fayfreethinkers.com

DAR
Hilarious, and so predictable.

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Religious Right Activists Want Government To Reflect Only Their Faith

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today deplored the disruption by Religious Right activists of a Hindu chaplain's prayer to open the U.S. Senate.

"This shows the intolerance of many Religious Right activists," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. "They say they want more religion in the public square, but it's clear they mean only their religion.

"America is a land of extraordinary religious diversity, and the Religious Right just can't seem to accept that fact," Lynn continued. "I don't think the Senate should open with prayers, but if it's going to happen, the invocations ought to reflect the diversity of the American people."

Hindu Chaplain Rajan Zed, a Nevada resident, gave the opening prayer in the Senate at the invitation of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). As he began his remarks, two protestors interrupted the proceedings, asking for forgiveness from Jesus Christ for the "abomination" of failing to pray to the "one true God." (The sergeant-at-arms had to restore order.)

Religious Right groups have been agitating against the Hindu leader's prayer since it was announced. The Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association has asked his members to complain to their senators about the invitation. The group's news service reported that "Christian nation" activist David Barton said that Hinduism has few followers in the United States and that prayer to a "non-monotheistic god" is "outside the American paradigm."

Said AU's Lynn, "The Religious Right promotes a deeply skewed version of American history. Our founders wanted separation of church and state and full religious liberty for all faith traditions. The episode today shows we still have a ways to go to achieve that goal."

LINK

Boy, do we ever have a long way to go to achieve "full religious liberty for all faith traditions" - and those of no "faith tradtion" as well. Maybe we should call or email Mark & Blanche, though, to reinforce our support for multiple faith traditions.

Blumner: Bush and the merger of church and state

Robin Blumner
Salt Lake Tribune
06/30/2007

When President Bush finally leaves office in January 2009, he will leave behind many legacies. One will be a nation stripped of its moral bearings. Where once we did not torture and were a nation of laws, that is no longer true. Bush will also leave us in far-reduced international standing and with a disabled military. And he will leave an exhausted treasury with a national debt of many trillions of dollars more than he found it.
In addition to all that, Bush will leave us with a system of church-state entanglements on an epic scale. By pouring billions of dollars into religiously affiliated social service providers, Bush will have accomplished precisely what the nation's founders warned against: a process by which people of many faiths and none at all are forced through compulsory taxation to underwrite other people's religious activities.
A group of freethinkers called the Freedom from Religion Foundation based in Wisconsin took action against the administration's faith-based policies. The foundation and three leaders of FFRF, as taxpayers, sued the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives as well as the heads of the eight additional faith-based offices - all created by Bush through executive fiat. The suit alleged that these agencies were using tax dollars to advance and promote religion.
It is pretty clear that the faith-based agenda of the Bush administration has been to do precisely what FFRF alleges. The regional conferences that the faith-based offices hold have had the feel of revival meetings where participants have been so whipped up they've been known to speak in tongues.
The Government Accountability Office issued a report in 2006 finding that the faith-based recipients of federal grants are not sufficiently policed to ensure that they don't discriminate in their services on the basis of religion. It found that some grantees engage in overtly religious activities such as praying, while providing government-funded social services.
The suit could have put all the unconstitutional activities of the administration's faith-based agencies under a microscope. But first the litigants had to get past the Bush-packed U.S. Supreme Court - something they could not do.
Lost in all the attention that other end-of-term cases received, Hein vs. Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. was as momentous as any. The 5-to-4 ruling, with the majority consisting of the conservatives on the court, including Bush's two appointees, will help insulate Bush's faith-based agenda from legitimate legal challenge. The justices kicked FFRF out of court as well as any taxpayer who wants to object to executive branch expenditures on religion activities. They said that taxpayers don't have standing to sue.
The notion of standing is grounded in the limited jurisdiction of our nation's federal courts. Only where a litigant suffers a cognizable injury may a suit be brought. This keeps the courts from postulating on hypothetical harms.
In general, taxpayers do not have standing to sue the federal government when they object to the way their tax money is used. The injury is considered too amorphous. But nearly 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the Establishment Clause, our guarantees of church-state separation, is different. The high court noted that there are deep historical roots associated with the injury inflicted when citizens are forced to support church activities and beliefs they do not share.
James Madison's famous Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments declared that no government in a free society may ''force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment'' of religion.
Being compelled to support others' faith was a wrong that the founders well understood. To them, the religious wars and mass slaughter that came in the wake of the Reformation were relatively fresh. Some had progenitors who were part of the migration from Europe to escape religious tyranny. They also saw the way minority religious groups in the colonies, such as Quakers and Baptists, chafed at state-collected religious taxes.
For this unique and historically portentous harm, the court in 1968 granted aggrieved taxpayers the ability to get into court and object.
But the court in 2007 has shut the courthouse door with a slam. The majority made some nonsensical distinction between the 1968 case that involved a congressional appropriation and the fact that FFRF was seeking to challenge a discretionary expenditure of the executive branch. The four-member dissent accurately summed up the distinction as lacking any basis in ''logic or precedent.''
There is now a four-member conservative plurality of the Roberts court that is openly hostile toward those who seek to keep their tax money from flowing into religious coffers. The dismantled wall between church and state will be just another one of Bush's disastrous legacies.

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_6270560

Are any of the 5 RCs on the Supreme Court old enough or in poor enough health that we might break this logjam any time soon? Like say January 20, 2009.

Not sure how poor/good their health is...but a sudden case of lead poisoning can strike anyone.