SCOTUS Fails to Uphold the First Amendment

 The United States is a largely secular country that was founded on the ideal that government should be completely separated from any religious sect. The term “separation of church and state”—a quote from Thomas Jefferson—is the most common label for the freedom of religion guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the constitution.

The 1st Amendment establishes a double-edged separation of church and state; one side of this separation prevents religion from taking control over the government, while the other side prevents government from interfering with religious expression.

Yesterday the Supreme Court took what I consider to be a big step backwards--to quote Andy Borowitz, if only they protected the First Amendment as vigilantly as the Second Amendment. Not only uis Christian prayer permissable in public meetings, but the door is open for people of all faiths to offer a prayer--the wicca, the satan workshipper, the rasta, you name it.  I do not want to listen to any of them.  Let's just get to the business of government and save the religious stuff for our private lives. And Justice Alito, keep your snarky remarks to yourself. It makes you look petty.

To quote from Justice Kagan's dissent in the Greece vs. Galloway case:

In 1790, George Washington traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, a longtime bastion of religious liberty and the home of the first community of American Jews. Among the citizens he met there was Moses Seixas, one of that  congregation’s lay officials. The ensuing exchange be­tween the two conveys, as well as anything I know, the promise this country makes to members of every religion. 

Seixas wrote first, welcoming Washington to Newport.  He spoke of “a deep sense of gratitude” for the new Ameri­can Government—“a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine.” Address from Newport Hebrew Congregation (Aug. 17, 1790), in 6 PGW 286, n. 1 (M. Mastromarino ed.1996). The first phrase there is the more poetic: a gov­ernment that to “bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” But the second is actually the more star­tling and transformative: a government that, beyond not aiding persecution, grants “immunities of citizenship” to the Christian and the Jew alike, and makes them “equal parts” of the whole country.  Washington responded the very next day. Like any successful politician, he appreciated a great line when he saw one—and knew to borrow it too. And so he repeated, word for word, Seixas’s phrase about neither sanctioning bigotry nor assisting persecution. But he no less embraced the point Seixas had made about equality of citizenship.  “It is now no more,” Washington said, “that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people” to another, lesser one. For “[a]ll possess alike . . . immunities of citizenship.”  Letter to Newport Hebrew Congregation (Aug. 18, 1790), in 6 PGW 285. 

That is America’s promise in the First Amendment: full and equal membership in the polity for members of every religious group, assuming only that they, like anyone “who live[s] under [the Government’s] protection[,] should demean themselves as good citizens.” Ibid.  For me, that remarkable guarantee means at least this much: When the citizens of this country approach their government, they do so only as Americans, not as members of one faith or another. And that means that even in a partly legislative body, they should not confront government-sponsored worship that divides them along religious lines. I believe, for all the reasons I have given, that the Town of Greece betrayed that promise. I there­fore respectfully dissent from the Court’s decision.