"... to hold high-school graduation ceremonies in a particular church building because of that particular building’s 'proselytizing environment.'"
There was no dispute that the reasons for holding the ceremonies in the building had nothing to do with evangelism and everything to do with space and comfort. But, because the building is “indisputably and emphatically Christian,” the court majority concluded that holding the ceremonies in this building both “endorsed” religion and “coerced” religious exercise....
Here's the opinion. In dissent, Judge Easterbrook says: "It is easier to justify graduation in a church than voting in a church." I agree. My voting place is in a church, and I don't think that should be allowed.
No one should feel obliged by conscience or faith to give up his influence in governance—and that’s what voting represents. A rule of neutrality between religious and secular sites permits government to use religious venues for graduation and voting alike, though I do not think it wise to use a church for either function.
So Judge Easterbrook agrees with me.
But acting inconsiderately toward persons whose sincere views disfavor conducting public business in religious venues differs from establishing a religion.
Now, Judge Posner — also dissenting — writes with confident expectation that the Supreme Court will pay attention:
The case law that the Supreme Court has heaped on the defenseless text of the establishment clause is widely acknowledged, even by some Supreme Court Justices, to be formless, unanchored, subjective and provide no guidance....
The text and history of the establishment clause provide no clue to whether a public high school (a virtually nonexistent institution in the eighteenth century) “establishes” religion when it holds its graduation ceremony in a church. The opaque phrase “respecting an establishment” casts no light on the question....
The students at Brookfield High overwhelmingly and emphatically deemed the school’s gym an inadequate venue for the graduation ceremony. Yet it was the only possible one on the school’s grounds (apart from the football field, also deemed inadequate — the students wanted to be indoors with air conditioning). Bowing to their wishes the school chose Elmbrook Church, the students’ first choice....
There is no suggestion that holding a high-school graduation at the Elmbrook Church has ever triggered a conversion.
How often are visitors to churches converted by the visit? Conversion generally precedes attendance. How many of the millions of non-Catholic visitors to St. Peter’s—Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and so forth—have converted to Catholicism as a result of their visit to that awesome site? I mean no disrespect to the Elmbrook Church in pointing out that no counterpart to the treasures of St. Peter’s that include Bernini’s baldacchino and Michelangelo’s Pietà, the tombs of 91 Popes, a fragment of the True Cross, and the spear that pierced Christ’s side at the Crucifixion (of course the authenticity of the last two items has been questioned), is to be found there.
The plaintiffs argue that by holding its graduation ceremony in a church festooned with religious symbols, Broomfield High is “coercing students and parents to attend a house of worship.” “Coercing?” That is hyperbole. Attendance at graduation isn’t compulsory, graduation is not a “coerced activity,” and a student who attends graduation in Elmbrook Church no more attends a religious ceremony than the cleaning crew when it sweeps the church’s aisles. When the Supreme Court said in Lee v. Weisman, supra, 505 U.S. at 586, 595, in florid hyperbole that “attendance and participation in the [graduation ceremony] are in a fair and real sense obligatory, though the school district does not require attendance as a condition for receipt of the diploma,” as “it is apparent that a student is not free to absent herself from the graduation exercise in any real sense of the term ‘voluntary,’ for absence would require forfeiture of those intangible benefits which have motivated the student through youth and all her high school years,” it was whistling in the dark.
The plaintiffs say the church is “using its control over the environment of the graduation ceremonies to expose thousands of attendees per year—including numerous youths—to its religious message.” There is nothing to suggest that the church enhances the religiosity of its interior décor for the graduation. The interior is what it is. A church that rents space to a secular organization shouldn’t be required to pretend it isn’t a church.
The reductio ad absurdum is the plaintiffs’ complaint, as unrealistic about the modern American high schooler as the Supreme Court in Lee v. Waisman, that when the students sit down in the church pews for the graduation ceremony, church literature visible to them in the book racks on the backs of the pews in front of them tells them they’re “God’s Little Lambs,” and thoughtfully provides them with a “Scribble Card for God’s Little Lambs” and a pencil to scribble with, and thus tries to seduce them to Evangelical Protestantism. Imagine how 18-year-olds react to being called little lambs! True, the family members who attend the graduation may include children, but in no sense are they coerced by the school to attend the graduation.
The idea that mere exposure to religious imagery, with no accompanying proselytizing, is a form of religious establishment has no factual support, as well as being implausible. Religion is for good or ill a large component of human culture, including American culture. Religious words and symbols are ubiquitous....
