Posted on 08/10/2005 11:25:50 AM PDT by JZelle
RICHMOND -- Civil liberties lawyers have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow a Wiccan priestess to offer prayers before a public board's meetings. Cynthia Simpson was turned down in 2002 when she asked the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors to add her name to the list of people who customarily open the board's meetings with a religious invocation. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the suburban Richmond county. In their petition, received by the court yesterday, American Civil Liberties Union lawyers accuse the federal appeals court of trying to "obscure with legal smoke and mirrors" Chesterfield's preference for mainline religions. "Although Establishment Clause jurisprudence may be beset with conflicting tests, uncertain outcomes and ongoing debate, one principle has never been compromised ... that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another," ACLU attorneys wrote in their 13-page filing. County officials said they had the right to limit the prayers to Judeo-Christian beliefs and religions based on a single god.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Wica (or Wicca) is not a religion. It a fraud started by a retired civil servant so he could get sex from women stupid enough to believe him.
This has all the validity of the prisoner in jail lawsuit that sued the prison system because he claimed to have a surf and turf religion which required the consumption of steak and lobster as a sacriment. The jail was doing religious persecution by not providing the required steaks and lobsters.
She is some lonely wacko who wants to prove some point.
I am the founding minister of the first church of the 45ACP. I'd like to offer a few prayers.
You don't get to decide that. *I* don't get to decide that either.
The US Army recognizes it as a religion, that's good enough to pass this test.
Because the majority (that's MAJORITY) of the people in this country are Christian.
However, if the prayer is nondenominational (IE: doesn't mention Jesus, Allah, Baal, or whoever one worships), what's the big deal? If it's a silent prayer, who frakkin' cares?
A majority of the people cannot limit access of a minority of people in this nation. It's antithetical to the Constitution.
If they're giving special favors (such as free advertising) to one group, they must give it to all groups.
This is probably the ACLU's ideal solution. Anything which weakens the bonds of community, they are for.
You're right - it didn't take long at all for our government to betray the principles our nation was founded upon.
That's why we must constantly defend our liberty.
No government body is required to allow anyone to say a prayer at the beginning of that body's proceedings.
However, once they open that door, they cannot discriminate based on religion.
Never fear there are other conservatives that agree. There is just a very vocal minority that wants to see Christianity as the state religion.
Public meetings don't require invitations. They are open to all.
Like it or not, government is required to treat all religions equally.
But does she weigh more then a duck?
Seriously the word "wicca" did not even exist untile the late 1940's.
It was all cut from whole cloth by a British Civil Servant by the name of Gardner. He made up a fictional coven and he slapped together a bunch of rituals.
It is not an issue of judgment, it is just a fact.
The fact the military included some of the rituals in their manuals is irrelevant. There is no central anything about this fake religion. Satanism is also in the chaplins manual. Somehow I doubt they will be holding animal sacrifices (or human for that matter) to start their meetings.
The fact that this pathetic woman was dumb enough to be suckered is beyond the point. There is no "tradition" for "wiccan", there is no "way of life." By the goofy standard promoted by the ACLU, FreeRepublic is a religion and should be opening up meetings.
That's not what Stone Mountain is saying at all.
Public figures may speak their mind. But when they start giving special benefits to one faith (such as free advertising), they can't deny them to any other faith.
I know one Wiccan, and although I do not know much about their religion, I do know that she is a law-abiding, moral and decent person. She doesn't toss babies into fire. She is civilized. So, I'm not sure how a Wiccan wanting to pray at a public meeting pees on the Constitution. Please enlighten me.
You have misread my response at a couple of points. I tried to to make a distinction between what the Constitution provides and what the Framers of the Constitution intended. The point was to demonstrate the unspoken assumptions that the Founders worked from, and how their failure to encode these assumptions into the document allowed for consequences that they had never envisioned. You will (I hope) by re-reading my response see that the word "civilized" is being used within the context of eighteenth-century assumptions, not ours.
Closer attention to my response should also show that I did not equate wiccans with baby-roasters or bull-sacrificers, but used an outlandish comparison to show how unlikely the Framers of the Constitution would have imagined it that anyone in the world they envisioned would return to a religion that they considered long-dead. No equation of the two was intended.
I have known a couple of Wiccans myself, and I agree that they are generally nice people, not given to child sacrifice or the ritual beheadings of cats on anything like a regular basis. I do know a little about modern wicca because one of my students who was getting into it kindly provided me with some of the stuff he was reading for a college coven. As far as I could tell, it was harmless, if slightly silly, stuff, and there was a frank admission that what was being taught as wicca was largely unconnected with genuine ancient practices and that a lot of it was being made up as they went along. I regarded it as a play-time religion or "belief accessory" and didn't give it much thought afterwards. Perhaps there are other, more serious, better informed schools of wiccan practice out there. I don't know.
That said, whether or not a wiccan wishing to pray at a public gathering is "peeing on the Constitution" (not my phrase--read again) depends on his or her motives and the sort of gathering that the person is attending. I have been present at a few public occasions where "alternative" prayers have been offered--or the request for "standard" prayers objected to--and in neither case did I feel that either party was acting out of a love for their alternative religion , or out of a desire to preserve religious diversity, but in an attempt to push their views into the faces of the majority present and outrage or hurt them. This is, as I said, "pee[ing] on the sort of nation that the Constitution was intended to produce." As a group or public prayer is generally assumed to reflect the wishes of most of the people there (or what else is it for?), it is usually framed in a way that most people can give assent to. Jews, Muslims, Christians and Hindus can at least respond favorably to the word "God" though they mean different things by it; a person praying publically to a frog (just an example, NOT what wiccans do, I know, so don't tell me)is doing so for a very different reason and will get a very different response.
So, does a Wiccan have a right to pray at a public gathering if invited to do so? The Constitution as I understand it gives him or her the right. But I have to admit I would suspect the motives of a person who would do so with no one else of his or her faith present. If I, as a Christian, went to a meeting of largely Jewish businessmen and ended my prayer with "in Christ's Name," I would be a fool not to expect a chilly reception, and worse than a fool if that had been the intended response.
None of that is relevant. There was a time when Christianity was new. Same with Mormonism, Islam, Judaism and all the rest. Believers in each "know" that they're right, outsiders "know" that they're wrong.
It's not your place, or mine to evaluate their validity for the government, only for our own lives. All faiths are equal under the law so long as they have legitimate followers who believe of their own free will.
And once the government starts handing out preferences, they have to give the preferences to all faiths, even those that you or I think are silly.
It's not really a way to avoid a perjury charge. You can't come back and say "I didn't really mean it" after swearing an oath to tell the truth.
Witnesses will lie or they'll tell the truth. The presence or absence of any holy book will not change that.
aclu backs witch? is this a surprise?
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