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Antonin
Scalia - Supreme Court Evangelist
January 15, 2003
By Patrick Ennis
 U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a crowd at a Religious
Freedom Day event in Fredericksburg, Va., on Monday, Jan.
13, that courts have gone too far to keep religion out of
public schools and other forums. In typical evangelist fashion
and sounding for all the world like theocratic pundit and
fellow right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan, Scalia fed the crowd
a mostly fact-free diet of propaganda calculated to mislead,
and then to anger. Predictably, he offered little proof of
this alleged secular onslaught by the judicial branch beyond
last summer's wildly controversial decision by a three judge
panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco that the
phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violates
the constitutional separation of church and state.
Apparently, he neglected to mention the tellingly unpopular
decision was almost immediately stayed – ordered not to take
effect – by the same panel of judges, pending a review by
the full appeals court, which is virtually certain to overturn
it if only for the sake of political correctness. He also
failed to mention that members of both houses of congress,
in their never-ending quest for popularity at the expense
of principle, quickly passed resolutions in support of The
Pledge, including the religious reference, with near unanimity.
Nor did he reference the growing number of states which, in
the wake of Sept.11, 2001, now require that the Ten Commandments
be hung on the walls of public schools.
The chamber in which Scalia and his fellow Supreme Court
jurists sit also displays a copy of the Ten Commandments on
its wall. U.S. currency still features the phrase "In
God We Trust". SCOTUS has upheld the right of the Boy
Scouts of America to discriminate, on religious grounds, against
gays and atheists. Prayer in public schools is still (and
always was) legal when done during lunch or free periods and
not faculty led, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that
religious organizations such as the Good News Club have the
same rights to use school facilities after school hours as
any other group. The constitutionality of the official state
motto of Ohio, "With God, All Things Are Possible",
has been affirmed, and just last year, Scalia and colleagues
upheld the legality of private school vouchers from the government
which can be used to help parents pay tuition at religious
schools.
A casual, unbiased observer might get the impression that
religion in public life, far from being under assault, is
on the offensive. So if Scalia believes that courts have "gone
too far" to keep religion out of public life, one has
to wonder just what it would take to satisfy him and his ilk.
Scalia, referring to the lone protestor at the event, an
intrepid man silently holding a sign promoting church/state
separation, told the crowd "I have no problem with that
philosophy being adopted democratically. If the gentleman
holding the sign would persuade all of you of that, then we
could eliminate 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance.
That could be democratically done."
All of you? Not just a majority? Apparently, in Scalia's
definition of democracy, a thing is only to be enacted if
support is universal. No simple "majority rules"
allowed. Perhaps this helps explain his vote on those Florida
presidential ballot recounts in Dec. 2000. Of course, all
of this ignores the larger point that one of the original,
primary purposes of the Constitution was to protect the rights
of the minority from the tyranny of the majority, something
that ought to be common knowledge for every member of the
Supreme Court, the sole purpose of which is to interpret said
Constitution.
The tactic, exaggerating or even inventing a threat within
the minds of the faithful and then exploiting the fear and
anger it generates, is hardly new; it a staple of religious
activism, used to devastating effect in modern times by both
the Christian Right and militant Islamists. The surprise is
that in this age of information overload, with an American
population better educated than any in history, such baseless
fear mongering can still be so effective. But the proof is
in the pudding – how many Americans still think that their
children are not only being taught sexual positions and techniques
in health class, but also being issued publicly procured condoms
there in order to facilitate "safe sex"? How many
think their children will be sent home from school if they
show up wearing a t-shirt that says "WWJD: What Would
Jesus Do?", or for reading a bible during a lunch break?
Ignorance is dangerous, precisely because it is so easy to
exploit.
Regardless of how you feel about the validity of church/state
separation, it should be obvious that one cannot be both a
Supreme Court Justice and a proselytizing evangelist. Scalia
needs to choose one or the other as a public persona, and
hang the other in the closet. Judicial evangelism is the worst
kind of judicial activism. The ghosts of Sept. 11 should serve
as a constant reminder of the dangers of official religious
intolerance. If Scalia wishes to live under the boot of theocracy,
he should consider moving to Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the
19 al-Qaeda hijackers.
Patrick Ennis: Articulating the views of the secular, liberal,
Midwestern working class because, frankly, somebody has to
(and nobody else is).
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