Lamar W. Hankins : Alcoholics Anonymous, Nonbelievers, and the Constitution

Alcoholics Anonymous "praying hands" medallion. Image from Alternatives in Treatment.

Alcoholics Anonymous, nonbelievers, 
and the Constitution

AA proponents argue that the 'higher power' found in its steps can be whatever one wants it to be. Yet plainly religious practices go on at AA meetings, such as prayer, scripture-quoting, and the crediting of a supernatural 'higher power.'

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / August 1, 2013

Every day, courts throughout the country require people placed on probation for alcohol-related offenses to attend 12-step treatment programs. Often, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is specifically named as the program they must attend, and a probationer may be required to attend one AA meeting each day for 30 days or more.

This raises two important questions: 1) Is AA a religion-based program? 2) If so, does it violate the First Amendment rights of probationers to require attendance at AA meetings?

Since 1996, at least 12 federal district and appellate courts have found that AA is religion-based. Thus, mandatory attendance at AA meetings as a condition of probation (or parole) violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Of course, if there is a secular program that serves the same purpose as AA, attendance at that program can be made mandatory because no Establishment Clause problem affects secular programs. But no other alcohol recovery program of which I am aware provides as many meetings as does AA. With over 100,000 meetings worldwide and nearly 2 million members, all other programs are dwarfed by AA.

I do not oppose AA. Many of my friends, relatives, acquaintances, and clients benefit from AA. But I have also known people who find AA meetings that emphasize religion or religious practices unacceptable, preventing them from benefiting from the program.

Not all AA meetings are the same, though it is probably fair to say that most AA groups include religion in their meetings. Some people who reject religion are able occasionally to find a group that has a more secular approach that is not offensive to their core beliefs.

But every one of the 12 federal courts and one state court that I have found that has ruled for the record on this issue has held that AA is religious-based and that offenders cannot be constitutionally compelled to attend AA meetings.

There is irony in this situation. AA is widely acknowledged as founded by Bill Wilson (Bill W. in AA parlance) and Bob Smith, but others joined them in creating what is arguably the most successful self-help program to help alcoholics overcome (or at least manage) their problems with alcohol.

Bill W. wrote the first version of the 12 Steps that at least 10 people began using in 1938 to get and stay sober. But two members of the group, Jim Burwell and Hank Parkhurst, objected to the emphasis on faith, religion, and religious practice they encountered when they began to attend meetings.

Wilson reported in “The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions” that Burwell said in their first encounter, “I can’t stand this God stuff! It’s a lot of malarkey for weak folks. The group doesn’t need it and I won’t have it. To hell with it.”

Burwell could not accept the idea of Christian redemption that most of the group was preaching. When Burwell started to drink again a few months later, the members of the group turned against him and refused to help him again. After Burwell regained his sobriety and would not stop attending the meetings, the group once again accepted him in spite of his anti-religion attitude.

Wilson initially refused to change any of the ideas he had enunciated in “The 12 Steps,” which he wrote on a scratch pad in pencil in May 1938. But Burwell and Parkhurst would not go along with the use of the word God in the original draft. They represented 20% of the original group and Wilson did not want to lose them, so he relented.

As Susan Cheever, a columnist for The Fix recently explained:

Finally a compromise was reached, and four key changes in the document were agreed to. In Step Two, “a Power greater than ourselves” replaced “God.” In Steps Three and Eleven, the single word “God” was qualified by the addition of “as we understood Him.” “On our knees” was cut from Step Seven. And the sentence “Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a Program of Recovery” was added to introduce all the Steps; they were being offered as “suggestions” rather than imposed as “rules.”

It was Jimmy Burwell’s uncompromising stance against religion that initially forced Alcoholics Anonymous into the tolerant, open and welcoming group that has helped more than two million believers, agnostics and atheists. It was Burwell and Parkhurst who bridled at Bill’s original “God”-centered Step Three and pestered the group into the all inclusive revision, “God as we understood Him.” And it was Burwell whose “bad behavior” was the foundation of the Third Tradition in which the only requirement listed for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.

After at least 100 men were participating in AA, Wilson began dictating what became known as “The Big Book,” which was edited and revised by all who were then participating in the program. Burwell later became the unofficial archivist for AA, though his secular views never changed. Burwell retained his sobriety until his death at age 76 in 1974.

