Nativity Scene Controversy in Central Texas

[Norstal]

We got rid of DADT and Obama is working on removing DOMA. Shows that our fight for a secular America is winning, so why stop there?

This isn't prevent people of different sexual orientation or religious background from doing anything, it is just the work of some loons who want people to start something up so we can end the year with the usual bullshit, and it is just an statuette, a statuette of religious significance, but just a statuette all the same.

The size of the offensive object does not matter. It could be a cross and it still needs to be removed from public property. And if they are trying to violate the constitution, you're seriously saying that we should let them?

Now, if the judge makes ruling based upon their religious conviction, then we have something there, we can send them packing away, and give them their figurines to play with as they look for another job, but, as it is, it doesn't interfere with my right to religion, nor yours.

Your "right to religion"? Excuse me? Your "right"?

What makes this an issue of your "right to religion"? It's a symbol endorsing religion in a public property and it seems like you're supporting the fundamentalists you mentioned earlier.

[The Godly Nations]

Pointless Heckles. That's why. They want to be persecuted, and if we play into them, they will do it again and again, until we will never hear the end of it. If we just let the Jesus-folk stick up a little statue of some chick and her kid, and ignore them, they will eventually stop because they will realise that no body fucking cares, and turn their attention to other heckle raising activities.

Or we could just, you know, point out the fact they are not being persecuted, and would likely be doing the persecuting if given the opportunity. Fundamentalists from every religion are the ones trying to cram their narrowly-defined "morals" down everyone's throat, while claiming everyone who doesn't toe the line will suffer eternal torment. Instead of ignoring them and hoping the problem goes away, why not call them out on their hypocrisy?

I tried talking to a religious nutjob once- one of those who think that the Jesuits are a nefarious conspiracy aimed at evil, and thinks that Christianity is under attack at every moment, the problem is, they don't listen.

[Lackadaisical2]

And you guys wonder why we trust rapists more.

[Norstal]

They aren't out to repress yet, it doesn't affect anyone's right, as far as I know, and it is just a giant waste of money to raise heckles- when they cross the border and make comments like: "He's guilty cuz he's a godless atheist", or allow their religious conviction to influence their ruling, then we can send them packing, but, as of now, they aren't persecuting anyone yet, they are trying to get people to persecute them so they can say something along the lines of "They are attacking Jesus now".

So we have to wait till that happens?

[Occupied Deutschland]

From the perspective of it being unconstitutional.

It could be argued on two grounds. First, the Constitution does not require a separation or exclusion of religion.

Yes it does.

No, it requires that government not make any law respecting the establishment of religion. IE: not pick an official religion or only allow one specific one to be practiced or espoused on public grounds.

[Hittanryan]

I tried talking to a religious nutjob once- one of those who think that the Jesuits are a nefarious conspiracy aimed at evil, and thinks that Christianity is under attack at every moment, the problem is, they don't listen.

Maybe that means they aren't just trolling. If they really believe that they need to "take a stand" to turn the US into a "Christian nation," then aren't we justified in opposing them, especially considering the law of the land is on secularism's side?

[The Godly Nations]

This isn't prevent people of different sexual orientation or religious background from doing anything, it is just the work of some loons who want people to start something up so we can end the year with the usual bullshit, and it is just an statuette, a statuette of religious significance, but just a statuette all the same.

The size of the offensive object does not matter. It could be a cross and it still needs to be removed from public property. And if they are trying to violate the constitution, you're seriously saying that we should let them?

Now, if the judge makes ruling based upon their religious conviction, then we have something there, we can send them packing away, and give them their figurines to play with as they look for another job, but, as it is, it doesn't interfere with my right to religion, nor yours.

Your "right to religion"? Excuse me? Your "right"?

What makes this an issue of your "right to religion"? It's a symbol endorsing religion in a public property and it seems like you're supporting the fundamentalists you mentioned earlier.

1. Religious objects are always abound in public area- they stick booklets and light candles with saints to leave in the street, and leave devotional objects around oddly shaped piss-stains. We can't go about removing all those, can we? Beside, if it doesn't effect my right to worship, the Jew's right to worship, the Christian's right to worship, the Mahometan's right, the Buddhist's right, the Atheist's right not to worship, etc., why should we bring up another pointless argument over some statues?

