{"id":92,"date":"2008-11-10T16:20:38","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T16:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/11\/religion-in-supreme-court-for.html"},"modified":"2008-11-10T16:20:38","modified_gmt":"2008-11-10T16:20:38","slug":"religion-in-supreme-court-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/11\/religion-in-supreme-court-for.html","title":{"rendered":"RELIGION IN SUPREME COURT FOR WRONG REASON"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pleasant Grove City, Utah, has a website<\/a>.  <\/span>It also has a park.  <\/span>In that park is a monument containing the Ten Commandments.  <\/span>Some years back, a religious group called Summum <\/a>asked to put up its own monument in the same park.  <\/span>Summum’s beliefs are encapsulated in what are called the “Seven Aphorisms.”  <\/span>The city rejected the offer.  <\/span>On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing all about this.  <\/span>My partner-in-blog Jay Sekulow will be arguing for the city.  <\/span>Over at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, we are arguing neither for the city or for Summum.  <\/span>We have told the court in a friend-of-the-court brief that this whole matter has been argued under the wrong legal framework from the start and that the Supreme Court should send it back for re-litigation.<\/font><\/p>\n

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor <\/a>of Summum on “free speech” grounds.  <\/span>Although I am sympathetic to Summum’s concerns that it seems one religion is clearly being favored over their own in Pleasant Grove City, I can’t buy into the specific legal argument they are using.<\/font><\/p>\n

This dispute is before the Supreme Court because the city did the wrong thing in 1971 by accepting the “gift” of a Decalogue display.  <\/span>The Ten Commandments had nothing to do with the establishment of the city any more than the Ten Commandments are the basis for the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the “Bill of Rights.”  <\/span>The commandments were and are theological statements, not legal norms for America.  <\/span>In fact, much of what is prohibited by the commandments is not the subject of laws in the United States.   <\/span>We don’t criminalize being bad to your parents, blasphemy, or coveting your neighbor’s SUV (or, these days, his Prius).  <\/span>Pleasant Grove City should have rejected the monument and suggested that the donor give it to (let’s get wild here) a church.  <\/span>They could then avoided showing governmental preference for some religions over others and not had to deal with the possibility of so many kinds of other religious groups seeking inclusion of their icons that you wouldn’t be able to find grass to sit on in the park.  <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the city made a mistake.  <\/span>If Summum wins under its “free speech” argument, we could see demands to erect even permanent displays promoting hate in parks throughout the nation.   <\/span>Think of Fred Phelps (whose website I will not link to).  <\/span>On the other hand, if some of the claims of the city prevail, we’ll see cities using all manner of excuses to justify inclusion of some religious messages and rejection of others.  <\/span>The best solution is for the Supreme Court to listen patiently tomorrow and then in a few weeks write a brief opinion that notes: “This case isn’t about freedom of speech; it is about whether religion is being promoted by a city in Utah.”  <\/span>They should then send the case back to the proper square one and instruct the lower court to ask the question that should have been asked all along: Does this violate the non-establishment principle of the First Amendment?<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pleasant Grove City, Utah, has a website.  It also has a park.  In that park is a monument containing the Ten Commandments.  Some years back, a religious group called Summum asked to put up its own monument in the same park.  Summum’s beliefs are encapsulated in what are called the “Seven Aphorisms.”  The city rejected the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-separation-of-church-and-state"],"yoast_head":"\nRELIGION IN SUPREME COURT FOR WRONG REASON - 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\/2008\/11\/religion-in-supreme-court-for.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"RELIGION IN SUPREME COURT FOR WRONG REASON - 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\/92","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=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}