In 1941, Jack Alexander wrote an article about AA for the Saturday Evening Post, which established the program as what Cheever calls “a serious and effective option for alcoholic treatment.” Cheever summed up Wilson’s attitude toward Burwell and Parkhurst:

In “Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age,” Bill Wilson paid tribute to Burwell, Parkhurst and the changes they forced in AA’s principles: “This was the great contribution of our atheists and agnostics. They had widened our gateway so that all who suffer might pass through, regardless of their belief or lack of belief.”

Any AA group that is intolerant of atheists, agnostics, and religious nonbelievers fails to appreciate the history of AA and has too narrow a view of what makes AA successful. From my observations over the years, I have concluded that it is the assistance that members provide to one another that makes AA work. Each member helps others stay sober and, in turn, is helped.

The best AA programs provide a form of cognitive behavior therapy in which participants look at themselves honestly and openly, identifying the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that cause them problems. With the help of one another, members find ways to avoid their dysfunctional feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

Psychologists and psychotherapists might suggest journaling, role-playing, relaxation techniques, and mental distractions as coping strategies. In the best AA programs, members practice these or similar strategies, including having someone available day or night to provide support.

The “Serenity Prayer” that is a part of AA (“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”) recognizes what writer and psychology educator Kendra Cherry says is the purpose of cognitive therapy: “The goal of cognitive behavior therapy is to teach patients that while they cannot control every aspect of the world around them, they can take control of how they interpret and deal with things in their environment.”

AA would appeal more to atheists, agnostics, and other nonbelievers if AA would make a conscious effort to be more inclusive. When that doesn’t happen, secular alternatives in some communities can serve the non-religious population, but their meetings are not as available to most people as are AA’s meetings.

Among secular alternatives to AA are Life Ring, which has one meeting in Texas, in Austin; Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS) has meetings in about 30 towns and cities in Texas, including Austin and Lockhart in Central Texas; Smart Recovery has no meetings in Texas; Women for Sobriety has an office in Pennsylvania, but no meeting information on its website; Rational Recovery has one meeting location in California and one in Iowa.

In contrast, even in most small towns, one can find several AA meetings to attend every week.

Many AA proponents argue that the “higher power” found in its steps can be whatever one wants it to be. Yet plainly religious practices go on at AA meetings, such as prayer, scripture-quoting, and the crediting of a supernatural “higher power” for what is obviously a result of intensive support by the AA community.

I’m glad AA exists for those who need, want, and benefit from it. But we need other alternatives for those whose beliefs don’t harmonize with AA practices.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott's 'Demagoduery'

Kountze cheerleaders. Screen grab from ABC News. Image from Austinist.com.

Gimme a 'G':
Texas Atty. Gen. Abbott’s 'demagoduery'

It is beyond conjecture or opinion: the Kountze cheerleader banners expressing religious views are government speech.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / May 21, 2013

Sometimes the marvelous English language with its quarter of a million words fails to capture adequately in one word the character of a person or action. Such is the case with the behavior of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott as he uses his political position to curry favor with the religious right and further develop his obsequious relationship with that group.

So I have invented a new word to describe this behavior: demagoduery.

Demagoduery occurs when someone, usually a politician, publicly announces his support for government promotion of religion (for example, posting the Ten Commandments in government buildings); when he advocates that the government sponsor religious exercise (particularly praying at government meetings); when he invokes his belief in God as part of his political character; when he calls on God from his public position to fix something that’s not working right (like when we have a drought and he asks God for rain); when he engages in all manner of conspicuous religiosity; and when he exaggerates or distorts the legal precedents for government entanglement with religion.

Abbott’s latest bit of demagoduery is his support for the Kountze, Texas, cheerleaders, who in their official capacities as school cheerleaders at football games, like to promote their religion (it’s Christian by the way) by writing Bible verses on large signs that they hold up before games and which the football team bursts through when the players run out on the field. Some of the signs have read:

• “But thanks be to God, which gives us Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ - I Cor. 15:57”
• “If God is for us who can be against us? - Romans 8:31”
• “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me in Christ Jesus - Philippians 3:14”
• “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me - Philippians 4:13”

Last fall, when the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a non-profit educational and advocacy organization, received a complaint from a man who had attended one of the Kountze ISD football games and was offended by the signs, the FFRF pointed out to the superintendent of schools of the Kountze ISD that the cheerleaders were official representatives of the high school and they were promoting religion at an official school-sponsored event with the Bible verses.