2. Our rights. Everyone's right. It is just a symbol stating the religion of the judges, not endorsing it. When they let their convictions affect the way they rule, regardless of law, we can have them out and packing. I don't support them, but I would rather combat them over more serious issues, like their various attempts to foist a theocracy, or their wildly biased rulings, than over some figurines of some dead Middle Eastern Folks that, given they would probably arrest on account of "Suspicion of Terrorism".

[The Godly Nations]

They aren't out to repress yet, it doesn't affect anyone's right, as far as I know, and it is just a giant waste of money to raise heckles- when they cross the border and make comments like: "He's guilty cuz he's a godless atheist", or allow their religious conviction to influence their ruling, then we can send them packing, but, as of now, they aren't persecuting anyone yet, they are trying to get people to persecute them so they can say something along the lines of "They are attacking Jesus now".

So we have to wait till that happens?

In America, we judge people based on what they have done, not what they have the potential of doing, even if its a very high potential. There is the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, that separates us from China.

[Norstal]

1. Religious objects are always abound in public area- they stick booklets and light candles with saints to leave in the street, and leave devotional objects around oddly shaped piss-stains. We can't go about removing all those, can we? Beside, if it doesn't effect my right to worship, the Jew's right to worship, the Christian's right to worship, the Mahometan's right, the Buddhist's right, the Atheist's right not to worship, etc., why should we bring up another pointless argument over some statues?

2. Our rights. Everyone's right. It is just a symbol stating the religion of the judges, not endorsing it. When they let their convictions affect the way they rule, regardless of law, we can have them out and packing. I don't support them, but I would rather combat them over more serious issues, like their various attempts to foist a theocracy, or their wildly biased rulings, than over some figurines of some dead Middle Eastern Folks that, given they would probably arrest on account of "Suspicion of Terrorism".

Well alright, I do think we have better things to do. But do you support the atheists erecting a banner that supports their view?

[The Godly Nations]

1. Religious objects are always abound in public area- they stick booklets and light candles with saints to leave in the street, and leave devotional objects around oddly shaped piss-stains. We can't go about removing all those, can we? Beside, if it doesn't effect my right to worship, the Jew's right to worship, the Christian's right to worship, the Mahometan's right, the Buddhist's right, the Atheist's right not to worship, etc., why should we bring up another pointless argument over some statues?

2. Our rights. Everyone's right. It is just a symbol stating the religion of the judges, not endorsing it. When they let their convictions affect the way they rule, regardless of law, we can have them out and packing. I don't support them, but I would rather combat them over more serious issues, like their various attempts to foist a theocracy, or their wildly biased rulings, than over some figurines of some dead Middle Eastern Folks that, given they would probably arrest on account of "Suspicion of Terrorism".

Well alright, I do think we have better things to do. But do you support the atheists erecting a banner that supports their view?

It's freedom of speech, why shouldn't I support it?

[The Godly Nations]

I tried talking to a religious nutjob once- one of those who think that the Jesuits are a nefarious conspiracy aimed at evil, and thinks that Christianity is under attack at every moment, the problem is, they don't listen.

Maybe that means they aren't just trolling. If they really believe that they need to "take a stand" to turn the US into a "Christian nation," then aren't we justified in opposing them, especially considering the law of the land is on secularism's side?

As I said, innocent until proven guilty.

[Dyakovo]

Yes it does.

No, it requires that government not make any law respecting the establishment of religion. IE: not pick an official religion or only allow one specific one to be practiced or espoused on public grounds.

Guess again...

