The Supreme Court will be deciding next term whether opening public meetings with sectarian invocations violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission filed an amicus brief
There are still Xian Unitarians as well as Xian Universalists, as it happens. UUs have no dogma or creed, just an agreement to behave in certain ways, like treating people and other living creatures with respect and kindness, working to make the ways we run our lives (such as government) as fair as possible, and working to figure out Life, The Universe and Everything with our own brains. No answers are prescribed. Agnostics, atheists, Pastafarians and anybody else with a functional heart and brain are are all welcome. And yeah, I still choke on the C word.
"Sure you religious nuts can pray in public all you want, and subvert whatever Matthew says there in your own Bible, but you don't fuck with the Constitution."
My problem with cases like this is who is it actually hurting to let the little fucknubbins squeak to their cloud floating virgin diddler at every meeting? Other than the forced facepalm of those not belonging to the same Dead Carpenter Jew fanclub, why bother to litigate something like this?
Doesn't this sort of enable their martyrdom, and give them more reason to try to push for public religious expression in more of all of the wrong places?
They are "showroom window" xtians. They will whine about being persecuted because they couldn't show the world their piety. And no, they should not be able pray their baptist babble due to the separation of church and state.
I'd say it's because the meeting of an actual public agency is even more a government activity than is a public school class, and because the point of the Bill of Rights was to secure the basic rights of people who don't happen to be in the majority at any given moment. One of those rights, loosely speaking, is the right not to have to put up with being prayed at by people, whose beliefs you may not share, while attending government-sponsored activities.
Our government agencies do not need God's approval to function.
Yep. For a bunch of schmucks who blather on about the Constitution they amply demonstrate they never bothered to do the background reading.
Makes me wonder if the lawyers who take up these cases are as warped as their clients, or just the stereotypical bottom-feeding gutter snipe who sees an easy mark.
<i>&quot;That is not what our ancestors, and their allies among the American Founders, meant by religious liberty.&quot;</i>
Interesting phrasing. Our &quot;ancestors&quot; -- usually meaning blood lines. And &quot;allies&quot; of the Founders, not the Founders themselves.
If he&#039;d had the balls to say that&#039;s not what the Founders meant by religious liberty, I&#039;d point out that keeping the church out of the government is <i>exactly</i> what they meant by religious liberty. They lived under the Church of England and didn&#039;t like it very much.
When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
In other words, your &quot;invocation&quot; does you no good in heaven. Move on.
There are still Xian Unitarians as well as Xian Universalists, as it happens. UUs have no dogma or creed, just an agreement to behave in certain ways, like treating people and other living creatures with respect and kindness, working to make the ways we run our lives (such as government) as fair as possible, and working to figure out Life, The Universe and Everything with our own brains. No answers are prescribed. Agnostics, atheists, Pastafarians and anybody else with a functional heart and brain are are all welcome. And yeah, I still choke on the C word.
&quot;Sure you religious nuts can pray in public all you want, and subvert whatever Matthew says there in your own Bible, but you don&#039;t fuck with the Constitution.&quot;
My problem with cases like this is who is it actually hurting to let the little fucknubbins squeak to their cloud floating virgin diddler at every meeting? Other than the forced facepalm of those not belonging to the same Dead Carpenter Jew fanclub, why bother to litigate something like this?
Doesn&#039;t this sort of enable their martyrdom, and give them more reason to try to push for public religious expression in more of all of the wrong places?
They are &quot;showroom window&quot; xtians. They will whine about being persecuted because they couldn&#039;t show the world their piety. And no, they should not be able pray their baptist babble due to the separation of church and state.
I&#039;d say it&#039;s because the meeting of an actual public agency is even more a government activity than is a public school class, and because the point of the Bill of Rights was to secure the basic rights of people who don&#039;t happen to be in the majority at any given moment. One of those rights, loosely speaking, is the right not to have to put up with being prayed at by people, whose beliefs you may not share, while attending government-sponsored activities.
Our government agencies do not need God&#039;s approval to function.
Yep. For a bunch of schmucks who blather on about the Constitution they amply demonstrate they never bothered to do the background reading.
Makes me wonder if the lawyers who take up these cases are as warped as their clients, or just the stereotypical bottom-feeding gutter snipe who sees an easy mark.
I demand some Orphic Hymns! Let&#039;s fumigate this bitch up with incense!
How is Bibble formed?
<i>&quot;That is not what our ancestors, and their allies among the American Founders, meant by religious liberty.&quot;</i>
Interesting phrasing. Our &quot;ancestors&quot; -- usually meaning blood lines. And &quot;allies&quot; of the Founders, not the Founders themselves.
If he&#039;d had the balls to say that&#039;s not what the Founders meant by religious liberty, I&#039;d point out that keeping the church out of the government is <i>exactly</i> what they meant by religious liberty. They lived under the Church of England and didn&#039;t like it very much.
sometime around Constantine...
I wasn&rsquo;t very smart as a child&hellip; still waiting to grow out of it.
No part of this story makes any sense to me.
A little prayer to Sapho would keep things lively.
Christian assholes, read thy bible:
Matthew chapter 6, verses 5-6,
When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
In other words, your &quot;invocation&quot; does you no good in heaven. Move on.
BAM!
But that&#039;s how teh Jewish descends.
Hey, if it&#039;s Greece, why not a snappy little prayer to Athena or Zeus? I&#039;m sure the townspeople would appreciate that!