The superintendent then sought legal advice from a law firm. He was told that such promotion of religion was a violation of court decisions related to the separation of church and state. He ordered that the Bible-verse promoting at football games cease. The cheerleaders, through their parents, sued the school district in state court and obtained an injunction that would allow the promotion of religion at football games to continue.

The case was scheduled for trial in June, but under pressure from the community, and with the support of Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Abbott, the superintendent agreed to rescind his order prohibiting the Bible verses from being displayed by the cheerleaders at football games.

State District Judge Steven Thomas, appointed to his position in 2011 by Governor Perry, then granted summary judgment since there was no dispute between the parties, and issued a written opinion.

Thomas’s decree cites no law or court decisions on which the order is based. It simply declares that “the religious messages expressed on run-through banners have not created, and will not create, an establishment of religion in the Kountze community” (a statement that demonstrates a lack of understanding of First Amendment jurisprudence); that the religious messages on the banners displayed during the 2012 football season “were constitutionally permissible”; that “Neither the Establishment Clause nor any other law prohibits cheerleaders from using religious-themed banners at school sporting events”; and that Kountze I.S.D. is not required by the Establishment Clause nor any other law “to prohibit the inclusion of religious-themed banners at school sporting events.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott jumped at the opportunity to engage in demagoduery by issuing the following statement:

This is a victory for religious liberties and for high school cheerleaders who stood up to powerful forces that tried to silence their voices. The Freedom From Religion Foundation was wrong in trying to bully Kountze ISD into prohibiting the cheerleaders from displaying banners with religious messages. Our Constitution has never demanded that students check their religious beliefs at the schoolhouse door. Students’ ability to express their religious views adds to the diversity of thought that has made this country so strong. The Kountze Cheerleaders are heroes who fought for principles, and won!

Of course, no one tried to silence the voices of the Kountze cheerleaders as individual citizens. But some people recognized that the cheerleaders were using their official positions as representatives of the Kountze ISD to promote their personal religious views, which had the effect of making them the Kountze ISD’s views.

These actions appear to violate a previous Supreme Court ruling. The actions place the government in the position of favoring a particular religion over other religions and over no religion. Any student not representing the school district in an official capacity is free to display religious-themed banners at football games, though it might seem to some people that a football game is a strange place to debate religion in all its diversity.

In fact, the context in which speech occurs is relevant to judging its character. As the FFRF has pointed out, if the context of the speech “would lead an objective observer to believe a public school is endorsing the speech,” the Supreme Court has held that the speech “is not properly characterized as ‘private’ speech.” (See Santa Fe I. S. D. v. Doe, decided in 2000.)

And the Court’s position holds even if the speech is completely student-initiated and student-led, as was the case regarding the football banners at Kountze ISD last year.

Greg Abbott (and the Ten Commandments).

The context suggests that the school is endorsing the religious views expressed, rather than maintaining neutrality toward religion as the Constitution requires.

The cheerleaders have official positions with the school district; they wear official school uniforms; they are under the supervision of school officials; the football games are an official school-sponsored activity; the stadium in which the banners were displayed by the cheerleaders is owned and operated by the Kountze ISD; the costs of the event are paid for by the Kountze ISD; the stadium is filled with indicia of the Kountze ISD (its name, the school’s mascot, the school’s colors, the school insignia, etc.); the school district controls who may have access to the playing field.

And now the Kountze ISD, in its pleadings to the district court, officially endorses the activity of the cheerleaders in promoting religious views in this context.

As FFRF pointed out in its Amicus Brief filed with the court,

The district controls everything about this message including: (1) where the message is presented; (2) who presents the message; (3) what the students holding the message are wearing; (4) the property where the message is delivered; and (5) the event at which the message is presented. The cheerleading squad represents and speaks for all members of that team, the football team, and the student body.

In Santa Fe v. Doe, the Supreme Court found that similar speech was government speech in a context remarkably similar to the context found in Kountze. If the viewing audience would reasonably perceive the religious messages promoted by the cheerleaders as representing the views of the student body “delivered with the approval of the school administration,” then the speech will be seen by the court as government speech.

It is beyond conjecture or opinion: the Kountze cheerleader banners expressing religious views are government speech. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause does not permit the government to express religious views. Even Attorney General Abbott should know that.

