A prayer covered with a tarp is a statement of atheist belief

A New York Times editorial, with my commentary:

EDITORIAL

A Brave Stand in Rhode Island

Published: January 31, 2012

Jessica Ahlquist, an 11th grader at Cranston High School West in Rhode Island, has endured verbal abuse because, as an atheist, she objected to the “School Prayer” that has been on the school’s auditorium wall since 1963.

Her friends, classmates, and neighbors endured legal abuse and have been denied their Constitutional right to free exercise of religion. A flawed and irrational federal court order based on transparent bigotry is also a denial of due process of law.

"Verbal abuse"-- free speech on the part of the justifiably angry citizens of Cranston-- is actually a legal right.

It is now covered with a tarp after Judge Ronald Lagueux of Federal District Court in Providence properlyruled last month that displaying it violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against “establishment of religion.”

A tarp covering a prayer is, in this Orwellian farce, the result of "enforcement" of the First Amendment, which is our charter of freedom.

The anger and hatred directed at Ms. Ahlquist — she was called “an evil little thing” on talk radio by a Cranston state representative — helps explain why the judge, responding to her brave lawsuit, did his duty under the Constitution and ordered immediate removal of the prayer, which begins “Our Heavenly Father” and concludes “Amen” and was visible throughout the auditorium.

The Times dissembles. "Our Heavenly Father" and "Amen" were virtually the only religious words on the mural (it also said "a prayer"). The other eighty or so words were exhortations to good citizenship. That fact alone complied with the second prong of the Lemon Test, which requires that an government act (which the mural is, marginally) not have an advancement of religion as its primary purpose.

The primary purpose of the mural was to encourage good citizenship, and the banal few religious words of the "prayer" obviously didn't advance religion in any meaningful way.

The judge's bigoted ruling obviously advances mandatory civic atheism, in a way only a federal court order can.

Dozens of speakers at school committee meetings agreed it is a Christian prayer. As Judge Lagueux wrote, “The guiding principle of Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been government neutrality,”

Bullshit. The Establishment clause nowhere states that "neutrality" is required, and no sane interpretation of the clause concludes that. Religious expression of a very un-neutral sort has characterized our civic discourse for two centuries. Our civic arena-- public buildings, national monuments, national cemeteries, military missions, and civic documents-- are saturated with religious expression that is not the least bit neutral.

No where does the Constitution require that American civic life be a Unitarian Church soiree.

and the prayer fails all tests of neutrality set by the Supreme Court.

The prayer is utterly banal. It is as neutral as it could be and still be a prayer.

It was “clearly religious in nature” when installed.

There is no Constitutional prohibition on installing a religious statement in a government building. If there were, no building on the National Mall would be open.

The prayer mural is much less "religious in nature" than Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which is etched in huge letters across the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

While the school committee’s 4-to-3 vote last March to keep it was based partly on its importance to the school’s “history and tradition,” “no amount” of either “can cure a constitutional infraction,” the judge wrote. 

It's not a Constitutional infraction. The judge's ruling-- a piece of raw anti-Christian bigotry that is a government act that has the primary purpose of inhibiting religion--  is a Constitutional infraction.

The judge's ruling should be covered with a tarp.

Recent meetings in Cranston about the prayer involved the kind of “excessive entanglement with religion” the court has warned against, with prayer backers reading from the Bible.

We have a right to do that. Basing a judicial ruling on our public expression of our religious belief is raw bigotry.

The meetings showed why what believers consider a harmless request to respect a prayer can feel like coercion to nonbelievers.

No one asked Jessica to "respect" the prayer mural. She was asked to ignore it, if she didn't like it.

There was no compulsion of any sort involved, until Jessica called the police.

As Ms. Ahlquist explained to The Times about her response to the prayer: “It seemed like it was saying, every time I saw it, ‘You don’t belong here.’ ”

Now the prayer mural is talking to Jessica.

The kindness, friendship and other values the prayer champions are universal, but a statement of religious belief has no place in a public high school auditorium.

"You don't belong here"-- a precis of the judge's opinion-- is a finger in the chest of Christians in the school and in the community. The ruling is mere bigotry, guised as a court ruling. It is a bald assertion of mandatory civic atheism, enforced by government power, a plainly unconstitutional violation of the rights of the people of Cranston, Rhode Island.

A tarp over a prayer, or a fresh empty spot on a wall, is a government-enforced "statement of religious belief".