Posted on 11/13/2018 11:53:14 AM PST by detective
The Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of a towering cross-shaped memorial to Maryland men who died in the First World War.
The Supreme Court agreed in early November to hear the case in which the American Legion is asking the high court to reverse a 2017 appeals court ruling that the memorial violates the First Amendment’s prohibition on governments establishing religion. Overturning a lower court’s decision, the Fourth Circuit panel said the memorial, which stands on public land, is unconstitutional because it “excessively entangles the government in religion.”
The case may be a gauge for the conservatism of the current Supreme Court now that Justice Brett Kavanaugh is on the bench. The lawyers for the American Legion at the First Liberty Institute and the law firm Jones Day have asked the court to overturn decades of often unclear and contradictory liberal precedents regarding religious displays on public property. Instead, they would like such cases to focus on whether the government is effectively coercing someone to participate in a religious observance that violates his or her conscience.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
The legality of the 93-year-old memorial was challenged by an atheist organization called the American Humanist Association, which argued that the cross sent an exclusionary message in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
“[T]he sectarian elements easily overwhelm the secular ones,” Barack Obama-appointed Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote in the majority opinion.
Thacker also said that the American Legion’s “affiliation with Christianity” should not be ignored.
Once again we are subjected to the terminally cancerous disease called Obama. Purposely appointing lower court judges across this country to infect every foundation of American society, may his being rot and stink before our very eyes as well as his criminal minions who do his biding
I have a feeling SCOTUS will rule the correct and proper way on this and the cross monument, along with every other one will stay intact.
A simple monument is in no way an exclusionary message.
This Republic now has to kowtow to whatever the minority du jour of the day wants whether it be gays, atheists, transgenders, transracials, transhumans or whoever else comes along.
Acknowledgement of religion is not
Establishment of religion.
Marko
This is insane. Should they get rid of all the headstones in Arlington because they have crosses and stars of David on them as well?
Where in Maryland in THE CONGRESS establishing a religion?
Acknowledging the dominant faith of the dead memorialized is somehow wrong now?
Just. Wow
These militant atheist are a bit like the guy with nothing to sell in History of the World, pt 1 ... but where they differ from that man is that they, having nothing to sell, take offense at others having ANYTHING to sell.
Yes, they may fitfully tolerate the proverbial guy selling rats because people don’t really want rat unless they really only have a choice between a rat and nothing (and then expect them to get uppity over rats) ... yet their rage against anyone daring to sell “good food” would boundless because someone selling good food is, to their way of thinking, exclusionary of their nothing.
I have hopes that the court will rule 5-4 or 6-3 in favor of keeping the cross in place.
Yes.
An Establishment of Religion has long been obscured by those wanting to move the nation away from Christianity in particular.
At it’s heart to respect an establishment of religion means that, yes, some expression of divine truth is acknowledged ... BUT also that the State is empowered to do something ABOUT anyone who does not conform.
It’s about the assumption of police powers to do with how those who do not conform that is the “establishment”.
If, for example, you set up a 10 Commandments display out in front of a court house but that display has no bearing on who may enter the building to have business with the court then that is just a display.
But if you stand someone outside do demand of any seeking to enter the building what they think of the display and give that persons authority to bar any who give the wrong answer from entering ... THAT is respecting an establishment of religion.
It’s all about the assumption of police powers. How it makes you FEEL isn’t them having police powers, them having police powers is them having police powers.
Historically, in times and places known to the Founding Fathers, it had happened on at least two occasions that forces in Scotland had tried to respect and establishment of religion over the Westminster Confession of Faith and require any person seeking to serve in an official capacity (or serve of a jury) to make that confession or else be unable to serve.
The move WAS expressly anticatholic because, though the WCoF was of sufficient antiquity that it might be considered a “Roman Catholic” confession it was nevertheless not the one the RCC used. Less obvious was that among Presbyterians who were completely orthodox there were many who didn’t require confessing the WCoF to take communion ... which was pretty darn important.
Among Scottish Presbyterians they tore into each other over this and supposedly these fights spread even to the Colonies though none of those congregations had any dogs in the hunt.
Those were attempts to respect an establishment of religion.
Granted they fell far short of the “or take your last breath” sort of respecting an establishment of religion that had last been seen in England many years before ... but they were the ones most immediately known of.
BTW ... I think the years that they did this were in 1737 and 1767. I seem to remember clearly that they were 30 years apart but the actual years ... well, it’s been years since I read about them. I do know I later tried to investigate them only to discover an interesting fact ... that to secular historians I interacted with they were religious affairs and, conversely, to religious they were secular doings ... so oddly no one seemed much interested in them!
People are strange that way.
I hope so too.
I think that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Kagan, and Breyer are all solidly in favor of tearing down crosses. The wise Latina may actually be against a move to tear down the cross. All the others I expect will rule that the cross can stay.
I have never understood how this language can be construed to prevent states from endorsing religion. In fact, the tenth amendment suggests just the opposite.
This REALLY ticks me off...see, and hear, this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omd9_FJnerY
What do you see but crosses on foreign fields where our servicemen have fallen. Thousands of them. All buried under the cross of Christianity (with a few Judaism stars scattered here and there among the Christian crosses).
What are these atheist communistocrats going to next, go to Europe and Asia and remove all those Christian crosses? that these brave men chose to be buried under?
Wouldn’t that be something, the very thing these heroes fought against, socialism (godless Nazism, Communism), desiring to remove the Christian cross above them?
My dad, by the way, was a lifer in the Army, fighting in WW2 and the Korean war, against forms of godless socialism.
Yes. Amazon needs room.
It should be 9-0, but look who we’re dealing with.
The cross was erected by the American Legion on private land. The state took possession many years later, I presume in connection with road widening projects. I presume that the state agreed to maintain the monument when it took the land. If the state wants to renege, fine, but it should give the land back, remove any roads impinging on the property and restore the status quo ante. Or pay full cost for a mutually agreeable relocation.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
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