But the Attorney General wants the citizens to believe that the religious liberty of the cheerleaders is being infringed, although he knows that those same cheerleaders are free to display religious banners at any time they are not representing the Kountze ISD in an official capacity.

 If the banners were the cheerleaders' private speech, there would be no conflict with the Constitution. The cheerleaders are engaging in religious speech in the wrong context, but it does not serve the Attorney General’s demagoduery to acknowledge that fact.

As the FFRF pointed out in its Amicus brief:

The banners with biblical quotations are an affront to non-Christians and non-religious students, faculty, and members of the school community. Even supporters of the banners have acknowledged to national news media that they could be upsetting to Jewish students... Students on the cheerleading squad and the football team may be offended by the exclusionary message because they are not Christian or religious.

Given the elite status that football has in the State of Texas, what dissenter on the squad or team would dare speak out? Allowing the religious messages on these banners forces those students to violate their rights of conscience, or else to "forfeit [their]... rights and benefits at the price of resisting conformance to state-sponsored religious practice." (Citing Lee v. Weisman, a 1992 Supreme Court case.)

If Attorney General Abbott were really representing the Constitution and the interests of all Texans, he would acknowledge that the cheerleaders at Kountze football games engaged in school-sponsored speech -- a kind of government-promoted religious speech that offends civil behavior and violates the leading Supreme Court interpretations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as applied to public schools. But Abbott will never do that.

The attraction of demagoduery is just too strong for a sanctimonious, self-promoting politician like him.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : City Council and Religious Liberty in Central Texas

San Marcos, Texas, City Hall. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Nearly half of Austin-area city
councils violate religious liberty

It doesn’t take clergy to remind council members of their duties, and there is little evidence that clergy provide any more moral authority than most of the rest of us.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / December 4, 2012

SAN MARCOS, Texas -- An on-line review of agendas from 30 Austin-area communities reveals that almost half of area city councils use their elected positions to promote religion. Of those 30 towns and cities, 14 begin their meetings with invocations (usually prayers) according to their agendas. While nearly 47% of area municipalities promote this religious practice, the rest do not. Austin is the largest city in the area to do so.

The invocation practice I have studied the most, that of the City of San Marcos, demonstrates most of the problems with such government religious practices. San Marcos did not have such City Council prayers until then-Mayor Susan Narvaiz introduced the practice around 2006.

When Narvaiz (a recent Republican candidate for Congress defeated by Rep. Lloyd Doggett) became mayor of San Marcos in 2004, she set about to promote her evangelical religion through her elected position.

She may not have intended to attack the religious liberty of everyone who held different religious views, but that was the effect when she pushed all but one city council member to vote to begin having almost exclusively Christian prayers at the beginning of each regular meeting of the City Council. Apparently, divine guidance was not needed at special meetings and workshops.

While not everyone on the City Council at the time -- including some who voted for the practice -- approved of it, the fear of political reprisal caused most of them to go along with this disregard for the religious liberty of all San Marcos residents.

After challenges to the practice by the ACLU of Texas and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the City Council adopted a formal policy that, in effect, required nonsectarian prayers, but this requirement has been largely ignored by both the City Council and those included on its Invocation List -- mostly local ministers approved by the City Clerk to give invocations.

In 2009, after hearing in person from ACLU attorney Fleming Terrell at a city council meeting, the Council directed the City Attorney to promulgate an Invocations Policy that met the Council’s preferences and would satisfy the leading Supreme Court case in this area, Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983).

Marsh was a lawsuit challenging the invocation practice of the Nebraska Legislature. In Marsh, the Supreme Court allowed limited legislative prayer based on history and custom as a narrow exception to the Constitution’s prohibition of an establishment of religion by a governmental body. Of course, San Marcos had no such history and custom.

In Marsh, the invocation prayers were directed only to legislators in the Nebraska Legislature. Offered by the Legislative Chaplain, they never included any reference to Jesus or other Christian symbols or language, so they did not “advance” Christianity.

Normally, these kinds of prayers are referred to as nonsectarian. But even nonsectarian prayers can lead a reasonable observer to conclude that the sponsor of the prayers (the San Marcos City Council in this case) favors religion over non-religion. When the prayers use the name of Jesus, or include Christian symbols and language normally identified with Christian doctrine or belief, a reasonable conclusion would be that the City Council favors Christianity over other religions.

