[Vision2020] Wall of separation argument leaps tall building in a single bound!

[Joan Opyr]

Let me get this straight: arguing that city council meetings should not 
officially begin with a Christian prayer is equivalent to a total ban 
on religious expression and this will ultimately lead to genocide?  Is 
this paranoia or just ridiculous hyperbole?  Our secular government 
should not begin secular meetings with officially-led, 
officially-sanctioned prayers to any deity, be that deity Yahweh, 
Jesus, Kali or Odin.  Insisting on a "wall of separation" between 
church and state protects both government and religion.  You think it's 
harmful to religion?  Have a look at those countries with official 
state religions -- let's start, since Sunil mentioned Episcopalians, 
with Great Britain.  Anglicanism is the official state religion.  How 
many British people attend services in the Anglican Church?  Last time 
I checked, it was about 4%.  The numbers for the Lutherans in 
Scandinavia are even worse.

I don't want to stop Kai, Pat, Donovan, or Roger from praying wherever 
and whenever they like.  Perhaps Donovan will stand up at the next 
Moscow City Council meeting on zoning issues or our big-box problem and 
use his five minutes of floor time to offer up an Ave Maria.  There's 
nothing whatsoever to stop him.  What can't happen is for Mayor 
Marshall Comstock to begin the city council meeting by leading us all 
in the Our Father, having first sensitively invited all non-Christians 
to wait out in the hallway.  Do you get the difference between these 
two scenarios?  The former is an example of the free exercise of 
religion; the latter is the attempted establishment of a 
government-sanctioned religion.  Yeah, it's government-sanctioned 
religion on a small scale, but it's unConstitutional and it is 
consequently verboten.

On a related note, it is not difference that leads to genocide; it's 
intolerance for difference.  It's demonizing those we identify as 
"other."  Who rocked the boat in Great Falls, SC?  A Wiccan woman.  
Want to guess how much fun her life is these days?  Care to guess how 
many times she's been invited to love Great Falls or leave it?  The U. 
S. Constitution is packed with deliberate checks on the will of the 
majority, checks designed to protect the rights of the minority.  If 
the majority rejects those checks (and, often, it clearly does), it 
expresses its anger and disdain by spending tax dollars attempting to 
shove religion or English-only laws or anti-immigrant legislation down 
the minority's throat.  Good thing, then, that we have an independent 
judiciary in place to check the will of the majority.  Not that this 
system always works (Priscilla Owen and William Pryor are likely to do 
untold damage to the wall of separation before their lifetime 
appointments to the federal bench end) but it's the best we've got.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.auntie-establishment.com