Mike Huckabee: SCOTUS Delivers First Amendment Win - When Will These Atheists Get It?
The Supreme Court delivered a welcome smackdown on Thursday to another frivolous case by an atheist group, the American Humanist Association, that was demanding the removal of the Bladensburg Cross from public land.
It’s a 40-foot cross that’s stood for nearly a century as a memorial to that Maryland community’s residents who gave their lives in World War I.
Victory! The Bladensburg Cross still stands! In a 7-2 victory the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this memorial cross does NOT violate the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment. The first sane opinion in establishment clause cases in a LONG TIME. pic.twitter.com/Kg2xqp5aPC
— Deacon Keith Fournier (@KeithFournier7) June 20, 2019
To get your obvious question out of the way first: yes, there really is a group of people with souls so dead and lives so empty that they consider attacking a century-old memorial to fallen war heroes to be a pressing and worthwhile use of their time and the public’s resources.
The SCOTUS ruled that there was no evidence of discriminatory intent in selecting a cross shape to memorialize the town’s war dead, and Justice Alito wrote that in fact, removing it now could be seen as an act of hostility against religion “that has no place in our Establishment Clause traditions.”
In a section that should be stitched into a sampler and hung in the home of every atheist activist in America, Alito explained:
“The Religion Clauses of the Constitution aim to foster a society in which people of all beliefs can live together harmoniously, and the presence of the Bladensburg Cross on the land where it has stood for so many years is fully consistent with that aim.”
Take special note of that SCOTUS confirmation that the sections of the Bill of Rights concerning religious freedom are intended to foster a society of people of different beliefs living together harmoniously, not to banish any specific religion from the public square if one group of loudmouths doesn’t like it (I paraphrase.)
How many hours and dollars must be wasted on these ridiculous lawsuits before the point is driven home that simply expressing religious faith on public property is NOT “establishing a state religion”?
It seems pretty clear to me, but liberal Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented, with current media darling Ruth Bader Ginsburg claiming that the memorial should have been ruled unconstitutional because “using the cross as a war memorial does not transform it into a secular symbol” and “by maintaining the Peace Cross on a public highway, the Commission elevates Christianity over other faiths, and religion over non-religion.”
Note that under this interpretation of the Constitution, the only way a religious symbol can be allowed on public land if it has somehow been stripped of any religious meaning and turned into “a secular symbol” (and would that not be elevating non-religion over religion?)
It’s no wonder she has no use for originalism, since I can only imagine what the men who wrote the Constitution would have to say about that.
On the other hand, not every Christian is completely happy with the ruling.
At the link, Dan Calabrese explains that the Court should have gone further in protecting religious expression, and that it actually leaned too much toward Ginsburg’s argument by narrowly finding the Cross acceptable only because it had a historical meaning separate from its religious meaning.
Just as with the ongoing persecution of religious wedding business owners, expensive nuisance lawsuits by atheists will never end until the SCOTUS finally issues a ruling that should be unnecessary: one that affirms once and for all that when the First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” it means exactly what it says.
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