The US Supreme Court. Now as loony as the rest of them.

[mistermack]

They have ruled that holding prayers before government meetings isn't religious. Dumb cunts. No wonder people laugh at America. It's not prejudice. we laugh at Iran too. But at least Iran REALISES that it is a religious state. The Supreme Court has ruled that black is white :

Dumb Cunts !

[Svartalf]

Indeed, the roberts court is dumb cunts, I've lost much of the respect I used to have for justice scalia.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

They have ruled that holding prayers before government meetings isn't religious.

Lol. Dafuque?

[JimC]

Theocracy, here we come...

[Warren Dew]

They have ruled that holding prayers before government meetings isn't religious. Dumb cunts. No wonder people laugh at America. It's not prejudice. we laugh at Iran too. But at least Iran REALISES that it is a religious state. The Supreme Court has ruled that black is white

That's not really an accurate description of their ruling. Rather, they've ruled that having prayers from a variety of religions just before a local government meeting does not constitute the government's establishing an official religion.

Except for one of them who ruled that the establishment clause doesn't apply to states at all, just to the federal government.

I disagree, but only mildly.

[Scott1328]

While I believe the court ruled incorrectly, the religious shouldn't view this as much of a victory. The court in effect equated prayer to being purely ritual. I guess on a par with patting a bald man's head before getting up to bat.

[FBM]

Even so, it's a religious ritual. Wtf is wrong with their minds?

[Seabass]

Theocracy, here we come...

But I thought the U.S. was a corporate oligarchy? Will you people make up your minds?! I'm so confused!

[JimC]

Theocracy, here we come...

But I thought the U.S. was a corporate oligarchy? Will you people make up your minds?! I'm so confused!

The corporate oligarchs set the agenda, the theocrats provide the opiate of the people...

win-win...

I know it will be argued that the constitutional prohibition is about governments not setting up particular state religions, and that prayers at state functions don't qualify as a breech of that.

However, I would bet that, aside from a very occasional token nod to judaic or islamic prayer, the vast majority of prayers at state functions are plain vanilla christian, which is tacit acceptance of a US christian hegemony.

[FBM]

Every other religion in the cunt-ry should band together and demand equal time. Just opening a formal session of anything would take all day.

[Hermit]

Even so, it's a religious ritual. Wtf is wrong with their minds?

The judges did not deny that prayer is a religious ritual. They just did not think it does not constitute the government's establishing an official religion. In the absence of a clause in the constitution that prohibits prayer in conjunction with gubernatorial functions they were correct. The result of this legalistic determination may be reprehensible to many (it is to me), but the sole proper role of judges is to make determinations in relation to existing laws. If they did anything else, they'd be acting in an extrajudicial manner by definition. Nothing is wrong with their minds, at least as far as this case is concerned. Something may be wrong with the laws as they stand, though, but that's quite a different issue.

[Warren Dew]

However, I would bet that, aside from a very occasional token nod to judaic or islamic prayer, the vast majority of prayers at state functions are plain vanilla christian, which is tacit acceptance of a US christian hegemony.

It's reasonable for the proportion of prayers to be roughly equal to proportion of population. It's not the government's job to change peoples' religion; if the U.S. is predominantly Christian, which it is, the government should accept it.

[JimC]

Even so, it's a religious ritual. Wtf is wrong with their minds?

The judges did not deny that prayer is a religious ritual. They just did not think it does not constitute the government's establishing an official religion. In the absence of a clause in the constitution that prohibits prayer in conjunction with gubernatorial functions they were correct. The result of this legalistic determination may be reprehensible to many (it is to me), but the sole proper role of judges is to make determinations in relation to existing laws. If they did anything else, they'd be acting in an extrajudicial manner by definition. Nothing is wrong with their minds, at least as far as this case is concerned. Something may be wrong with the laws as they stand, though, but that's quite a different issue.

If the prayers are overwhelmingly christian (which I bet they would be), then at least the prayers could be seen as favouring a particular religion, which surely goes against the intent of the constitution...