The City Council policy, adopted on August 4, 2009 (Resolution 2009-97R), provided that the City Clerk would maintain a list of clergy who would give invocations on a rotating basis; that the clergy would represent all faith traditions that could be found in or out of the city; and that the invocations would not be used “to advance any one religion, disparage any other religion, or proselytize,” quoting some of the language from the Marsh decision. The policy also provided that any clergy who violated the policy could be removed from the rotation list.

I have periodically reviewed the implementation of this policy and have recently reviewed all 42 regular meetings between March 1, 2011, and November 20, 2012.

In 34 of the meetings, invocations were given. In eight instances, a moment of silence was observed because no clergy member was available to offer a prayer. Twenty-one of the 34 prayers referred directly to Jesus. Nine other prayers referred to Christian symbols or used language associated with Christian doctrine or belief. Nearly 90% of the prayers promoted Christianity in their content, an unmistakable violation of the holding in Marsh.

Introductions of the guest clergy is another way the invocations promote Christianity. When their names are announced, so are the names of the churches they represent. Fifteen of the organizations associated with the clergy who participated over the past 20 months are Christian groups. Announcing these Christian affiliations publicly further involves the City Council in promoting and advancing Christianity, just as announcing other religious affiliations advances those religions.

It should be noted that the council violated its own policy when those who gave prayers were not clergy associated with a particular religion. One was the chaplain for the San Marcos Fire Department; one was a student involved with the local Catholic Student Center and St. Jude’s Chapel; one was an employee of the San Marcos Baptist Academy; one was a member of a local Muslim group; one was introduced as a Bahá’í “pastor,” although Bahá’ís do not have pastors; and one person is a Native American who is the proprietor of a business -- the Cherokee Candle Shop.

The Invocation Policy resolution focuses on a brief summary of the Marsh decision. It does not concern itself with lower court decisions that have piled up since 1983 and that apply Marsh to other cases, some strikingly similar to the San Marcos situation.

For instance, in 2002, Rubin v. Burbank, 101 Cal.App 4th 1194, held that city council prayer ending “in the name of Jesus Christ” violated the Establishment Clause, even when only 20% of prayers had such references, citing Marsh as precluding prayers that advance any one religion.

In a decision eight years ago, Wynne v. Town of Great Falls, 376 F.3d 292 (4th Cir 2004), the court wrote:

The invocations at issue here, which specifically call upon Jesus Christ, are simply not constitutionally acceptable legislative prayer like that approved in Marsh. Rather, they embody the precise kind of "advance[ment]" of one particular religion that Marsh cautioned against.

In a footnote relevant to the San Marcos practices, the Wynne court found “that citizens customarily participated in the prayers by standing and bowing their heads. Indeed, citizens actively joined in the prayers by declaring ‘amen’ and sometimes ‘hallelujah’ at the conclusion.”

The practice of saying “amen” aloud at the conclusion of San Marcos prayers occurs at virtually every meeting. One pastor even invites the audience to join in his prayers by concluding with “And all God’s children said Amen,” which is always joined by a rousing chorus of “Amens” from the audience.

Frequently, those who give the invocations at San Marcos City Council meetings address the audience directly, importuning them to bow their heads or join with them in the prayer. In one instance the clergyman even interjected “hallelujah” and “glory” in his own prayer, giving it the flavor of a worship service.

It should be noted that the Wynne decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but earlier this year that court refused to consider the case, so Wynne stands as an exemplar of the constitutional limits of city council invocation practice.

In another 2012 case, Galloway v. Town of Greece (New York), 681 F.3d 20, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, the court held that town council prayers that contain Christian references two-thirds of the time, even when other faiths also give prayers, unconstitutionally affiliates the town with Christianity.

Many other facts about this case are strikingly similar to those surrounding the practices in San Marcos. The Town of Greece staff was responsible for inviting the clergy to give invocations, and the court noted the following:

A substantial majority of the prayers in the record contained uniquely Christian language. Roughly two-thirds contained references to "Jesus Christ," "Jesus," "Your Son," or the "Holy Spirit." Within this subset, almost all concluded with a statement that the prayer had been given in Jesus Christ's name. Typically, prayer-givers stated something like, "In Jesus's name we pray," or "We ask this in Christ's name." Some prayer-givers elaborated further, describing Christ as "our Savior," "God's only son," "the Lord," or part of the Holy Trinity. One prayer, for example, was given "in the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever." Other prayers, including ones not expressly made in Christ's name, spoke of "the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives," and celebrated Christ's birth and resurrection.