The interior of the Elmbrook Church, perhaps the very idea of a church, offends the plaintiffs. But offense can’t be the criterion for an establishment of religion; if it were, no challenge based on the establishment clause would ever fail, for those challenges are invariably mounted by people offended by the government’s association with religion.
52 comments:
If the law orthe Constitution ahead any real meaning left, I could raise my ire about this.
As it stands, however, the rulings go whichever way the left wind blows, so I say to hell with it.
Being offended has become an act of evangelism for the church of militant atheism.
Wait...you're saying that a majority of the 7th circuit ignored forceful arguments by Easterbrook, Posner, and Althouse?
This taxes the imagination. Or, perhaps, penalizes it.
Not only is this decision/reading of the establishment clause a preversion of its very wording (let alone the intent of the framers as may be discerned by their contemporanious comments on the subject and what we know of their political philosphphies from their other writings)it clearly demonstrates that the Founding Fathwers were made of far sterner stuff than the maj in the SCOTUS decision who obviously have "taken the vapors" over the mere thought--the very act of contemplation--that HS students anywhere might become "unclean" by the merest brush with a "House of Worship"--least their eyes gaze upon the "wrong sort" of imagery and their minds become tainted with un-PC retrograde religious thoughts beyond repair. The Horror!!
I suppose they think that the unfortunate attendees of the graduation ceremony will absorb religion by osmosis simply by coming into contact with religious icons on the wall and the mere act of viewing a pamphlet.
Kind of like religious cooties.
When I graduated from Columbia Law School in 1968, after months of campus occupations, riots, police sweeps, etc. (sparked by Viet Nam, the King Assassination, etc.), the leftists held their counter-graduation in a church -- St. John's Episcopal (at that time commonly called St. John's The Unfinished, because it had been under construction so long; but I digress). I guess the court would have said that was OK, because the leftist graduates had the option of attending the official graduation in the secular on-campus venue.
I'm with Frank on the idea of voting in a church, that's wrong.
When I moved to the South (from Madison) I was blown away when I was invited to attend a church service for what is now a mega-church with 20K members and 3 enormous auditorium facilities. When I was invited to an Easter service by a friend, this church had no fixed facilities and had a following of only 2-3,000. They held their services in the rented gymnasium of a public school in Buckhead. I sat down thinking, hey, you can't be doing this. But no one ever questioned it. That wouldn't happen in Wisconsin.
My sincere views disfavor conducting voting in public schools. In fact I disfavor the existence of public schools.
Being offended has become an act of evangelism for the church of militant atheism.
It helps that their being offended is viewed with such extraordinary solicitude by our judges.
Fortunately, my younger son's graduation was 25 years ago. His class was 25 in a small private school. The ceremony was held in the church that was affiliated with the school. The school is much larger now but still small by industrial public school standards.
Religion needs protection from the gummint, not vice versa.
"When I was invited to an Easter service by a friend, this church had no fixed facilities and had a following of only 2-3,000. They held their services in the rented gymnasium of a public school in Buckhead."
The horror! The horror! Do you still wake up screaming at night?
Judge Posner can thank Grandma O'connor and Drama Queen Kennedy for the incoherent state of ConLaw on the 1st amendment establishment clause.
Read some of SDOC's opinions and you can see why Scalia prefers Ginsberg.
The plaintiffs argue that by holding its graduation ceremony in a church festooned with religious symbols, Broomfield High is “coercing students and parents to attend a house of worship.”
I believe that should be Brookfield High, as the ceremonies were for graduates of Brookfield East and Brookfield Central High Schools.
So now we have the Seventh Circus. The Establishment Clause says exactly what it says, nothing more, nothing less. It is totally absurd to suggest that a High School, its Board and its employees has any authority over the students with regard to their religious choices - especially when the church itself gets involved by hosting a students graduation ceremony once every twelve years.
Last time I checked, there exists no law on the books establishing a government-sanctioned church but there are those who might think that Islam is gathering support through imposed reading of the Koran in some schools. Funny how the ACLU ignores such cases.
We have gone barking mad. Just go in the fucking building and vote. If you are so goddamn stupid or suseptible to conversion that you are offended by the building you are voting in you are likely the kind of person who votes for a guy because he is black and says he is going to unite us all. Barking. Fucking. Crazy. Over Analytical. Academic.
@ Michael I agree totally with you. 100%. But[t] I am wondering/worrying about your stress level. As you can see from my profile, I was in the industry of managing portfolios and other people's money[over 20 years of it]. Kind of the same thing as you I think. I retired about a year and half ago. My stress level has really gone down and my health up. Sometimes it is good to vent. (I personally love to vent and debate so it is good for me.) Other times, maybe not so much. Times are really REALLY tough right now for financial advisors. I would hate to be back in the saddle again...so to speak.
