The Obama administration has joined Republicans in requesting that the Supreme court allow prayer at Town Council meetings.
Last year, a federal appeals court ruled that the town of Greece, NY had violated the first amendment ban on establishment of religion by opening town meetings with a Christian prayer. The town appealed that decision to the Supreme court who decided in May to hear the case.
U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr. told the court that Greece’s practice “should not be considered an endorsement,” and does not amount to an “unconstitutional establishment of religion merely because most prayer givers were Christian.” He further wrote that the House and Senate chaplain’s open each session with a prayer and the “law should not require them [town council meetings] to closely police the content of prayers.”
Ken Klukowski, a lawyer for the Family Research Council, who filed a brief on behalf of Republican House members, called the government’s submission a “surprisingly conservative brief.”
Of course, the Obama Administration is not doing this because they believe that Christians have a right to pray or for that matter, have a right to exist. They are hoping that by seeming to be reasonable, they can head off a much more sweeping ruling from the Court’s conservatives who have wanted to scrape Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s decision for a long time and believe that schools and local governments have a right to invoke religion and Christianity as long as no one is forced to join in.
Regardless of the reason for Obama’s decision to throw its support behind Greece, NY, Barry Lynn of the far left Americans United for Separation from Church and State is upset. If the Court rules in favor of NY, it could dramatically expand the types of legislative prayer practices considered constitutional.
The government’s Amicus brief has also upset that bastion of liberalism, the ACLU. They are preparing their own brief in support of the left according to Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.
“The [Obama] administration brief takes a cramped view of religious liberty,” Mach said. “It ignores the basic idea that government should never play favorites with faith. It suggests the town’s practice in Greece was OK, notwithstanding [the] clear alignment of the local government with the majority faith. It suggests that government-sponsored sectarian prayer inflicts no harm.”
Why is the left so scared of Christians? If God does not exist as the left implies, our prayers have no meaning and therefore should not inflect harm to anyone. If God does exist [most assuredly] then it stands that our prayers would benefit even those on the left.
To me, the fact that they fight so hard to take God out of America, says a lot. If they can destroy a belief in a higher power, they are one step closer to destroying free will, making it much easier to impose their dictatorial stands on everyone.
