Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: [OT] Did you know that blacks built Stonehenge?
Date: Mon, 26 May 2025 19:42:07 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <1012g6f$25oqf$1@dont-email.me>
References: <100vc8j$1cpje$2@dont-email.me> <1010305$1j1vg$2@dont-email.me> <10105kc$1j59c$4@dont-email.me> <1010hst$1lqcl$3@dont-email.me>
Injection-Date: Mon, 26 May 2025 21:42:08 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="9d18b686acd79bf3ed522a9d0a7f2ff1";
	logging-data="2286415"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/ZDehoDwcQU/Ba0X592UrMMdaXxAOR2SU="
Cancel-Lock: sha1:+5tbjFJp7DhbXL8dbeBFJqqvwNI=
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010)

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

>. . . 

>Several years ago, the San Francisco schools were caught bringing imams into
>the classroom and having the kids recite the Muslim prayer of conversion to
>Islam. Yet the two words "under god" in the pledge of allegiance are
>supposedly unconstitutional because "we all know they refer to the Christian
>god".

There have been parents suing school boards for the forced recitation of
the pledge with "under God" in it making exactly that claim.

Why was that wrong?

The last I read about such a lawsuit, it was filed in a district court
in the Ninth Circuit in which the merits of the argument could not be
considered in court, requiring an en banc decision of the entire circuit
to reverse precedent. It's widely assumed that if the merits were ever
considered, the plaintiff would prevail.

Seems to me that forcing students to pray or to recite "under God" in
the Pledge of Allegiance is an obvious infringement upon free exercise.
A student, not being a wise ass, could consider how he prays to be a
private matter, or that he's religious but it's not applicable to his
perception of God, or that religious or not, school must remain a
secular activity, or that he's an atheist.

Too bad the Ninth has refused to take such a case about reciting the
Pledge for it would have made the Muslim prayer unconstitutional without
the need for another appellate court ruling.

It's not a good analogy given that "under God" was added to the Pledge as
a loyalty test during anti-Commie hysteria forcing children to profess
some sort of religious sentiment to demonstrate that they aren't being
raised as ghodless Commies. That's why the argument has been made that
it refers to a Christian God, as it was generally Christians claiming to
be the main fighters against Communism for the right to worship freely.

It's actually the perfect example of why Jefferson's desire for there to
be a "wall of separation between church and state" was correct, what a
bureaucrat might think is an innocuous form of a state-sponsored
religious acknowledgement that is likely to offend both religious and
non-religious people.

>Of course, if they'd brought in a Catholic priest to say the Liturgy,  forcing
>the children to participate no less, the ACLU would have shit itself and
>wouldn't have been able to file lawsuits fast enough.

If Islam is favored at the expense of other religions, then that's an
unconstitutional Establishment of religion. If it were being done as a
comparison of religions without favoritism, then it wouldn't have been
unconstitutional.

Do you know for a fact that ACLU of California was asked, but refused,
to seek an injunction on Islam being favored in public schools? I've
never heard of this type of thing.