Supreme Court rules in favor of public legislative prayers

[Felch]

The 1st Amendment doesn't say anything about a church

It prohibits the establishment of a religion. I used the word church to refer to an established religion, under the assumption that any established religion would be Christian.

and I explained why the decision was BS, the Pledge was still coercive under their compromise.

No, you said it was BS, and didn't explain it. The Pledge is not coercive because no one is obliged to say it. The Supreme Court upholds your right not to Pledge Allegiance.

[Kidlicious]

Showing, once again, that the five right wing justices don't belong on the court.

Yeah, where do they think they are? America?

[Kidlicious]

Here's hoping that those who are not religious, or are atheists, will not be compelled or feel pressure to pray along, if they do not wish to do so.

Here's hoping no one is ever forced to bake a cake for you or take your picture.

[Berzerker]

It protects free exercise. Insofar as it's not a hindrance to their job performance, I can't see what right the state has to regulate prayer done on their time. Prayer is very broad. It could be simply someone praying silently or listening to the Liturgy of the Hours. I don't see what's the problem with a government official choosing to open and close with prayer.

It aint their time, aint their property, aint their religious freedom.

I'm not sure I can abide by an interpretation of freedom that argues that freedom of religious exercise deprives others of their freedom, it's not a zero-sum game. If it were the entire edifice of liberty makes no sense.

If you're taking my $$$ to pay for your religion it aint religious freedom.

What requirement is there for you to pray anything?

None that I can see, maybe you should re-read what I said.

I don't think it's beyond the bar of the government to have their officials swear an oath.

How does a Christian swear an oath when Jesus told people not to swear oaths?

I think they would have quite a bit to say about a law barring them from opening with a prayer because it might offend some.

I agree, can we get back to our debate now? The "offense" is politicians coercing children into pledging allegiance to the state's god, making me pay for it just adds injury to injury. The fact these hypocrites cloak their immorality with the Framer's halo of religious freedom is also offensive. The Pledge was not introduced until long after they finished rolling in their graves. And it was a national socialist who gave it to us.

[Berzerker]

Of course you do! If you want to pray in a public building nobody is allowed to stop you. The first amendment protects your right to practice your religion.

Religious freedom is not limited to prayer and if I walked around city hall praying out loud they'd put me in chains. Can I walk into city hall and set up my portable altar with incense and drugs? No, we dont have religious freedom on other people's property. We need permission for that.

What financial costs? Is Greece, NY putting preachers on the city payroll?

I dont know who is paying for what, thats why I said if they're paying the costs they can argue religious freedom. If they're soaking the taxpayers then it aint religious freedom.

And which also bans laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Something you seem determined to ignore.

I dont have the religious freedom to make you pay for my religion. I have not denied you religious freedom if I dont pay tithes to you and your church.

There is no coercion. I posted that link to West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, and you said it was a BS decision, but for the third time, THERE IS NO COERCION.

The court didn't say there was no coercion, they ruled the Pledge could not be required (forced).

It prohibits the establishment of a religion. I used the word church to refer to an established religion, under the assumption that any established religion would be Christian.

It doesn't say established religion or of a religion, just no law respecting an establishment of religion.

No, you said it was BS, and didn't explain it. The Pledge is not coercive because no one is obliged to say it. The Supreme Court upholds your right not to Pledge Allegiance.

Do you understand the difference between force and coercion? The definition of freedom requires the absence of both.

[Hauldren Collider]

It's tough being an atheist when so many atheists are annoying preachy ****heads who care and get upset about all the wrong things.

[Kidlicious]

It's tough being an atheist when so many atheists are annoying preachy ****heads who care and get upset about all the wrong things.

The proof of God's existence is in your heart. The universe makes it clear. You only have to want to believe it.

[kentonio]

hell, thats worse than Judge Roy Moore's 10 Commandments monument outside the courtroom down in Bama

but I doubt all the little people with business before them are in the room during the prayer, much less eyed by some keeper of the faith looking for non-believers to screw

I wouldn't be so sure..

Let’s put the cases in context. The Court found that the prayers in Greece were what’s called “legislative prayer.” That means prayer held by legislative bodies like Congress or a state legislature, directed at the body’s own members, to solemnize the opening of a business day. That kind of prayer was approved by a 1983 case, Marsh v. Chambers. The Court in Marsh relied on history to reject a challenge to prayers in front of Nebraska’s legislature, “where ... there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief.”

Marsh is good law, and no party to Town of Greece was foolhardy enough to ask the Court to step back into the “legislative prayer” thicket. But there are crucial differences between the Nebraska chaplain’s invocations and those at the town-board meetings in Greece. To begin with, onlookers in Nebraska were in a gallery, while the chaplain addressed the members of the legislature. No citizen was called on to do business with the legislature during its session. And the chaplain, after first referring to Jesus in his early prayers, stopped the practice when a Jewish member quietly objected.

