Posted on 12/21/2004 9:02:20 PM PST by CHARLITE
I am looking at the front page, top center story in the Sacramento Bee for Friday, December 3, 2004, the gist of which is that a Christmas tree was erected in the rotunda of the Federal courthouse in Sacramento. Soon after, an attorney donated a Menorah to the display to commemorate Hanukkah, which almost immediately aroused a controversy, as a result of which both the Menorah and the Christmas tree were removed, which aroused another controversy, whereupon the Menorah and the Christmas tree were restored to the rotunda, and ever since a debate has raged whether it is permissible to display the Christmas tree and Menorah in a Federal courthouse, or whether this violates the first clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Looking and listening to other news, I feel inundated by stories about school districts, courthouses, city halls, universities, and other public institutions, purging Christmas and Hanukkah from public places. One school banned the colors red and green! - allowing only white to commemorate the “winter holiday.” That, of course, should have given offense to both Mexico and Italy with their red, white, and green national flags.
Other schools have barred students from singing Christmas carols, or even playing them in instrumental arrangements, or exchanging Christmas cards on campus, or even saying “Merry Christmas” to each other. A town in Oregon permitted the erection of a Christmas tree at City Hall on the condition that it would be removed if anyone objected. Of course, someone objected and the tree came down. I could go on and on, but I think you have the picture, and if you haven’t you must have been in a sensory deprivation tank for the last two weeks.
America is being newdowed, a verb I have just coined to commemorate the antics of Doctor/Lawyer Michael Newdow who sued, ostensibly on behalf of his daughter, to purge the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and hounded his obsession all the way to the Supreme Court, which properly dismissed all the nonsense in the simplest way possible by ruling that since he was not his daughter’s custodian, and was not going to school and reciting the pledge himself, he had no standing to complain.
Open almost any newspaper, or listen to almost any talk show on the radio, and you’ll find new stories every day about someone somewhere trying to rid Christmas of Christmas. Even Barry Lyndon, director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, showed up on the Sean Hannity show recently to tell Oliver North why America should be de-Christmassed, a peculiar position indeed for an allegedly Christian organization (Americans United) to take.
When pressed by Mr. North for his reasoning, Mr. Lyndon launched into a diatribe on the evils of the commercialization of Christmas . . . which has nothing to do, of course, with the placement of Christmas trees and Nativity Scenes on courthouse lawns or the excision of Christmas carols from “winter musicals” in elementary schools.
Mr. Lyndon pointedly ignored the real meaning of the commercialization of Christmas, or the practice of giving gifts to those we love, and sometimes to strangers - it began to commemorate and follow the legend of St. Nicholas, who gave gifts to the poor, the freezing, and the starving, in the season of Christ’s Mass. St. Nicholas (who has been morphed into Santa Claus) was inspired, of course, by Christ’s gift of salvation to mankind.
I would suggest that rather than whining about the commercialization of Christmas, we should revel in the fact that the commercialization of Christmas, the season of giving, ultimately commemorates the gift of Christ, reminds us all to remember those we love, our family and friends, and those we know or don’t know who may be in need of charity; and that the holiday shopping season means - for many merchants, who are people too - the difference between poverty and prosperity.
How, I wonder, has Christophobia, the fear of Christ, the fear of Christmas, come to be the driving political force in the politicization of Christmas, this year more than ever before? I cannot imagine that even 1% of Americans really want to get Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of all public places. After all, some 90% of Americans are at least nominally Christian, and at least half of those are actively Christian, and I have seen no demonstrations by the Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, or Sikh congregations to rid America of Christmas, nor any demonstrations by Christian churches to rid America of any other faith.
No, the charge seems to be led by the American Civil Liberties Union, which apparently cares deeply about civil liberties for everyone but Christians and conservatives, and the somewhat eccentric Americans United for the Separation of Church and state which traces its origins to a certain paranoia that the government would one day establish an official religion, presumably Roman Catholicism, and then persecute everyone who didn’t convert.
Both the ACLU and Americans United (I doubt that the membership of both combined adds up to even 1% of 1% of Americans, but I’ll have to check that out) are in the dubious business of filing lawsuits against the kinds of discrimination, real and imaginary, they don’t like, while actively and aggressively using the courts and the intimidating threat of litigation to discriminate against the political and religious freedoms and free speech rights of everyone with whom they disagree, and they do it for profit. It’s a business for both, pure and simple. Yes, okay, it may have some ideological motivations, too, but it’s still a business.
And then there are a handful of other scattered and assorted atheists and miscellaneous malcontents, I’ll call them ”newdows,” drooling the juice of sour grapes from their clenched lips, who are apparently so amazingly hypersensitive and intolerant (and so amazingly blind to their own hypersensitivity and intolerance) that they are deeply and profoundly offended by the fact that other people have religious beliefs and practice religious observances they do not share, and feel that everybody else must be barred from doing anything that offends them.
Surprise! According to the 2005 World Almanac, out of six billion people on earth, about two billion are Christians!. More than a billion are Muslims. Another two billion or so are assorted Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and followers of many other faiths, while a mere 15% are non-religious or atheist. Most people are not like you - get used to it! To these last poor folk, I say - Get a life! Then get a good psychoanalyst and see if you can figure out why you are so thin skinned and hypersensitive that you are deeply offended by the sight and sound of others’ religious beliefs and traditions.
Why, I ask, do you few think you should and can impose your anti-religious, anti-Christian, or anti-Christmas prejudices, beliefs, and intolerance, on the 290,000,000 Americans who do not share them? Is this the emergence of the new Tyranny of the Tiny Minority?
