Well, imagine that. After 17 years of legal fighting and losing, religious conservatives and their vassals within the US Congress finally “won”. President Bush signed a law that allows the Federal government to acquire the Mt. Soledad cross.
Category: Courts
The US Supreme Court, more specifically Justice Anthony Kennedy, issued a stay of a lower federal court ruling that said the Mt. Soledad Easter Cross is unconstitutional and it needed to be removed from the city of San Diego’s property by August 2nd or the city would be fined $5,000 a day. The religious right and the pandering city officials who keep this case alive follow the same pattern the so-called Christians seem to follow – lying, name calling, character assassination, fraud, delays, and contempt of court.
In the past week, Michael Newdow, the man who lost his lawsuit against “under God” in the pledge of allegiance on a technicality, lost his lawsuit concerning the use of the words “In God We Trust” on US currency. The federal judge based his decision on a previous case from the early 1970’s that upheld the words on the currency. Using Aronow v. United States, the court ruled that the motto is a “secular motto” having only a spiritual, psychological and inspirational value.
Some friends of mine, including some atheists, think Newdow is wasting our time fighting over mere words.
I have another view and it has something to do with sports.
A judge in Iowa ruled that a program for inmates in the Newton Correctional Facility was a Bible-based prison program that violated the First Amendment’s freedom of religion clause by using state funds to promote Christianity to inmates.
Prison Fellowship Ministries was sued in 2003 by Americans United for Separation of Church and State led by Rev. Barry Lynn.
The judge ruled that the Iowa program advanced evangelical Christianity at the expense of other religions and the non-religious with special perks for inmate participants and it used state tax money to do it.
A federal judge last week gave the city of San Diego 90 days to remove the 29-foot-high Mt Soledad cross or face $5,000 a day in fines to enforce a rulling he made back in 1991. The Mayor and Pat Robertson don’t seem to get the fact that the city lost the battle and they now need to move the cross.
Coach Dave Daubenmire, former London, OH high school football coach and now National Director of Minutemen United and Founder of Pass the Salt Ministries, held a rally in Danbury, Connecticut Tuseday. “Standing on the 1st Amendment promise that ‘Congress shall make no law,’ we declare that Christians, and the Christian God will no longer be pushed back into the church. We believe, as the Founders did, in ‘the free exercise’ of our Faith, unhindered by the unconstitutional restrictions of government. It is our belief that no court decision in the history of America has had a greater impact on the moral condition of this nation than that issued by Justice Black in Everson case of 1947. For sixty years, the mouth of the church has been silenced, as we bought the lie that the church had no voice in the moral/political issues of our day.” – Coach Dave Daubenmire. It is not the first time that Daubenmire has tried to rewrite history. You only have to look at his bio on his ministry website.