A Nation "Under God"? Hardly

From ZNet:

Those in the religious majority claim to respect minority rights. But that's clearly not so. Their response to the recent federal district court ruling in Sacramento against the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance makes that obvious. It was the same bigoted reaction as they had last year to those who unsuccessfully urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold an appeals court ruling that the phrase is in conflict with the constitutionally-promised separation of church and state.

The Supreme Court refused to rule, on grounds that atheist Michael Newdow, who won the lower court ruling on behalf of his elementary school daughter, did not have legal standing to do so because he did not have legal custody of the child.

But Newdow, an attorney, returned to court this year as an advocate for two families who complained that their children are illegally forced to pledge allegiance to "one nation under God." District Judge Lawrence Karlton agreed that the words in the pledge violate the right of school children to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."

The response has been swift -- and predictable. Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said the district court decision is an example of "where judges do not protect us from having religion imposed upon us but rather declare war on religion."

Click here for the rest.

This reminds me of the whole prayer in school thing. That is, the issue is being misrepresented by religious zealots. I've heard many times throughout my life that the government has banned prayer in school. Not so. What was banned was school officials leading students in prayer, that is, officially mandated prayer, which makes sense because schools are government institutions, and the government is Constitutionally disallowed from forcing religion on citizens. But prayer itself was never banned. When I was teaching, I always enjoyed making it known that non-disruptive student prayer was completely welcome in my classroom. Why not? Kids have rights, too, don't they?

Same thing with the "under God" phrase. This lawsuit doesn't want to literally remove God from the pledge: rather, it seeks to establish that forcing students to verbally assert a belief in the Almighty is the same thing as making them pray. In other words, the pledge can stay the same; it's unConstitutional, however, to mandate recitation of it in schools. If the suit wins, kids could still say the pledge if they wish, but they wouldn't be compelled to do so.

Unless, of course, everybody decides to simply remove the phrase "under God." Then, there's no Constitutional problem. Heh.

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