Yoder, Religion and The Strain-ed Gnat

[JMHACLJ at aol.com]

"But if the clients aren't so articulate and the lawyer doesn't take the  
time, things like this get reduced to conclusions.? Same thing happens all the  
time on the issue of burden on religion -- burden is so obvious to the 
religious  claimants they just assert it, and don't prove it up to the satisfaction of 
a  more secular and skeptical court."

A client of mine was moved by his beliefs to stand along the Inaugural  
Parade route in Washington DC, during the second inaugural of Bill  Clinton.  The 
president had then recently vetoed a restriction on  near-birth infanticide 
(partial birth abortion).  His plan in standing  along the parade route was to 
rebuke the President for his sin of  injustice.  The effort on the part of 
Reverend Mahoney was part of a larger  "Project John the Baptist."  Within that 
project, as the occasions and  opportunities arise, he goes to public places and 
uses the right to demonstrate  as a means of speaking truth to power.
 
At the hearing on the emergency preliminary injunction motion, the late  
Harold Green, a federal judge that had become an American citizen after coming  to 
the US, questioned the reverend's claim that his religion compelled him to  
hold signs critical of the President on the parade route sidewalk during the  
inaugural.  He literally insisted that the religious imperative or  compulsion 
be phrased in such specific terms, that the reverend could not simply  depend 
on a religious belief that he should "call all men everywhere to repent"  or 
"speak truth to power."  Instead, God, in the judge's view, would have  to send 
along a link to Google maps, and a detailed timetable, if His hands and  feet 
here on earth would seek to enjoy the religious freedoms guaranteed by the  
law and Constitution.
 
How does that kind of petty insistence on finely detailed assertions  about 
religious belief aid the pursuit of justice or truth?
 
Jim "Yes God told me to stand on this sidewalk, holding this  sign, on this 
date, at this hour, and for this purpose" Henderson
Senior Counsel
The American Center for Law and Justice 



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