Progressive Cry Babies

“IN LANDMARK DECISION, SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN MAIN REASON COUNTRY WAS STARTED” 

This assertion is false on the face of it.  The only place religion is mention in the Constitution is Article 6, at the end of the third clause: [N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.  Then again in the First Amendment’s Establish and Free Exercise Clauses.  The Constitution was not binding upon the states, only the federal government.  It was through incorporation via the “A constitutional doctrine whereby selected provisions of the Bill of Rights are made applicable to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” That the Bill of rights were imposed upon the states.  The latest example of this in the Second Amendment decision where the Court decided that it applies to the states as well as to the federal government.

 

The 1st Amendment thus prevented the establishment of a national religion, and it also prohibits government aid to any religion, even on an non-preferential basis, as well as protecting the right of the individual to choose to worship, or not, as he or she sees fit.  The Bill of Rights, however, had no effect on how a state treated its churches. Unlike today, the Bill of Rights applied only to the rules and laws of the federal government. The states were still free to establish churches, to direct church taxes be paid, and to even require attendance in church, all within the bounds of the state’s own constitution. As noted below, many did. While the “free exercise” clause is undoubtedly referring to an individual right, the “establishment” clause refers to a state power. This clause not only prohibited the federal government from establishing a national religion, it also prevented the federal government from forcing a state to disestablish any state religion.

 

In 1702 all 13 American colonies had some form of state-supported religion. This support varied from tax benefits to religious requirements for voting or serving in the legislature.  Eight States had official religions at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights. The five that did not, had provisions which discriminated against those who did not believe in Christianity or at least a Judeo-Christian G-d.   It was not until the 1947 in the Everson decision that the SCOTUS “discovered” that the 14th applied the Establishment Clause to the states that any such “nullification” would have been based on the 14th. That “discovery” was written into the opinion in Everson by Hugo Black, Klansman and anticatholic bigot. The doctrine of separation of church and state that the incorporation of the Establishment Clause accomplished was fundamental Klan doctrine, as well as secular humanist doctrine.

 

The U. S. Supreme Court has issued two bans on prayer in public schools. The first came in 1962 and the second was issued in 1963. The bans were the result of a court case sponsored in part by Madalyn Murray O’Hair. She was but one of the litigants in the lawsuit, but her name became synonymous with the case and the promotion of atheism. The ban not only outlawed prayer in public schools, but it also banned Bible reading in public schools.   In the 1983 Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983) was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that government funding for chaplains was constitutional because of the “unique history” of the United States. Futhermore said, “To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making laws is not, in these circumstances, an ‘establishment’ of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgement of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.”

This is the first time that the prayer of public officials has reached the Supreme Court, and it struck down the lower courts’ restriction on them from opening a government meeting with a prayer,  such as when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals who decided on March 18th, 1999 that the Board of Education in Cleveland, OH, could not pray before their meetings.  The court ruled that prayers are an illegal endorsement of religion.  So show me in the history of the creation of the United States of America where freedom from religion was the reason for its creation. To so assert is to create your own history.