"Our Nation's historical practices permits the disregard of polytheists and atheists."

[elfs]

Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from the majority in McCreary, writing:

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.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Hey, Scalia, you big dummy, our national practices permitted slavery until 1861. Segregation until Brown vs. Board.

Or maybe you're right, elfs. If this is 180 out from his usual M.O., one has to ask why. You and I have learned from long and painful experience that people don't change much without a real good reason.

Hmmmm.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Scalia has, again and again, argued that money is speech in the political arena. His rejection of McCain-Feingold was premised on the notion that giving money to political campaigns was a legitimate form of expression and therefore protected expression under the First Amendment.

Scalia here has said money is not speech, it's seperate, it's distinct, it cannot be correlated.

As a constitutional scholar, Scalia is a disaster.

[solarbird]

One of Scalia's very first opinions stated that it was okay to ban religious practices, no matter how egregious, as long as you didn't state outright that you were doing so. He was voting with the majority but writing a separate, individual paper away from the majority regarding an Oregon drug law that did not exempt religious use by Amerindian tribes. So no, none of this surprises me.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Do you feel safe in Antonin Scalia's America?

No. Are you leading the revolution? Can I sleep on your couch? Do you need the use of mine?

best,

Joel

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

The big picture is simple. Christianity is falling by the wayside (thank god!), and to revive it, the church hierarchy wants to require it through the government. Or, at the very least, get the imprimatur of government.

Heaven forbid that they should actually have to convince converts!

No one likes competition. Not farmers, not engineers, not corporations, no one. And yet, it is competition that demands that you do better today than you did yesterday, and yet better tomorrow, and results in the betterment of society as a whole. Which is why, of course, we resist competition at all times with all means at our disposal.

Fuck the churches, all of them. Let them change/improve to fit the modern world, and the new requirements of their flocks.

Or die.