didsantorumsay:

He did not. :(

exposingthetruths:

As much as we want to say this nation accepts all religions, let’s face it - that isn’t the truth. Christian holidays such as Christmas are recognized nationally, but since when did the entire nation get a day off from work for a Muslim holiday such as Eid-Al-Fitr?

Always scarily relevant.

letterstomycountry:

You’d think so, but not according to a District Court Judge in Pennsylvania:

There is a surprising story out of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania that seems the perfect storm of religious tensions. You begin with Ernie Perce, an atheist who marched as a zombie Mohammad in the Mechanicsburg Halloween parade. Then you add Talaag Elbayomy, a Muslim who stepped off a curb and reportedly attacked Perce for insulting the Prophet. Then you have a judge (Judge Mark Martin) who threw out the criminal charges against Elbayomy and ridiculed the victim, Perce.

There’s video of the attack at the link above.  Jon Turley was kind enough to provide a transcript of some of the Judge’s remarks, which, while admirable in terms of its purported respect for the Muslim culture, is nonetheless an abjectly grotesque butchering of the jurisprudence and history of the First Amendment:

In many other Muslim-speaking countries, err, excuse me, many Arabic-speaking countries, predominantly Muslim, something like this is definitely against the law there, in their society. In fact, it could be punished by death, and frequently is, in their society.

Here in our society, we have a Constitution that gives us many rights, specifically First Amendment rights. It’s unfortunate that some people use the First Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don’t think that’s what our forefathers intended. I think our forefathers intended to use the First Amendment so we can speak with our mind, not to piss off other people and cultures – which is what you did.

I don’t know how else to grapple with this other than to simply point out that the judge got the law blatantly and utterly wrong.  Here is Justice Brennan writing for the majority in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989):

A principal function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.

Jon Turley, who represented Dr. Ali Al-Timimi when he was charged with inciting violence against the government, is on the same page:

I fail to see the relevance of the victim’s attitude toward Muslims or religion generally. He had a protected right to walk in the parade and not be assaulted for his views. While the judge laments that “[i]t’s unfortunate that some people use the First Amendment to deliberately provoke others,” that is precisely what the Framers had in mind if Thomas Paine is any measure.

There is absolutely no affirmative defense to the crime of assault that involves invoking your First Amendment right to religion.  Your religious beliefs cannot and will not ever justify physically attacking someone on the grounds that the content of their speech is deeply offensive to you.  This is a concept so deeply ingrained in our legal history that even the most egregious offenses against a 3rd party’s morals and/or conscience cannot be made to justify a violent response.  

Hence the reason why the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church when they were sued for protesting at the funeral of a dead American soldier, despite the fact that it was unquestionably offensive to the friends and family of the deceased, and many of them would’ve probably liked to punch the WBC protesters in the face.  And hence the reason why the Court held in Texas v. Johnson that your right to burn an American flag is constitutionally protected speech, despite the fact that it unquestionably deeply offends people who believe with conviction that the flag represents a body of morals, ideals and beliefs that are worth dying for; that it is not just “another symbol,” and that it is the closest thing to a sacred symbol one can find in American civic culture; to the point where an offended person would undoubtedly have violent designs if you sullied its visage in their presence.

What bothers me most about this case is that it will inevitably be misconstrued by good-faith advocates for the Muslim community and Islamophobes alike.  There will be those in the former camp who will probably sympathize with the man who attacked the protester, and blame the protester for purposefully inciting the passion of devout Muslims.  The latter will undoubtedly use the judge’s ill-advised diatribe and the violent act of the Muslim attacker as evidence that Islamic values are in fact incompatible with American society, and will use this incident as yet another anecdote to justify the imposition of intolerable discrimination and cruelties against the broader Muslim community (such as the Park 51 controversy).  

And therein lies the issue: allowing this sort of violence to stand makes it more difficult to soothe the American body-politic’s trenchant Islamophobia by sending a dubious message: the law will not protect you if you say or do something that is offensive to a devout Muslim.  That is the wrong message to send if we are trying to get people to eschew their parochial fear of Islamic culture and replace it with cosmopolitan cultural values.

That’s why it is so imperative that we apply the law equally in cases like this.  The line is simple and clearly drawn: you don’t get to hit people for saying something that offends you.  It does not matter that your offense comes from deeply and sincerely held religious convictions, or strong secular ideological prescriptions.  You don’t get to use violence to vindicate your offended conscience.  It cannot be gainsaid that we would not likely tolerate this from a member of a different faith. We most certainly would not tolerate it if the attacker was an Agnostic or Atheist vindicating a strongly-held secular moral prescription.  Why then, permit of an exception for Muslims?  Does it not show a deep condescension to the innate morality of Muslim believers that they can’t be expected to restrain themselves from violence if their convictions are impugned?

