Government Religious Displays and Substantive Neutrality

[Rick Duncan]

Art Spitzer wrote:

In a message dated 3/31/09 6:02:12 PM, laycockd at umich.edu writes:

Here's
one more way to think about it:  ... the rule that government must be
religiously neutral [is] a special protection for religion .... 
Government can not try either to coerce you or persuade you to change
your views about religion.  That ... is the greatest level of possible
protection.Yes, but it's an entirely hypothetical (and thus unimportant)
protection to those who are comfortably in the majority, and who
therefore can, without perceived risk to their own views, seek to get
the government to coerce or persuade others to change their
views.  Isn't that why so many local government officials would react
to Doug's excellent point with blank stares?  It just doesn't relate to
their world.



Art Spitzer

ACLU

It took me a couple of days to run down the reference, but I love the way Profs. Jeffries and Ryan describe the huge gap in the way cultural elites and ordinary folks think about the EC. Jeffries and Ryan observe that "the controversy over school prayer revealed a huge gap
between the cultural elite and the rest of America. People generally
may have supported school prayer and Bible reading, but the leadership
class did not." They also note that "elite support for the Supreme Court's secularization project was clearly visible in the activities of law professors and deans." See Jeffries & Ryan, A Political History of the establishment Clause, 100 MICH. L. REV. 279, 325 (2001).

I really enjoyed this thread. 

Cheers, Rick



      
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