{"id":170,"date":"2009-05-09T12:18:22","date_gmt":"2009-05-09T12:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/no-day-in-court-justice-denied.html"},"modified":"2009-05-09T12:18:22","modified_gmt":"2009-05-09T12:18:22","slug":"no-day-in-court-justice-denied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/no-day-in-court-justice-denied.html","title":{"rendered":"No Day In Court: Justice Denied"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, Jay, there will be a major battle about the Mojave National Preserve cross next term in the Supreme Court. In fact, it is really two battles in one.  The first is whether the plaintiff in this case is even able to get his complaint heard.  It has already become more difficult to obtain “standing” for people suing against infractions of their religious liberty–including not having to pay for other peoples’ religious activities–thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hein<\/u> <\/a>case a few years ago.  Now, you want to make it even more difficult.<\/p>\n

I think one reason the “Right” is so interested in not allowing people into the courtroom to plead their case is that when courts look at the merits, litigants so often win. They win because it becomes apparent from the evidence that the symbol in question is not some mere annoyance.  It is a blunt and apparent declaration of support by a government for the icon of a specific faith, almost invariably American’s statistically predominant religion, Christianity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nMy son recently took me on a hike in San Francisco in order to show me
\nthe Mount Davidson cross<\/a> which has been the subject of numerous lawsuits. 
\nOne walks from a pristine forest into a clearing where there is an
\nenormous one hundred foot cross. Since its sale to a private Armenian-American group, it is now defined as a memorial to the 1915 Armenian Massacre.  Not one in a hundred people who sees it, of course, remembers what it represents historically,  They know it is a symbol of the death and resurrection of Jesus.<\/p>\n

It is jarring; it is inappropriate; it
\nis offensive even to me–who finds the empty cross a significant and positive
\nsymbol. Its current owners may actually believe it serves to honor the dead. My theological view is that God is not “honored” by having the
\nnatural world disrupted by a monument like this one–or the one in the
\nMojave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, Jay, there will be a major battle about the Mojave National Preserve cross next term in the Supreme Court. In fact, it is really two battles in one.  The first is whether the plaintiff in this case is even able to get his complaint heard.  It has already become more difficult to obtain “standing”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,69],"tags":[71,144,51,67,145,388],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religious-displays","category-supreme-court","tag-mojave-national-preserve","tag-mount-davidson-cross","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-resurrection","tag-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nNo Day In Court: Justice Denied - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/no-day-in-court-justice-denied.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Day In Court: Justice Denied - Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yes, Jay, there will be a major battle about the Mojave National Preserve cross next term in the Supreme Court. In fact, it is really two battles in one.  The first is whether the plaintiff in this case is even able to get his complaint heard.  It has already become more difficult to obtain “standing”…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/no-day-in-court-justice-denied.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-09T12:18:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rev. Barry W. Lynn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"No Day In Court: Justice Denied - Lynn v. 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Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}