Photography with the Left Eye

A District court found that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. The decision was in April, and the court allowed the observance, which was last week, to go ahead.

Undoubtedly, there will be an appeal. It (and any higher appeals) should fail. Let’s analyze the likely arguments a bit.

The proponents of a national prayer day will say that a day does not violate the Establishment Clause because it does not favor any religion. Not so. By its nature, a National Day of Prayer favors those religions that express their spirituality through prayer. That represents a subset of the 4,200 or so religions in the world, though probably a significant subset. However, even among those, prayer as a publicly proclaimed exercise is not universal. I’m not a theologin, and I certainly have an incomplete understanding of most of the major world religions, but I would venture to say that the notion of a National Day of Prayer is a concept that would only be fully embraced by Christian sects. Therefore, the Day fails, on a very straightforward basis, to pass First Amendment muster.

Note that the court’s decision does not, in spite of heated headlines to the contrary, state that prayer itself is unconstitutional.

Anyway….

supbe

Twisted and selfish. The tea party activists who complain about government “handouts” and then finance their activism via those same government handouts. Cynical, hateful and twisted.

Twisted, but in a nice way: Freya

I got the following hit and run comment on this post:

Yea. I don’t want my son sleeping next to a queer. NO GAYS IN BOY SCOUTS

Well, since this poster didn’t have the decency to leave a real name (or even a good fake name), I’ll just respond here.

Statistically speaking, your son is sleeping next to a queer (and may be a queer himself). There are lots of studies, and no firm conclusions, but it seems that somewhere between 5 and 20% of the population is gay; depending on how the study is conducted, the numbers stretch from 1-40%. In today’s society, young people with undefined sexuality are often unclear about it at 11 (initial scout age in the US) and still often don’t come out by 18 (exit age for scouts in the US). This was certainly true for my referenced nephew.

In any case, as repugnant as the current US Boy Scout policy is, it does not attempt to ban gay scouts; but to prevent them from attaining the rank of Eagle, which is the penultimate rank for scouts. So, the boy scouts will continue to let your gay son sleep next to queers.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Wally Herger, Representative from California, encourages his constituents to commit acts of terrorism. I’m not sure why he’s not in jail yet. Honestly, he should be, and it would not be hard to find several federal statutes to prosecute him under.

Speaking of getting in uncomfortable positions….

Our democracy is in peril. And I actually think that is true. The ‘publican party seems to have one, and only one policy goal. Opposing anything initiated by Obama.

You know about the melodrama of the health care debate. And the whining about actually passing climate legislation (Lisa Murkowski tries to stop it even as her state starts to thaw and sink).

But there are the more hidden ones. Remember the ‘publican slogans asking members of Congress to give a “thumbs up or thumbs down vote” (on Bush nominees? Those crafty ‘publicans. Times have changed, and that is old thinking (I guess). How else to account for the fact that Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate. Idiots.

Ara