In the last 20 months, I found almost identical examples of everything found in the above paragraph in reviewing San Marcos City Council prayers. The Galloway court went on to conclude its opinion with this relevant paragraph:

What we do hold is that a legislative prayer practice that, however well-intentioned, conveys to a reasonable objective observer under the totality of the circumstances an official affiliation with a particular religion violates the clear command of the Establishment Clause. Where the overwhelming predominance of prayers offered are associated, often in an explicitly sectarian way, with a particular creed, and where the town takes no steps to avoid the identification, but rather conveys the impression that town officials themselves identify with the sectarian prayers and that residents in attendance are expected to participate in them, a reasonable objective observer would perceive such an affiliation.

City Council prayers are politically difficult to change because of the very vocal and activist evangelical church members in our communities who like having the government promote their religion. In addition, most people resist understanding the constitutional issues involved because their religious views and attachments often lead to strong emotions and claims that not having government-sponsored sectarian prayer violates their religious rights.

But this view is false. Americans do not have a right to have the government sponsor and promote their religions.

As someone who is non-religious, however, government sponsorship and promotion of religious practices does violate my religious rights. By using the power of government to force the religious practices of a particular religion on me and others in the community who don’t follow the tenets of that religion, the City Council deprives me of my religious liberty.

While I respect everyone’s right to follow whatever religion they choose, I do not respect their right to force their religious beliefs on me at the instigation of the local government.

In effect, the City Council members imply that if they are not allowed to pray mostly Christian prayers at the beginning of each meeting, their own religious liberty will be harmed or will be at risk. Of course, such reasoning makes no sense. A person’s religious liberty is not at risk because that person can’t force others to participate in his or her religion.

City Council members have presumed that they have the right to compel their favored religious practices on others through the use of public funds, staff, buildings, and resources, but they should know better.

They fail to appreciate that no religious group should be given status as the official faith of the city, even for one meeting. The local government cannot elevate any religion to such a status without violating the Constitution.

Fortunately, there are some simple solutions to this constitutional problem. Invocations do not have to be prayers and they do not have to be given by religious leaders. Anyone can address the city council with words about its responsibilities devoid of any reference to divine guidance.

What every city council should do is keep the best interests of its citizens in mind, seek honest information in pursuit of that goal, avoid conflicts of interest, and make decisions on the basis of reason and evidence, rather than engage in subterfuge and false justifications.

It doesn’t take clergy to remind council members of their duties, and there is little evidence that clergy provide any more moral authority than most of the rest of us.

Each City Council member took an oath to uphold the Constitution. By their continued actions in using the city government to promote and sponsor sectarian prayer, each member of the council violates that supposedly sacred oath.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Government Plus Religion is No-Win Situation

Image from Change Comes Slow.
No one wins when government
forces religion on everyone

If public officials believe that religious worship is important, perhaps they should meet in a conference room before the meeting and pray together with their chosen clergy.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2012

SAN MARCOS, Texas -- Those who see no harm in beginning a meeting of a city council, school board, or commissioners court with prayer owe it to the Constitution to take a few minutes and consider the perspective that the First Amendment’s prohibition against an establishment of religion means that the government is not allowed to force any religion -- or religion itself -- on its citizens.

For the moment, I will put aside the issue of sectarian versus nonsectarian prayer and focus on any prayer, whatever its content. Put simply, prayer is communicating with God or gods. Prayer is an act of religious worship. It is the most universal form of religious practice that I know of. There should be no doubt that prayer is a religious practice: people who are not religious or do not believe in the supernatural do not pray. Only religious people pray.

The prayer invocations regularly offered before meetings of government bodies are usually directed toward a deity, spirit, or amorphous supernatural being. They often express everyone’s reliance on the being and their desire to please said being. Usually they request guidance or help from the being and occasionally ask for special favors, such as rain or assistance for improving the performance of a favored athletic team.

When the government sponsors, promotes, or establishes prayer as a part of its activities, it is sponsoring, promoting, or establishing a religious practice, an integral part of religious worship. If any person wants to participate in the civic life of the community by attending, speaking at, or observing the meetings of elected officials who begin their meetings with prayer, that person must submit to a religious practice.