If we are to be barred from doing anything that offends you, merely because it offends you, then doesn’t the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment also bar you from doing anything that offends us? Maybe we should adopt as the rule of law that nobody can do anything that offends anybody? - no matter how thin-skinned or hypersensitive the offended person may be? Then, since almost anything may offend somebody, none of us will be free to do anything!
But we will have a brave new world in which nobody will be offended, except, of course, those who think something can and should be done . . . oh, my, I can see no way out of this conundrum already . . . And what about “multiculturalism” and “diversity?” Doesn’t “multiculturalism” and “diversity” include Christmas and Christianity, too?
For some reason I don’t understand, it seems that America has collectively allowed these poor misguided and benighted people to run roughshod over Americans’ freedom to observe our traditions in public, by forgetting the context of the “establishment clause” that the ACLU and its cohorts have primarily relied on to cause all this trouble and silliness.
Take a look at the First Amendment. The very first clause is, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, . . .”, and the ACLU and most of the decisions limiting the display of nativity scenes or the offering of prayer at high school graduations stop reading just there.
But the second clause reads, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and it continues in the third clause, “or abridging the freedom of speech . . .” In context (and all laws are supposed to be read in context, the very first rule of construction) the passage reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
In my opinion, the court decisions that have limited the inclusion of things such as school prayer at graduations and Christmas displays at city halls and the placement of the Ten Commandments in or near courthouses have improperly construed the First Amendment by applying the first clause, the “establishment clause,” in isolation, rather than in conjunction with the second and third clauses . . . “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech . . .” This conjunctive context requires, in my opinion, what the courts would call a “balancing test.”
In constitutional law it is well settled that fundamental rights (freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and so forth) cannot be infringed or limited in the absence of a compelling government interest or necessity, and then no more than necessary to accommodate that compelling interest. Any infringement on a fundamental constitutional right is supposed to be subjected to “strict scrutiny” and infringed as little as possible. The only permissible compelling interest is usually the maintenance of public order and safety, not the oppression and suppression of historic cultural traditions, such as the observance of Christmas.
The three clauses of the First Amendment are, or certainly should be, of equal dignity, of equal importance, and must be given equal weight. Government cannot do any of those things. None can burden any of the others, except to the minimal effect necessary to give equal effect to each. Thus, in my opinion, the “establishment clause” cannot be construed more broadly than is necessary to bar the government from endorsing, proselytizing, or “establishing” a public or official religion.
While this should obviously bar, say, patently religious services or observances in public schools, or the teaching of religious doctrine in public schools (other than in the context of a comparative religions or history class), when balanced against the “free exercise clause” and the “free speech clause” it should not, and must not, be construed to exclude all mention or observance of historic and cultural traditions - such as the erection of Christmas trees and nativity scenes, or the singing of Christmas carols - in public schools and in other public places.
I.e., the over-zealous interpretation of the “establishment clause” easily and obviously violates the “free exercise clause” and the “free speech clause” - and pushing the “separation of church and state” too far violates the First Amendment rights of 250,000,000 Americans to exercise, commemorate, their religious traditions, and the rights of 250,000,000 Americans to talk and sing about it and erect public displays, such as nativity scenes and Christmas trees and Menorahs, to commemorate a Judeo-Christian tradition that lies at the very core of more than two thousand years of Jewish, European, and finally American history, society, and culture.
The over-zealous interpretation of the “establishment clause” also violates the “equal rights clause” of the 14th Amendment, by giving greater weight to the “rights” of, say, a tiny minority of newdows to be free from the offensive sights and sounds of Christmas, than to the rights of the vast majority of Americans who love the sights and sounds of Christmas and would gladly have them everywhere, at least for a few weeks each winter.
And, as for the “free speech” clause of the First Amendment, long lines of cases have held that the “free speech clause” protects such things as “exotic (nude) dancing,” which cities and counties cannot prohibit; the publication of erotic literature; public speeches and marches by the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan; and events such as the Gay Pride parades in San Francisco and Mardis Gras in New Orleans, which some people think offend public decency.
So I ask, if the “free speech clause” of the First Amendment protects naked dancing, the hate speech of the Nazis and the Klan, and the public flaunting of the Gay Pride parades, does it not also protect Christianity and Christmas?
I hope that this year most Americans have had enough of the Christophobia of the American Left, or whoever it is that is driving the Christophobia movement through the courts, and are ready to fight back—at the very least by wishing a “Merry Christmas” or a Happy Hanukkah to every newdow who crosses their paths.
About the Writer: Raymond Kraft is a lawyer and writer living and working in Northern California.
Raymond receives e-mail at rskraft@vfr.net
It is absolutely contrary to the Interstate Commerce clause to stamp out Christmas........this is indisputable, considering the amount of money spent on Christmas gifts.
Can someone explain to me how a public display of a nativity scene or a menorah is establishing a law and forcing a religion on us? Also can someone point out to me the Constitution's "separation of church and state" clause?
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) - http://www.alliancedefensefund.org
Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) - http://www.thomasmore.org
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) - http://www.aclj.org
The Rutherford Institute - http://www.rutherford.org/
Stop the ACLU Coalition - http://www.stoptheaclu.org
Here are a few examples of how two of those organizations are fighting back:
ADF Contacts Over 3,600 School Districts Over Attempts To Censor Christmas
ADF: 700 lawyers ready to fight ACLU lawsuits
ADF: Pentagons' Warning About Boyscouts Is Absurd
Thomas More Law Center: Town of Palm Beach Pays $50,000 In Attorney Fees Apologizes To Women In Nativity Lawsuit
Additional information:
The ACLU must be destroyed: Joseph Farah supports Boy Scouts, urges Americans to fight back
Citizens mobilized to stop ACLU (seeks to consign group to 'ash heap of history')
ACLU fulfilling communist agenda
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