Jefferson's concept of "separation of church and state" first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878).[40] In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, "The word 'religion' is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning, and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted." The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the "separation" paragraph from Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, "coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured."
The centrality of the "separation" concept to the Religion Clauses of the Constitution was made explicit in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a case dealing with a New Jersey law that allowed government funds to pay for transportation of students to both public and Catholic schools. This was the first case in which the court applied the Establishment Clause to the laws of a state, having interpreted the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the Bill of Rights to the states as well as the federal legislature. Citing Jefferson, the court concluded that "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
While the decision (with four dissents) ultimately upheld the state law allowing the funding of transportation of students to religious schools, the majority opinion (by Justice Hugo Black) and the dissenting opinions (by Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge and Justice Robert H. Jackson) each explicitly stated that the Constitution has erected a "wall between church and state" or a "separation of Church from State": their disagreement was limited to whether this case of state funding of transportation to religious schools breached that wall. Rutledge, on behalf of the four dissenting justices, took the position that the majority had indeed permitted a violation of the wall of separation in this case: "Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state by Virginia's great statute of religious freedom and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the states by the Fourteenth." Writing separately, Justice Jackson argued that "[T]here are no good grounds upon which to support the present legislation. In fact, the undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters."
In 1962, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of officially-sponsored prayer or religious recitations in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), the Court, by a vote of 6-1, determined it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools, even when the prayer is non-denominational and students may excuse themselves from participation. (The prayer required by the New York State Board of Regents prior to the Court's decision consisted of: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.") As the Court stated:
The petitioners contend, among other things, that the state laws requiring or permitting use of the Regents' prayer must be struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause because that prayer was composed by governmental officials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs. For this reason, petitioners argue, the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State. We agree with that contention, since we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that, in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.
The court noted that it "is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America."[41] The lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart, objected to the court's embrace of the "wall of separation" metaphor: "I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the "wall of separation," a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution."
In Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), the Supreme Court considered an Arkansas law that made it a crime "to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals," or "to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches" this theory in any school or university that received public funds. The court's opinion, written by Justice Abe Fortas, ruled that the Arkansas law violated "the constitutional prohibition of state laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The overriding fact is that Arkansas' law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine; that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group." The court held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the state from advancing any religion, and that "[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them." [42]
In Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), the court determined that a Pennsylvania state policy of reimbursing the salaries of teachers of secular subjects in religious schools or the costs of secular instructional materials in religious schools violated the Establishment Clause. The court's decision argued that the separation of church and state could never be absolute: "Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable," the court wrote. "Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship."
Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the "Lemon Test". First, the law or policy must have been adopted with a neutral or non-religious purpose. Second, the principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute or policy must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of government with religion.[43] (The decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman hinged upon the conclusion that the government benefits were flowing disproportionately to Catholic schools, and that Catholic schools were an integral component of the Catholic Church's religious mission, thus the policy involved the state in an "excessive entanglement" with religion.) Failure to meet any of these criteria is a proof that the statute or policy in question violates the Establishment Clause.
In 2002, a three judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in a California public school was unconstitutional, even when students were not compelled to recite it, due to the inclusion of the phrase "under God." In reaction to the case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, both houses of Congress passed measures reaffirming their support for the pledge, and condemning the panel's ruling.[44] The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case was ultimately overturned in June 2004, solely on procedural grounds not related to the substantive constitutional issue. Rather, a five-justice majority held that Newdow, a non-custodial parent suing on behalf of his daughter, lacked standing to sue.
When the Louisiana state legislature passed a law requiring public school biology teachers to give Creationism and Evolution equal time in the classroom, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it was intended to advance a particular religion, and did not serve the secular purpose of improved scientific education.[45] (See also: Creation and evolution in public education)
The display of the Ten Commandments as part of courthouse displays was considered in a group of cases decided in summer of 2005, including McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky and Van Orden v. Perry. While parties on both sides hoped for a reformulation or clarification of the Lemon test, the two rulings ended with narrow 5-4 and opposing decisions, with Justice Stephen Breyer the swing vote.
On December 20, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in the case of ACLU v. Mercer County that the continued display of the Ten Commandments as part of a larger display on American legal traditions in a Kentucky courthouse was allowed, because the purpose of the display (educating the public on American legal traditions) was secular in nature.[46] In ruling on the Mount Soledad cross controversy on May 3, 2006, however, a federal judge ruled that the cross on public property on Mount Soledad must be removed.[47]

[Dyakovo]

The size of the offensive object does not matter. It could be a cross and it still needs to be removed from public property. And if they are trying to violate the constitution, you're seriously saying that we should let them?


Your "right to religion"? Excuse me? Your "right"?

What makes this an issue of your "right to religion"? It's a symbol endorsing religion in a public property and it seems like you're supporting the fundamentalists you mentioned earlier.

