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The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision holding
that the Pledge of Allegiance
violates the Constitution due to the phrase “under God” will
spark endless columns, which I would usually find reason enough to
write about my cat. Besides, regular readers will easily guess
where I stand: I think it’s about darned time. The
stay of the ruling, issued within 24 hours by the rattled judge
who wrote the decision, should be lifted immediately.
The American public has been treated to one goofball
fight after another on the issue of separation of church and state,
mostly involving schools. It has been years since Americans could
flip the calendar on June without a noisy battle over graduation
prayers; schools frequently barred student religious groups from
using their facilities until a 2001 Supreme Court decision stopped
the practice.
The threat of legal action against an elementary school
that posted “God Bless America” on its marquee after September 11
made national news, while a federal court order was required this
year before a
New York kindergartner was allowed to say grace before lunch.
One day after the pledge decision, the 10th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals held that Columbine High School acted properly in
refusing to allow the parents of two murdered students to hang
memorial tiles with hand-painted religious symbols and messages
alongside tiles created by other victims’ families. Considering the
money and effort dedicated to protecting the citizenry from these
two tiles, it is easy to believe Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would
have been stopped cold if only they had been packing Bible tracts.
All this nastiness, and more, over a clause that
isn’t there.
The First Amendment reads in its entirety “Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances.” Courts have wrung separation of church and state from
these simple words, but as the concept was established by legal
decisions rather than by the Constitution or an amendment, the
courts can also undo it.
Based on the language of the First Amendment, the true
issues are whether government actions establish a religion or
prohibit the free exercise of same. The separation crowd doesn’t
much like the answer to either question in most school cases,
leading both sides into silly tangents over whether one Founding
Father or another was really a deist and if the phrase “under God”
is only an exercise in rote repetition.
Accordingly, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has
done the nation a tremendous service. By taking the separation
argument to its logical, irrational, extreme, they may have finally
urped up a ruling asinine enough to wrench the debate back to what
the Constitution actually says.
The New York Times seems to agree, after a fashion. In
an editorial, they feared “Just the way removing a well-lodged
foreign body from an organism may sometimes be more damaging than
letting it stay put, removing those words would cause more harm than
leaving them in … the sort of rigid overreaction that characterized
(the ruling) will not make genuine defense of the First Amendment
any easier.”
I would suggest that genuine defense of the First
Amendment should involve reading it, but this decision may indeed
rub our noses in separation gobbledygook hard enough to inspire real
change.
I implore the 9th Circuit not to reverse itself, as some
have urged. Let the matter drag on, then rise to the U.S. Supreme
Court. When it does, the time may be right to end this nonsense for
good.
Report: Girl in suit a Christian, wants God to stay ... |