Protecting the rights of Muslim Americans, and destroying the shibboleths of Islamophobia in America means we must reject the invitation to make exceptions for those who would use faith as an excuse to do violence to others.  We are constantly fighting against a politics which asserts: “All Muslims are like this.”  No, they clearly aren’t.  But if the law assumes that they are, then the struggle to achieve social equality and respect for Muslim Americans is already lost.  Permitting of such exceptions is both absurd and dangerous, and we should reject the invitation to carve out any exception in the law that leads us inexorably down that path.

thepoliticalpartygirl:

Where’s my religious freedom?

liberalsarecool:

Churches have values, not laws. Don’t hide behind a faith in order to control or discriminate someone else.

but baby jeebus’ crys :’(

Religion of peace

word

eximago:

I’ve grown really tired of seeing the argument that most of the school wanted to keep the prayer, so it should have stayed.

This isn’t about a majority. This is about what the Constitution says.

When we’re talking about civil liberties, the majority is the last group you should ask.

This sums it all up quite nicely

ivjetsz:

“Religion Is Slavery, Jesus Is Freedom.”

         -IV Jetsz

Believing in any god automatically makes you part of a religion, by the definition of religion. Jesus is no exemption, and neither is Christianity. 

eximago:

howimetyourpadre:

msnbc:

NYT: 

CRANSTON, R.I. — She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

Image: Gretchen Ertl / The New York Times

People like her annoy the shit out of me. They weren’t forcing her to pray, she didn’t even have to acknowlege it was there but she goes and gets her panties up her ass and ruins a school tradition and takes away something that the people it was directed to found comfort and solace in. Same with the people who want to take “in god we trust” off the money, leave it alone, no ones forcing you to look at it. Leave it alone, I am so sick of hearing about stupid lawsuits like this. 

Heavy sigh…

As Jessica has stated, anyone who goes to that school and has to see that prayer everyday and isn’t a Christian gets to see that her school is a Christian one. The administration are Christians. Her fellow students are Christians. They get to see the prayer and be reminded constantly that they’re not the same as the rest of the school and that they’re ideas, beliefs, and passions aren’t welcome there— they’re not welcome there. It is her school too. A public school. That is, a school that’s funded by the government. By tax payers. The school broke the law when it put it up 49 years ago, and the “tradition” should never have started. It’s unconstitutional to have the prayer up which is exactly why she won the case.

Public schools are not the places for religious ritual in any form. If those kids who are heartbroken to see a prayer go, then they can go to a religious private school that doesn’t use tax payer dollars and have all the prayer they want.

nonplussedbyreligion:

Whose liberty, exactly?

icantbelieveitsalawblog:

NPR has a piece on the alleged infringement on religious liberty embodied in the Obama administration’s policies on issues like contraception and LGBT rights:

[Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative law group, Liberty Counsel] says as rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make gains, religious conservatives are having to set aside their convictions. A Christian counselor was penalized for refusing to advise gay couples. A court clerk in New York was told to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite religious reservations. A wedding photographer was sued for refusing to shoot a same-sex wedding. Staver says these people aren’t trying to impose their religious views on others.

“What people of faith don’t want to do, however, is be forced to participate in something that literally cuts to the very core of their belief.”

[Rob Boston at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State] says of course religious believers want to impose their views on the world — witness the fight against same-sex marriage. But he says under the law, people can’t discriminate based on their religious beliefs, any more than a restaurant owner can cite the Bible in refusing to serve black customers. He says the solution is simple.

“If you don’t want to serve the public, don’t open a business saying you will serve the public.”

What’s happened in the past decade, [Douglas Laycock, a constitutional lawyer who argues cases on behalf of religious groups,] says, is that the culture wars have become a zero sum game. When one side wins, the other loses.

“The conservative religious groups want to take away all the liberty of the pro-choice and gay-rights people, and the pro-choice and gay-rights people want to take away all the liberty of the conservative religious groups,” he says. “Neither side seems interested in the American tradition of ‘live and let live’ and protect the liberty of both sides.”

And Laycock sees little chance of a detente, particularly in an election year.

READ MORE…

Here’s the thing: anyone who really believes this could be a simple matter of “live and let live” is either an idiot, a liar, or both.

What are the supposedly conflicting values here? If a religious person, whose job is to provide services to the public, is forced to help a gay person or distribute birth control, they have a crisis of conscience but can otherwise go about their day.

If they can practice their purportedly deeply-held religious convictions, then what happens? A gay couple cannot get legally married. An adult cannot obtain birth control. A pregnant person cannot obtain entirely-legal emergency contraception. This is a bit more than a crisis of conscience, so don’t give me any crap about the two somehow being equivalent.

On one side, we have people trying to live their lives.

On the other side, we have people claiming the “religious liberty” to interfere with those people’s lives. They are free to believe whatever b.s. they want, but if they want to claim that their religion prohibits them from doing their jobs in ways that harm other people, maybe they are in the wrong line of work.

Others’ rights should not be harmed so that you can successfully practice discrimination, whether or not a magical being in the sky told you to.