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| Witchvox Chapter: Wren's Nest News | Chapter Page Views: 56,553,020 |
 Forum: Prayer In Governmental Meetings Author: Harry C. Dorman Jr. Source: Traverse City Record-Eagle (MI) Title: FORUM: PRAYER IN GOVERNMENTAL MEETINGS The question of prayer in Grand Traverse County Board meetings has been raised based on an objection by an individual of minor faith, concerned by the commission's ongoing sectarian prayer invocation that clearly aligns with a predominant mainstream religion. While it appears there's no negative intent on the board's part, its long-standing meeting invocation may be in violation of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which precludes the indentifying of a specific faith, or deity such as Buddha, Jesus or Allah, etc. This scenario isn't a localized phenomena by any stretch as hundreds of governmental bodies throughout the land most likely commit the same missstep primarily through not knowing the legal guidelines pertaining to prayer in governmental meetings. | |
| Community Thoughts: There are 3 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Marsh _v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983) | Nov 14th. at 4:35:33 pm EST |
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me - Web Shouldn't try to rush through a comment on complex legal issues, even when they're well etched in some rear corners of memory..... While there are two poorly constructed "Miller" SCOTUS precedents both involving Federal frauds, defining legal obscenity in biased ways called "neutral", and pretending some firearms used by our own military have no military purpose, the current benchmark of badly constructed US law on public prayer is "Marsh", not "Miller" (and two sources for that case) : Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983) [Web LINK] [Web LINK] Remember good American psychos, pandering religion and even tax funding it isn't really illegal, if one plays the right dance card steps along the way; or so sayeth our top collection of old largely Catholic white guys in black dresses. More importantly, EEOC regulations citing SCOTUS cases define "religion" fairly honestly in 29 CFR 1605.1, with related focus on how most such issues are not of "religion" or "belief", but related practices. Also, there's a series of 3rd Circuit cases in the 1990's involving a vegan Buddhist inmate that develop rather extensive, to the point of tediously impractical to widely apply, tests for when a given practice may be a religious right for some, and a nonreligious personal choice for others, with few outwardly obvious ways to distinguish. That raises other important elements of religious rights, where such tests cannot even be applied (despite being demanded by broken US legal process) without trampling privacy rights, such that a full and honest protection of religious rights necessarily must restrict laws that regulate what for some are religious issues, even if the same outward practices for many are not. |
| Soft Peddled Legal Paradox | Nov 14th. at 3:59:46 pm EST |
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me Perhaps most notable about this article is that it's written to a bible belt local political body, by a Wiccan HP who used to be an elected member of that body (even if Dan Halloran has in some higher profile media been represented as if the first such) . It's hard to say whether this Op-Ed deserves criticism as weak and fuzzy on the legal details involved, or may be a wisely crafted soft-sell on issues that demand no less than hard line civil rights enforcement, but where it might in that locale be more effective to approach them in ways that don't back rabid fundies into their corners and encourage them to fight for illegal government actions. Ultimately, without naming the SCOTUS 1983 Miller precedent, or two 4th Circuit pagan cases more recently, among other public pandering of prayer litigation, this Op-Ed does mostly raise the proper relevant issues. A core problem is that the Miller precedent itself is a paradox, whose core legal findings of tolerating "nonsectarian" government prayer are a fraud, and which cannot be resolved without interpretation as a total ban on government sponsored prayer. When "nonsectarian" essentially means "Protestant lite", and cannot equally treat the nonreligious or the religious who believe public pandering of prayer is wrong (including many pagans, and honest biblical Christians) , the only way to comply with the law and avoid perpetrating a fraud regarding alleged religious neutrality is to simply force prayer out of government functions, and leave it entirely a private matter done elsewhere by those who may so choose. |
| As I Have Stated... | Nov 14th. at 9:53:18 am EST |
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me The only praying the politicians should do- should be at election time when they should worry about how well they conducted the business for which they are paid to do-- not for the numbers of prayers these wannabe preachers want to lead. If they want to be preachers so badly, they are in the wrong business. |
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