:-) just a thought.
Schmendrick said, "They held their services in the rented gymnasium of a public school in Buckhead. I sat down thinking, hey, you can't be doing this. But no one ever questioned it. That wouldn't happen in Wisconsin."
Yes it would, and does. Happens all over the country in fact, including my own church in Milwaukee. Churches rent the school facilities (which are unused on the weekend anyway) and the school district gets extra money. It's a win win.
From a related Journal-Sentinel article:
The first year that graduation ceremonies were held at the church, the cross at the front of the sanctuary was covered during the ceremony. In subsequent years the church would not allow the cross to be covered. link
The refusal to cover the cross probably offended the sensibilities of the Plaintiffs. This reminds me of prudes who insist that breasts always be covered in Government buildings.
They held their services in the rented gymnasium of a public school in Buckhead. I sat down thinking, hey, you can't be doing this. But no one ever questioned it. That wouldn't happen in Wisconsin.
I was raised in the Seattle area, a liberal utopia similar to Madison, and after bouncing around for a decade my family and I settled in Texas a couple years ago.
This last spring my kids' public school awards ceremony opened with presentation of colors by the junior ROTC kids, followed by the entire auditorium reciting the pledge of allegiance, followed by a student singing the national anthem, followed by--and here's the part you'll like--one of the administrators delivering an explicitly Christian invocation which concluded with the words, "In Jesus' most precious, holy name we pray, amen."
(I am utterly delighted to be living in a place like this, by the way.)
So far, so good. No one has burst into flames or come down with Christian Cooties, I'm happy to report.
Why, again, should people who attend church fund public schools?
Another example of the intellectual brain freeze of liberals.
They actually fear that 2 hours watching diplomas be handed out in a Christian Church Building will steal the people's minds and send them out as believers in a 7,000 year old flat earth. Man that is power.
The Judges cannot remember that the national covenant we call our constitution was written by men who were Diests that believed Providence lead them to throw off the king's reign.
They respected all religions and only stopped the new Government from favoring one over the others like the reigning King of England had always done to them, resulting in the migrations over to the Colonies of the very men who had just defeated his best Armies.
No one gives a damn anymore, but what this decision does is expose California's liberal judges to be brain dead liars and not even grade C intellectuals.
To comment on the voting issue aspect. I don't know how far he took the comparison (the author of the opinion), tl;dr. However I can tell you that depending on the community, state laws here in Wisconsin can severely restrict the available sites for a polling place. Requiring the place to be in the district, be accessable (handicap and otherwise), etc. It can really narrow the choices and if you find yourself with a district that doesn't have a school, often you are left with churches. Especially in light how how many elections Wisconsin as suffered through, some "public" places such as nursing homes and such just flat out say no to having voting there. Dare I saw a bug and not a feature?
Leslyn...Why do you care about the feelings of other religions? You obviously don't care about the feelings of Christians (a/k/a the easy targets that dare not mention their name.)
traditional guy said...
what this decision does is expose California's liberal judges to be brain dead liars and not even grade C intellectuals.
There are no apparent Californians on the 7th Circuit yet. Dodged a bullet with the Victoria Nourse nomination, tho.
And 7 of the 10 current judges on the 7th were nominated by Republican presidents, including 4 Reagan appointees.
"Kind of like religious cooties"
i think that's a good description of the touchstone in existing Establishment Clause doctrine; would a[stridently irreligious] Reasonable Person - in such a situation [or from seeing or hearing a declaration this religiously assertive - catch religious cooties
As a carpenter over the years I worked on Jewish Temples, Baptist Churches, and a homosexual art gallery. Never worked in a mosque, but would have no problem with it. Not once, not even for an instant, did I become Jewish, Baptist, or homosexual. This ruling is beyond stupid, and just gives more fodder for those that think activist judges need to be reigned in.
I am one of those people.
Ps.
Why would voting in a church be off-putting? I could see maybe a bordello, or a crackhouse, or a DNC office, but then I repeat myself.
What has become of rationality?
And I wouldn't mind the bordello, or crackhouse :-)
Because one gives to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's? AKA separation of church and state.
That was back in the days before everything was Caesar's.
"If you've got the heavens and the earth, you didn't create that. Somebody else made that happen."
"I bet you wouldn't feel the same way if it were Muslim."
