(From Larry O’Dell, AP, July 23, 2008) “A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the Rev. Hashmel Turner’s lawsuit challenging a nonsectarian prayer policy adopted by the council in 2005.
The court said the policy does not violate Turner’s rights because the prayer is “government speech,” not individual speech.
“Turner was not forced to offer a prayer that violated his deeply held religious beliefs,” wrote retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who participated in the case as a visiting judge.
O’Connor wrote that Turner was given the chance to pray on behalf of the government, but was not willing to do so within the government’s guidelines. She wrote that he “remains free to pray on his own behalf, in non-governmental endeavors, in the manner dictated by his conscience.””
The City Council of Fredericksburg made a discriminatory religious test in its prayer policy. But, given the First Amendment – as it was written, not as re-written by Courts – their actions weren’t unconstitutional. Just biased against Christians.
The City Council’s policy is contrary to Virginia’s Statute of Religious Freedom – “Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.” But, I don’t know if these words remain in the Code of Virginia.
What other deities – than Jesus – are proscribed from public prayer in Fredericksburg? Jesus is the only name that can’t be spoken? Does a Muslim prayer meet the nonsectarian standard? How so? Or a Wiccan prayer?
It’s up to the citizens of Fredericksburg to elect a city council to correct their policy.
The Court decision is a different matter. Where is ‘government speech’ defined in the Constitution?
If judges can make up a category of speech, then judges can define speech as they like. As they already have in Sandra Day O’Connor’s addled logic above. Which means they can do far worse in the future.
When did We, The People, as Sovereigns of the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Virginia, give federal judges the power to re-write free speech in the individual free exercise of religion?
The judicial branch is a co-equal political branch of government. The judiciary is semper inter pares only in their constitutional duties to adjudicate existing laws – not to make up new ones.
The issue of who prays what in public in Virginia lies squarely with the cities and counties and Commonwealth of Virginia.
It’s time to take individual freedom back from judges. The Courts seized the power to re-write the First Amendment – especially since 1962. The Legislatures and Executives need to do their constitutional duty to limit judicial excesses – abuses of authority.
The judiciary is as wrong about religion as it was about race for so many decades. Judges built up a body of legal precedents supporting slavery and segregation for over a hundred years after Dred Scott. The five decades of legislating religious prejudices from the bench is less time and no different, politically, than the racial prejudices of former judges.
So, when is it time for civil disobedience in Virginia? If a person prays a public prayer in Jesus’s name, who will arrest him? Do Federal Judges issues bench warrants? Who will prosecute? What is the crime? What is the punishment?
The Apostle Paul spent time in jail. What better reason could there be to be in jail than, “I prayed in Jesus’ name?”