm also no fan of, well, let George explain it better:


"

So George Will admits that it IS an attempt to shove religion on everyone, but it's ok, because it's only a little religion, so get over it.

As long as we agree that it is an attempt to force religion on everyone...

 

[RockNroll]

Since I doubt George Will is dumb enough to miss the point so spectacularly (after all, he is what passes for an intellectual in conservative circles), I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's just being a dishonest ass.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I don't know, Please describe the asserted endangered baby.

I had no specific baby in mind. My point was a hope for caution in "unwinding all the damage this SCOTUS has done". Just because "this SCOTUS" made aruling is not, in itself, enough to declare that ruling "damage".

A specific example would be marriage equality. If, as I hope they will, this SCOTUS decides that marriage equality is, in fact, a constitutional right, it would, in my opinion, be a shame if "unwinding the damage done by this SCOTUS" involved throwing out that particular baby with the bathwater of Town of Greece v. Calloway and its ilk.

 

[pgwenthold]

Probably at least 15-20 years, and that is assuming Scalia walks in front of a bus tomorrow morning.

Well, you know that if Scalia did walk in front of a bus tomorrow morning, you could count on Thomas doing it, too, so that will help accelerate the process.

 

[d4m10n]

Well, you know that if Scalia did walk in front of a bus tomorrow morning, you could count on Thomas doing it, too, so that will help accelerate the process.

LOL

Seriously, though, I vaguely recall reading some serious legal scholar making the case that Thomas is the more ideologically consistent of the two and that Scalia has moved towards his position over time rather than vice-versa.