Except you cant just waltz into a mosque if you are not a Muslim. I personally would love to attend a graduation or vote in a mosque.
"I bet you wouldn't feel the same way if it were Muslim."
It's great how Leslyn always assumes the best of everybody here. It's like a breath of air!
Oh I do like to watch angels dance on the head of a pin. I don't even bother to count them anymore.
The English language and its literature would be reduced to a bad Where's Waldo cartoon if words and allusions from the Bible were expunged. Our social fabric would not exist absent the 6000 year old story.
Yet the nihilists among us sow dissent and eat of our substance based on a mere whimsy of one man. In his voluminous, nay prodigious, writings Thomas Jefferson mentioned the separation of church and state just once in a private letter to a church congregation in Danbury, Connecticut. This concept is mentioned nowhere else in all of his official and public works.
Methinks our judiciary is so fascinated with its own navel that they have ensconced themselves in a land of strange imaginings.
DBQ. !!!! Great catch on the stress front. Major deal in a slow motion collapse for the wrong reasons. Fee growing wings. You know the drill. Thanks for the sentiment. But you have to admit we inhabit a world that has gone barking fucking crazy.
leslyn said...
traditionalguy said... Leslyn...Why do you care about the feelings of other religions? You obviously don't care about the feelings of Christians.
How do I count the ways....
1. First Amendment. Isn't that enough? To love the Constitution?
2. Forcing a captive audience to be subject to the equivalent of preaching that is not in line with their beliefs.
It's a graduation ceremony! Thank you god, some boring speech, here's your diploma, now scram.
3. Forcing Christians to participate in (or sit out of ) religious practices in which they do not believe. Here's the viewpoint of a Seventh-Day Adventist looking at American society: " I do not have a problem living in a religious society as long as they allow me the freedom to practice my faith." Emphasis added.
Forcing? What'd they do nail ya to the chair? Get up and leave for that part.
4. If it would be forcing me to submit to, or practice, a religious tenet I do not believe.
See above.
5. It's unnecessary to the proceedings, and exclusionary (rude) to unbelievers.
You're opinion and you're welcome to it.
6. First Amendment.
Graduations don't establish a state religion
BTW, because I am committed to religious freedom and freedom from religion, including that forced upon me, why must that make me not a Christian? Jesus wouldn't say so.
You're also petty.
(In my best Homer Simpson)," They didn't give Jebus did they?"
First, there should be no such thing as government run schools. That would solve this problem - and many others, including the endless curriculum disputes. However, given that there are government schools, the state should err on the side of not showing any preference for religion, of any sort. All school activities should take place in government owned facilities. If none are sufficient for graduation, then mail the damn diplomas and be done with it.
But, the problem is coerced public schooling.
I bet you wouldn't feel the same way if it were Muslim.
Neither would the Seventh Circus, Islam being the de facto state religion of America, and all that.
4. If it would be forcing me to submit to, or practice, a religious tenet I do not believe.
You might want to take that point up with Crack, then, since he has a bee in his bonnet about Mormons baptizing the dead of other faiths into Mormonism after death.
If the particular Christian religious tenet offends you, you should be equally as offended with Mormons - more so, since the Mormons aren't even doing this while you're in the temple.
The anti-Christian hate bigots have gone totally nutsy fagan.
I'd say "leftard anti-Christian hate bigots," except there seem to a fair number of people who self-identify as libertoonians that have opted into the class too.
I attended a big statewide youth sporting event a few years back. I wasn't surprised by the flag, or the national anthem, or the Pledge, but I admit I was a bit surprised by the public prayer, complete with J-word, that followed.
Yet somehow, I, atheist that I am, survived. And my precious feelings were intact, also.
"Times are really REALLY tough right now for financial advisors."
Why so? Everybody taking their fund money and stuffing it into mattresses?
Virgil wrote: "the Founding Fathwers were made of far sterner stuff than the maj in the SCOTUS decision who obviously have "taken the vapors" over the mere thought--the very act of contemplation--that HS students anywhere might become "unclean" by the merest brush with a "House of Worship"--least their eyes gaze upon the "wrong sort" of imagery and their minds become tainted with un-PC retrograde religious thoughts beyond repair. The Horror!!"
I was thinking along those lines, but I could not think of such a funny and cogent way to express it. Great post.
Trey
I am the other way around. I agree that neither voting nor high school graduations should be held inside a church (or a mosque or a temple), but should at most be relegated to the church green.
It is the reverse of Leslyn's reasoning; these are worldly activities and have no business inside a house of worship.