1. Religious objects are always abound in public area- they stick booklets and light candles with saints to leave in the street, and leave devotional objects around oddly shaped piss-stains. We can't go about removing all those, can we? Beside, if it doesn't effect my right to worship, the Jew's right to worship, the Christian's right to worship, the Mahometan's right, the Buddhist's right, the Atheist's right not to worship, etc., why should we bring up another pointless argument over some statues?

In context "public areas" obviously refers to government property.

[Tmutarakhan]

Maybe that means they aren't just trolling. If they really believe that they need to "take a stand" to turn the US into a "Christian nation," then aren't we justified in opposing them, especially considering the law of the land is on secularism's side?

As I said, innocent until proven guilty.

That principle only applies when we are talking about the possibility of putting someone in prison. It is not the appropriate burden of proof here.

[The Godly Nations]

1. Religious objects are always abound in public area- they stick booklets and light candles with saints to leave in the street, and leave devotional objects around oddly shaped piss-stains. We can't go about removing all those, can we? Beside, if it doesn't effect my right to worship, the Jew's right to worship, the Christian's right to worship, the Mahometan's right, the Buddhist's right, the Atheist's right not to worship, etc., why should we bring up another pointless argument over some statues?

In context "public areas" obviously refers to government property.

Well, if you haven't noticed, the streets are 'Government Property'. Or have they managed to privatise that as well?

[The Godly Nations]

As I said, innocent until proven guilty.

That principle only applies when we are talking about the possibility of putting someone in prison. It is not the appropriate burden of proof here.

What is the appropriate burden of proof in this situation? Certainly not a potential, the trial must proceed the crime and, once tried, shall only be guilty if proven guilty.

[Tmutarakhan]

That principle only applies when we are talking about the possibility of putting someone in prison. It is not the appropriate burden of proof here.

What is the appropriate burden of proof in this situation? Certainly not a potential, the trial must proceed the crime and, once tried, shall only be guilty if proven guilty.

There is no "crime" here nor a "guilty" verdict: those are technical terms of the law which you are using in a wildly inappropriate way. The Supreme Court set the burden of proof as: the state needs to demonstrate that its actions are serving a secular purpose, and do not involve excessive entanglement with religion.

[Occupied Deutschland]

No, it requires that government not make any law respecting the establishment of religion. IE: not pick an official religion or only allow one specific one to be practiced or espoused on public grounds.

Guess again...