[FBM]

HuffPo's take on it is interesting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/0 ... 66930.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — A narrowly divided Supreme Court upheld decidedly Christian prayers at the start of local council meetings on Monday, declaring them in line with long national traditions though the country has grown more religiously diverse.

The content of the prayers is not significant as long as they do not denigrate non-Christians or try to win converts, the court said in a 5-4 decision backed by its conservative majority.

Though the decision split the court along ideological lines, the Obama administration backed the winning side, the town of Greece, N.Y., outside of Rochester.

The outcome relied heavily on a 1983 decision in which the court upheld an opening prayer in the Nebraska Legislature and said prayer is part of the nation's fabric, not a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion.

Writing for the court on Monday, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that forcing clergy to scrub the prayers of references to Jesus Christ and other sectarian religious figures would turn officials into censors. Instead, Kennedy said, the prayers should be seen as ceremonial and in keeping with the nation's traditions.

"The inclusion of a brief, ceremonial prayer as part of a larger exercise in civic recognition suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and the institutions they represent, rather than to exclude or coerce nonbelievers," Kennedy said.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court's four liberal justices, said, "I respectfully dissent from the court's opinion because I think the Town of Greece's prayer practices violate that norm of religious equality — the breathtakingly generous constitutional idea that our public institutions belong no less to the Buddhist or Hindu than to the Methodist or Episcopalian."

Kagan said the case differs significantly from the 1983 decision because "Greece's town meetings involve participation by ordinary citizens, and the invocations given — directly to those citizens — were predominantly sectarian in content."

Kennedy himself was the author of an opinion in 1992 that held that a Christian prayer delivered at a high school graduation did violate the Constitution. The justice said Monday there are differences between the two situations, including the age of the audience and the fact that attendees at the council meeting may step out of the room if they do not like the prayer.

In her dissent, Kagan said the council meeting prayers are unlike those said to open sessions of Congress and state legislatures, where the elected officials are the intended audience. In Greece, "the prayers there are directed squarely at the citizens," she said.

Kagan also noted what she described as the meetings' intimate setting, with 10 or so people sitting in front of the town's elected and top appointed officials. Children and teenagers are likely to be present, she said.

Kennedy and his four colleagues in the majority all are Catholic. They are: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Kagan was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Of the four, three are Jewish and Sotomayor is Catholic.

Senior counsel David Cortman of the Alliance Defense Freedom, which represented the town, applauded the court for affirming "that Americans are free to pray."

Ayesha Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the court disregarded the interests of religious minorities and nonbelievers. But Khan said she saw a "silver lining" in the outcome because the court rejected a more sweeping ruling that would have made it even harder to prove a violation of the Constitution.

A federal appeals court in New York had ruled that Greece violated the Constitution by opening nearly every meeting over an 11-year span with prayers that focused on Christianity.

From 1999 through 2007, and again from January 2009 through June 2010, every meeting was opened with a Christian-oriented invocation. In 2008, after residents Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens complained, four of 12 meetings were opened by non-Christians, including a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and the chairman of the local Baha'i congregation. Galloway and Stephens are described in their court filings as a Jew and an atheist.

A town employee each month selected clerics or lay people by using a local published guide of churches. The guide did not include non-Christian denominations, however. The appeals court found that religious institutions in the town of just under 100,000 people are primarily Christian, and even Galloway and Stephens testified they knew of no non-Christian places of worship there.

The two residents filed suit and a trial court ruled in the town's favor, finding that the town did not intentionally exclude non-Christians. It also said that the content of the prayer was not an issue because there was no desire to proselytize or demean other faiths.

But a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that even with the high court's 1983 ruling, the practice of having one Christian prayer after another amounted to the town's endorsement of Christianity.

Kennedy, however, said judges should not be involved in evaluating the content of prayer because that could lead to legislatures requiring "chaplains to redact the religious content from their message in order to make it acceptable for the public sphere."

He added, "Government may not mandate a civic religion that stifles any but the most generic reference to the sacred any more than it may prescribe a religious orthodoxy."

The case is Greece v. Galloway, 12-696.

[Svartalf]

Even so, it's a religious ritual. Wtf is wrong with their minds?

being right wing conservatives?