Supremes Gut-Knife First Amendment Again

The worst part about this is that a decision that just 12 years ago would have been impossible to imagine is just another step on our repug-led march away from democracy and toward theocratic fascism.

Down with Tyranny:

Today Slow Anthony announced to an unexpecting world that Kristian prayers before local council meetings are A-OK -- because they're not Christian, they're just pieces of American culture. Okay, as comedy it's pretty lame -- like a joke recycled from Friends With Better Lives or Bad Teacher. But as jurisprudence, well, it sucks hellaciously, but then, the Roberts Court, like the late-era Rehnquist Court before it, sets impossibly low standards for jurisprudence.

The issue before the Court in Town of Greece v. Galloway was the practice by the town council of Greece, NY (near Syracuse), of beginning meetings with avowedly and almost exclusively Christian prayers. Two local non-Christian residents objected and sued; the town was upheld at the town level but then overturned by a panel of the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which is now overturned by the High-ish Court.

SNIP

The most comical aspect of Slow Anthony's legal-comedy routine is this business of Christian prayers being jake because they're part of the culture -- just ceremonial, after all, but fine because the people are mostly Christians anyway. Any chance that this "ceremonial" nonsense might be taken seriously by right-wingers dancing in the streets today is given the lie by this comment reported by the AP's Sherman: "Senior counsel David Cortman of the Alliance Defense Freedom, which represented the town, applauded the court for affirming 'that Americans are free to pray.' " Of course neither Davy C nor any of the other Americans for Religious Imposition is likely to be able to cite a single instance in which any Christian ever suffered so much as the feeblest effort to impinge on his/her right to pray. Perhaps because American Kristians are konstitutionally liars and thugs as well as fascists, they equate "the right to pray" with "the right to force their prayers on any-goddamaned-body they fucking feel like."

 You know the old saying: "Give the Krap Kristians an inch, and they'll stomp all over you for a mile."