National Day of Prayer Ruled Unconstitutional

[laconicsax]

I'm surprised that this hasn't been posted here yet:

It's not every day that the president of the United States gets enjoined — prohibited by judicial order from a certain action — but it happened on April 15, 2010.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb decided in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation http://ffrf.org/uploads/legal/SummaryJudgementGeitner.PDF">in a ruling that the federal law designating a National Day of Prayer and requiring a National Day of Prayer proclamation by the president violates the establishment clause of the Constitution's First Amendment.

In her ruling, Judge Crabb wrote: "The same law that prohibits the government from declaring a National Day of Prayer also prohibits it from declaring a National Day of Blasphemy."

The Foundation filed its groundbreaking suit in October 2008. Plaintiffs besides the Foundation are Anne Nicol Gaylor, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Dan Barker, Paul Gaylor, Phyllis Rose and Jill Dean, who are all Foundation officers or board members. Defendants are President Barack Obama and Robert Gibbs, his press secretary. Original defendants were President George Bush and Dana Perino, his press secretary at the time.

More at http://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-wins-national-day-of-prayer-case/

58 years overdue, but welcome.

[Duer 157099]

1. I think blasphemy is highly underrated

I wouldn't want a National Day of Blasphemy any more than I'd want a National Day of Prayer.

I think blasphemy should be practiced every day.

[SoCalNative]

2. Actually...

it has...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8155885

;)

[laconicsax]

3. I meant here in R/T

[struggle4progress]

4. I completely agree with the spirit of this ruling: I find such religious

posturing from office offensive. I'd prefer to see religious-sounding slogans removed from the coinage and the pledge, and I'd really like to get rid of garbage like "Office of Faith-Based Initiatives," which I think represents a genuine unconstitutional entanglement

But I doubt that this ruling has much force or that it will retain any power after any appeal. Proclaiming a National Day of Prayer is a rather trivial and empty gesture: the actual Federal costs associated with the proclamation are almost nil, and the Defendants on any appeal would, I think, be found to have no real material issue on which to stand. De minimus non curat lex is an old and venerable slogan, and the material issues here are de minimus

[laconicsax]

5. Proud to agree with you on this. n/t

[ChadwickHenryWard]

7. By that logic the ruling should stand.

The ruling has already been made. If it truly doesn't matter what the outcome is the appeal itself would be a waste of time. I don't know how that law works in that regard, but it would be pretty ironic if it dictated that the whole appeal had to go through simply because of what a waste of time it was. Other than that, I totally agree. Even if I was in favor of religious slogans and days of prayer, they have no place on our coins and other official trappings. I'm opposed to the pledge itself, but for unrelated reasons.

[struggle4progress]

8. I don't know how the issue will be pressed. I think Administration lawyers

are likely to tell the President that he should resist, as a matter of principle, efforts to regulate his conduct: here the conduct is largely symbolic and the argument might be that symbolic conduct does not really rise to a litigable issue. I wondered briefly is Congress had the power to instruct the President to proclaim certain days for various purposes, but I think perhaps they do: nevertheless, there is, of course, no question in my mind that, despite this being a law passed and signed, a President who opposed it would be on good solid ground to challenge it as an unwarranted intrusion of faith into government and would obviously have standing for the challenge -- but after many decades none has taken that position and I regard it unfortunately as a position no President is likely to take inn the near future, either, for purely political reasons

The de minimis argument against the ruling is that the particular issue here is one of such immateriality, that no court should bother with it, and there is a related argument that the issue is so entangled with purely political considerations that the judiciary should simply regard the whole thing as an immaterial political issue that is best left to the political realm. I'm no lawyer, but intuitively I expect the POV just sketched to prevail, though I suspect (without having read the ruling) that I might be happy enough to have the judge's order stand

[katandmoon]

6. Great news.

[DeSwiss]

9. K&R

- Now it the courts could move onto this "other" business:

[uberllama42]

10. National Day of Blasphemy? That sounds like a great idea!

I say we set one up for next year and have ourselves a time.

[onager]

11. Well, what a surprise!

The law setting the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer passed Congress in 1952 after an intensive campaign led by Rev. Billy Graham...

In 1952, religious leaders like Graham lobbied Congress heavily to pass the law.

Graham's culminating speech included this: "We have dropped our pilot, the Lord Jesus Christ, and are sailing blindly on without divine chart or compass, hoping somehow to find our desired haven. We have certain leaders who are rank materialists; they do not recognize God nor care for Him; they spend their time in one round of parties after another. The Capital City of our Nation can have a great spiritual awakening, thousands coming to Jesus Christ, but certain leaders have not lifted an eyebrow, nor raised a finger, nor showed the slightest bit of concern. Ladies and gentlemen, I warn you, if this state of affairs continues, the end of the course is national shipwreck and ruin."

What a load of pompous, self-aggrandizing crap from "the thinking man's Easter Bunny" (as Graham was aptly described by the conservative writer Garry Wills).

That bit about "a great spiritual awakening" clearly refers to Billy Grab'em's own revivals in D.C. And many of those "rank materialists" he blasts were funding him and giving him millions of $$$ in free publicity. The Hearst media empire, for one.

Whenever Graham's name is mentioned in here, usually a load of outraged posts go up insisting that Graham is (1) a registered Democrat and (2) the "class act" among Xian evangelists.

As to (1), he publicly endorsed G.W. Bush in the 2000 election. Well, of course the Supreme National Witch-Doctor can't actually endorse a political candidate. That would be grubby and materialistic.

But in a video - which you can still find on the Internets - Graham and his wife are onstage with Mr. and Mrs. $hrub. Graham coyly leaves no doubt about who he would like to endorse. And he calls $hrub "a fine young man," etc. etc. Sickening.

As to (2), IMO Graham has no more class than Jimmy Swaggart, Peter Popoff, or any other Jesus-shouter. Graham is and always has been a shameless power-whore.

Back in the Seventies, he stuck his nose so far up Richard Nixon's butt that it threatened the Graham Miracle Franchise when the Watergate shit hit the fan.

That's also a matter of public record, easily checked in any of the objective biographies of Graham.