Religious freedom and nonpublic fora

[Sanford Levinson]

>Art Spitzer wrote:
>
><<  I think that's fine, because the government's interest in preserving a
>quiet,  dignified atmosphere in these limited places seems adequate to me.
>>>

To which Jim Henderson replies:
>
>Suppose that you are a Federalist, or a Southern sympathizer?  In those
>circumstances, the government's viewpoint, that these facilities should
>communicate an aura of hushed reverence, respect, devotion, might be seen as a
>directly viewpoint based regulation.
>
My deepest thanks to both of you, for no exchange more succinctly explains
why I have become enthralled by the whole issue of public monuments and how
they fit (or do not fit) standard theories of free speech, including,
especially, the notion of state "neutrality."  Art assumes that there is a
"we" within American society that truly agrees on the meaning of some
symbols (including persons).  Jim, on the other hand, addresses the fact
that we are, for better or worse, a fragmented, multicultural society that
cannot agree on the most basic symbology (if that is a word).  Consider,
e.g., the recent controversy over renaming the George Washington Elementary
School in New Orleans because, after all, he *was* a slaveholder.  In
essence, the state (always) wants to promote its own civil religion, whereas
others want to point out that the heroes selected by the state for "quiet,
dignified" veneration are in fact false gods who deserve to be traduced.

Sandy Levinson