In Greece, however, citizens come to the town board not only to watch but to supplicate such favors as building permits and zoning changes. The “chaplain of the month” faces the audience, not the members, and often aggressively asks attendees to bow their heads and pray, and as noted, the prayers are rife with theological claims not only controversial to non-Christians but troubling for many of the faithful. The town board, which has a town employee solicit a different member of the clergy every month, has designated only four non-Christians to pray in 15 years of official prayer. (Those four were picked just after litigation over the prayers began, and the nod has gone to Christians for the six years since.) In Greece, moreover, once the lawsuit was brought against prayers, at least one volunteer chaplain responded by tongue-lashing the dissenters in his official prayer.

Faced with the Marsh precedent, the challengers did not ask the Court to ban the opening prayers altogether. Instead, they quoted Scalia’s dissent and asked that “prayers that are obviously sectarian ... should be prohibited.”

The majority rejected the very idea of “non-sectarianism.” The legislature could not monitor prayer for its sectarian content, Kennedy wrote: “Government may not mandate a civic religion that stifles any but the most generic reference to the sacred any more than it may prescribe a religious orthodoxy.” After all, despite what Scalia had written two decades ago, Kennedy wrote, “There is doubt ... that consensus might be reached as to what qualifies as generic or nonsectarian.”

But even with the new green light, local legislative prayer will not become a free-for-all of calls to Jesus, Kennedy continued: “If the course and practice over time shows that the invocations denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion ... [t]hat circumstance would present a different case than the one presently before the Court.”

This is worth a read from the source btw (I only quoted part of it here).

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...greece/361754/

[Lorizael]

The proof of God's existence is in your heart. The universe makes it clear. You only have to want to believe it.

Oh holy crap, how many people have you eviscerated searching for the proof of God's existence?!

[Felch]

It doesn't say established religion or of a religion, just no law respecting an establishment of religion.

What the **** do you think that means?

Do you understand the difference between force and coercion? The definition of freedom requires the absence of both.

Let's look up the definition of coercion in a few online dictionaries...

Dictionary.com - 1) the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance. 2) force or the power to use force in gaining compliance, as by a government or police force.

Merriam-Webster.com - 1) to restrain or dominate by force 2) to compel to an act or choice 3) to achieve by force or threat

Wiktionary - 1) Actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing. 2) Use of physical or moral force to compel a person to do something, or to abstain from doing something, thereby depriving that person of the exercise of free will.

My brain isn't really seeing a difference between coercion and force, probably because everybody seems to define coercion in terms of using force. How about you explain the difference to me? How are you being coerced into doing something that the law says you don't have to do?

[kentonio]

Coercion doesn't have to include force. If you truly believe that you will not receive fair treatment by a public body unless you conform to their beliefs then that is a coercion to conform.

That Mirriam-Webster definition even includes it. "2) to compel to an act or choice".

[Lorizael]

What the **** do you think that means?


Let's look up the definition of coercion in a few online dictionaries...

Dictionary.com - 1) the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance. 2) force or the power to use force in gaining compliance, as by a government or police force.

Merriam-Webster.com - 1) to restrain or dominate by force 2) to compel to an act or choice 3) to achieve by force or threat

Wiktionary - 1) Actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing. 2) Use of physical or moral force to compel a person to do something, or to abstain from doing something, thereby depriving that person of the exercise of free will.

My brain isn't really seeing a difference between coercion and force, probably because everybody seems to define coercion in terms of using force. How about you explain the difference to me? How are you being coerced into doing something that the law says you don't have to do?

It does seem patently obvious that you can only coerce someone with a non-zero time derivative of momentum.

[Felch]

Coercion doesn't have to include force. If you truly believe that you will not receive fair treatment by a public body unless you conform to their beliefs then that is a coercion to conform.

That Mirriam-Webster definition even includes it. "2) to compel to an act or choice".

If anybody truly feels that they are not receiving fair treatment because they refuse to say the Pledge, they can take the matter up in court and they'd have a very strong case. Assuming that they actually are being coerced and aren't just being paranoid that is. The law protects your right not to say the Pledge. How is there coercion?

[kentonio]

If anybody truly feels that they are not receiving fair treatment because they refuse to say the Pledge, they can take the matter up in court and they'd have a very strong case. Assuming that they actually are being coerced and aren't just being paranoid that is. The law protects your right not to say the Pledge. How is there coercion?

Because having to take government to court (be it local or federal) is not something most people would consider a reasonable option. If I hold you up at gunpoint, is that not coercion either because you can take me to court over it?

[Felch]

If you hold me at gunpoint, it's coercion because there's the threat of violence (i.e. force). If you just feel like you need to say the Pledge to fit in, nobody is coercing you. You're just a weak willed wuss.