Jefferson's concept of "separation of church and state" first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878).[40] In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, "The word 'religion' is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning, and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted." The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the "separation" paragraph from Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, "coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured."
The centrality of the "separation" concept to the Religion Clauses of the Constitution was made explicit in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a case dealing with a New Jersey law that allowed government funds to pay for transportation of students to both public and Catholic schools. This was the first case in which the court applied the Establishment Clause to the laws of a state, having interpreted the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the Bill of Rights to the states as well as the federal legislature. Citing Jefferson, the court concluded that "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
While the decision (with four dissents) ultimately upheld the state law allowing the funding of transportation of students to religious schools, the majority opinion (by Justice Hugo Black) and the dissenting opinions (by Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge and Justice Robert H. Jackson) each explicitly stated that the Constitution has erected a "wall between church and state" or a "separation of Church from State": their disagreement was limited to whether this case of state funding of transportation to religious schools breached that wall. Rutledge, on behalf of the four dissenting justices, took the position that the majority had indeed permitted a violation of the wall of separation in this case: "Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state by Virginia's great statute of religious freedom and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the states by the Fourteenth." Writing separately, Justice Jackson argued that "[T]here are no good grounds upon which to support the present legislation. In fact, the undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters."
In 1962, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of officially-sponsored prayer or religious recitations in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), the Court, by a vote of 6-1, determined it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools, even when the prayer is non-denominational and students may excuse themselves from participation. (The prayer required by the New York State Board of Regents prior to the Court's decision consisted of: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.") As the Court stated:
The petitioners contend, among other things, that the state laws requiring or permitting use of the Regents' prayer must be struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause because that prayer was composed by governmental officials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs. For this reason, petitioners argue, the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State. We agree with that contention, since we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that, in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.
The court noted that it "is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America."[41] The lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart, objected to the court's embrace of the "wall of separation" metaphor: "I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the "wall of separation," a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution."
In Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), the Supreme Court considered an Arkansas law that made it a crime "to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals," or "to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches" this theory in any school or university that received public funds. The court's opinion, written by Justice Abe Fortas, ruled that the Arkansas law violated "the constitutional prohibition of state laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The overriding fact is that Arkansas' law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine; that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group." The court held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the state from advancing any religion, and that "[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them." [42]
In Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), the court determined that a Pennsylvania state policy of reimbursing the salaries of teachers of secular subjects in religious schools or the costs of secular instructional materials in religious schools violated the Establishment Clause. The court's decision argued that the separation of church and state could never be absolute: "Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable," the court wrote. "Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship."
Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the "Lemon Test". First, the law or policy must have been adopted with a neutral or non-religious purpose. Second, the principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute or policy must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of government with religion.[43] (The decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman hinged upon the conclusion that the government benefits were flowing disproportionately to Catholic schools, and that Catholic schools were an integral component of the Catholic Church's religious mission, thus the policy involved the state in an "excessive entanglement" with religion.) Failure to meet any of these criteria is a proof that the statute or policy in question violates the Establishment Clause.
In 2002, a three judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in a California public school was unconstitutional, even when students were not compelled to recite it, due to the inclusion of the phrase "under God." In reaction to the case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, both houses of Congress passed measures reaffirming their support for the pledge, and condemning the panel's ruling.[44] The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case was ultimately overturned in June 2004, solely on procedural grounds not related to the substantive constitutional issue. Rather, a five-justice majority held that Newdow, a non-custodial parent suing on behalf of his daughter, lacked standing to sue.
When the Louisiana state legislature passed a law requiring public school biology teachers to give Creationism and Evolution equal time in the classroom, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it was intended to advance a particular religion, and did not serve the secular purpose of improved scientific education.[45] (See also: Creation and evolution in public education)
The display of the Ten Commandments as part of courthouse displays was considered in a group of cases decided in summer of 2005, including McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky and Van Orden v. Perry. While parties on both sides hoped for a reformulation or clarification of the Lemon test, the two rulings ended with narrow 5-4 and opposing decisions, with Justice Stephen Breyer the swing vote.
On December 20, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in the case of ACLU v. Mercer County that the continued display of the Ten Commandments as part of a larger display on American legal traditions in a Kentucky courthouse was allowed, because the purpose of the display (educating the public on American legal traditions) was secular in nature.[46] In ruling on the Mount Soledad cross controversy on May 3, 2006, however, a federal judge ruled that the cross on public property on Mount Soledad must be removed.[47]

[Ifreann]

Because it is unconstitutional.

We have Christmas trees everywhere, no one would think that that is a promotion of Heathen values. It is just an image, it does not promote any specific religion over another, it just says 'We, the judges of this court, are Christian, and we have this here Nativity Scene to show the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Trolololol'. We can either ignore it, and let the whole thing die down and celebrate this day, regardless of religion, and all symbols associated with this day, religious or not in nature, or we can go through another year of pointless debating and feed into these fundamentalist's persecution complex and encourage them to do the exact same fucking thing next year.

"They're just trolling" is a terrible, terrible reason to let people continue to violate the constitution.

[Risottia]

It is not, however, an ancient Texan tradition to put a nativity scene in front of a courthouse, which is the real issue, not nativity scenes in general. Private citizens are free to put up nativity scenes on private property, but not on government property.

Well, its still stupid.The local inhabitans want it there, and it is undemocratical to deny their right to do so.

Democracy isn't exactly just "whatever the majority wants".

[Risottia]

Please show one example where the "leftists" have run around the Constitution.

Din'cha know, they elected a foreigner as President to turn the US into a Nazisoviet M00zlem Dictatorship!!1111lll11!1|||!

[Risottia]

it just says 'We, the judges of this court, are Christian, and we have this here Nativity Scene to show the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Trolololol'. .

And why should they do it on public premises with public money?

[Eridanuus]

I dont care if people want to start displaying their religions, go for it. Just none of those stupid cults, you know the ones I mean..

[Risottia]

...
Guess again...

Jefferson's concept of "separation of church and state" first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878).[40] In that case, ...

Then again, Jefferson was a cryptocommie, we all know that.

[Ifreann]

I dont care if people want to start displaying their religions, go for it. Just none of those stupid cults, you know the ones I mean..

I trust you have a rigorous definition for "stupid cults" that would stand up in a court of law, yes?