Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from the majority in McCreary, writing:
Ed Brayton writes (and I recommend you read it all) that Scalia is engaged in classic wingnut rhetoric when he claims that forbidding official recognition of religious symbolism is equivalent to banning religious expression in public squares. This is simply wrong: public streets, parks, universities, and even military installations are thick with religious speech. The point is a matter of equal access, restricting the power of the state to declare one more valid than another. Scalia makes a frightening step here when he says that the State has exactly that right.
Jack Balkin writes that when Scalia claims that it is unacceptable to "provide aid and support" to a religious cant, but it is okay to "acknowledge" a religious cant, he's claiming that one thing (money) is more (or perhaps, less) significant than another thing (official recognition), but even claiming that they're comparable acknowledges a continuum of "recognition" without an adequate bright line. Scalia is usually so fond of bright lines that he'll write a bad opinion as long as it provides mechanism. In this case, he's written a bad opinion that does not provide mechanism.
One has to wonder why.
With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation's historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.Do you feel safe in Antonin Scalia's America?
Ed Brayton writes (and I recommend you read it all) that Scalia is engaged in classic wingnut rhetoric when he claims that forbidding official recognition of religious symbolism is equivalent to banning religious expression in public squares. This is simply wrong: public streets, parks, universities, and even military installations are thick with religious speech. The point is a matter of equal access, restricting the power of the state to declare one more valid than another. Scalia makes a frightening step here when he says that the State has exactly that right.
Jack Balkin writes that when Scalia claims that it is unacceptable to "provide aid and support" to a religious cant, but it is okay to "acknowledge" a religious cant, he's claiming that one thing (money) is more (or perhaps, less) significant than another thing (official recognition), but even claiming that they're comparable acknowledges a continuum of "recognition" without an adequate bright line. Scalia is usually so fond of bright lines that he'll write a bad opinion as long as it provides mechanism. In this case, he's written a bad opinion that does not provide mechanism.
One has to wonder why.
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