One of the logical dead ends I always come to is how atheists say we are vapid for believing in a God who is not there, and yet they so fear our intellectual inferiority.
These aspects just do not cohabit well. I think they are afraid they are wrong.
They should be.
Trey
I have to throw in with the folks who find the idea of a congregation renting public school facilities more constitutionally alarming than a public school district renting a church for a graduation ceremony. The latter doesn't tend towards establishment, whereas the former seems rather inappropriate.
We had a new Baptist congregation renting out the local middle school's auditorium for a while before they built their own church and yes, I found it inappropriate, more so than half the wards in the borough using church basements for elections.
So following the pretzel logic of this decision I should then be able to file suit against all normal graduations held in the publik skools because of they are forcing their atheism upon my sensitive pussified feelings?
"They held their services in the rented gymnasium of a public school in Buckhead."
The gym is public property. If it's offered for rent, why would a church not have the same right to rent it as any other organization?
For that matter, is the Court saying that a school may rent any building for graduation ceremonies except one that's used for religious observance?
Why would the Establishment Clause require discrimination against all religious organizations in favor of secular ones?
I have np problem with religious services being held in public places within reason, and a temporarily homeless congregation of whatever faith would certainly fit that description; it is the otyher way around that bothers me, but of course, it is up to the congregation and how they feel about it.
DBQ. !!!! Great catch on the stress front. Major deal in a slow motion collapse for the wrong reasons. Fee growing wings. You know the drill. Thanks for the sentiment. But you have to admit we inhabit a world that has gone barking fucking crazy.
No problem. Been there and done that.
"Times are really REALLY tough right now for financial advisors."
Why so? Everybody taking their fund money and stuffing it into mattresses?
Not just that. When you (like Michael, I assume, and I) live on a commission and fee basis, your income is incredibly uncertain. The stress of the uncertainty in the markets and what Obozo is doing to the economy is never ending.
BUT. The worst is that we CARE about our clients and want to help them succeed. Many of my former clients were retirees, wealthy retirees and small business owners. Many had been with me for the whole 20 years. With the market volatility, real return on fixed income investments being a negative, you feel trapped. Where to turn to find a return on investments for your clients and how to balance risk.
You go to bed every night worrying....."did I do the right thing? Is this deal going to blow up in my face and harm my clients? How am I going to explain/hold hands/calm the fears when the market drops triple digits? What can I do? Am I going to be able to get enough money for my clients to be able to survive much less prosper? If they don't listen to me, they will be making a big mistake and then blame me for not forcing them to make the moves. I KNOW this is the right thing, but if my client decides to go elsewhere or do nothing, how am I going to pay my office lease, eat, pay my bills"........Toss, turn, toss turn.
Then you get up in the morning, watch the business news, see Europe in a financial melt down, watch the morons on Capitol Hill determined to drag us over the financial abyss, see the market drop another triple digits.....and like Micheal conclude that
The world has gone barking fucking mad.
Why is it wrong for members of the community to rent out a community-paid facility (in terms of a congregation using part of a school for something)?
One thing lost in separating church and state is that it's in the interest of the church to avoid the entanglement. Play with fire and you'll get burned.
When religions go begging to government, they shouldn't be surprised when government wants a say in what those religions do.
Any church that allows purely secular ceremonies to take place within is diluting and perverting itself.
Petty because no one is forcing you to sit and listen.
my high school graduation was in a chapel and the service was in latin and half the people there were jews.
Even if you don't believe that shit you put up with it for the sake of the tradition.
Nobody is establishing anything.
Christian isn't going to stick on you like a stain.
Jesus. you should get this worked up when somebody invokes allah.
OOooooo he said christ!
Stone em!
Congress hasn't passed any law of establishment. You're safe.
The archbishop of canterbury isn't going to sneak into your bedroom late at night an give you anglican.
Oy vey!
@leslyn
I have been exposed to many different cultures in my time, and have attended many functions that were completely foreign to me. I wasn't offended, but rather enlightened by the introduction of tenets that were very different than mine.
Nobody is asking you to believe. They are merely asking for you to be tolerant. I think even Jesus would not have a problem with that.
When I voted last year, a woman in the room loudly and angrily complained! that there ought to be separation of church and state in the polling place.
The reason for her outrage was a small, framed, historical photo on the wall showing a old church in this rural county where I live. It was one photo among many historical photos of the county, on the walls of the room.
I'm not religious. Haven't been to church in years; but for a moment I regretted every atheistic and agnostic thought I'd ever had.
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