If the Supreme Court has been clear about anything in this area of jurisprudence, it is that the government may not sponsor, promote, or establish religion or religious practices, although it has permitted prayer not identified with a particular religion (nonsectarian prayer), because it views such prayer as insignificant, if not irrelevant.

For most elected officials, it seems that having an invocation before a meeting of a government body means offering a prayer. But “invocation” need not be so narrowly construed. Merriam-Webster defines invocation in other ways: “the act or process of petitioning for help or support” and “a calling upon for authority or justification.” Neither of these definitions necessarily suggests that an invocation be addressed to a god.

An invocation can be addressed to the governing body (rather than to a deity), to remind its members of their responsibility to serve the greater good; to respect the dignity of all citizens; to show no favoritism based on personal interest, race, religion, or party affiliation; to be open to the ideas of others; to use reason devoid of cant and deceit; to display compassion when that is needed; to seek answers to our problems through the ingenuity of our people; and to honor other ideals inherent in our history. An invocation need not be an act of religious worship or practice.

When it comes to fashioning an invocation for a home-rule city like the City of San Marcos, its charter will provide specific responsibilities of the city council that should be carried out, the goals of the city, the proper behavior expected of city officials, and any general standard that should always be kept in mind, such as “devotion to the best interest of the City.” There is no better way to help public officials always be aware of why they were elected than to regularly remind them of their proper role as found in their local constitution.

If an invocation is intended to set a tone for a meeting of our elected leaders, these suggestions seem to accomplish that purpose, and they do so without engaging in any religious practice or worship. If they express opinions about how the body or its citizens should act that the listener disagrees with, that listener should be able to get on the invocation list and offer a non-prayer invocation that he or she believes is more in keeping with our shared values and the purpose of the governing body.

Part and parcel of the prayer problem is limiting who may give invocations to clergy. Clergy are expected to pray. That is why they are invited to give the invocation. All of the official invocation policies that I have seen single out clergy to provide the invocations -- clear evidence that the purpose of the invocation is to engage in the practice of religion.

Many of our elected representatives are religionists first and public officials second. It should be the other way around. Religionists want to use the government to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of the population, ignoring the rights of all citizens to have the autonomy to make their own religious and moral decisions.

This was the case with both the Hays County Commissioners Court and the San Marcos City Council. When Jim Powers began his tenure as Hays County Judge and Susan Narvaiz began her tenure as Mayor of San Marcos, both decided for their own religious reasons to have their respective governmental bodies begin using prayers to start their meetings. They used their public positions to have the government promote their private religious beliefs. For many decades, both bodies had functioned just fine without the prayerful invocations.

Having the government force religious positions on other people has always created great turmoil in society, and it has corrupted both the government and the religious groups involved. For these reasons, the drafters of the Constitution sought to keep government out of religion.

They had seen what happened in England to religious liberty when the state and religion are intertwined, and they had witnessed the disorder, dissension, and destruction brought about in various colonies by an alliance between government and religion. James Madison was aware also of the example of Holland where religion and government were kept separate so that each person had full religious freedom and freedom of conscience.

Even the Texas Constitution, in spite of its frequently inappropriate religiosity (much of which has been invalidated by the Supreme Court as infringing on the guarantees and provisions of the U.. Constitution), provides that no one “shall be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent. No human authority ought, in any case whatever, to control or interfere with the rights of conscience in matters of religion, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious society or mode of worship.”

This is precisely what religious prayers as invocations do to all the citizenry. They maintain a ministry without the consent of all those who want to participate in local government. They interfere with the right of conscience in matters of religion. They give preference to certain religious groups and subject those in attendance at meetings to religious worship.

Those who suggest that anyone who disagrees with the prayers can absent themselves from that part of the meeting have not thought fully about this suggestion. The way the San Marcos City Council functions, for instance, it is not possible to know when the invocation will be held. The Council often begins meetings with lengthy workshops, starts the business meeting by convening into executive session, delays the invocation until after other business is conducted, or waits until the clergy scheduled to give the invocation arrives at the meeting.

Should the Mayor announce in advance that a moment will be given for all those who don’t want to engage in prayer to leave the room? Will that person’s seat be saved or taken by another during the person’s absence? Avoiding the prayer requires leaving the building because the meeting is broadcast outside the council chambers for those who can’t find a seat or want to stay in the foyer. Who will tell those who have left the building when the prayer is over?

But the very suggestion that those not wanting to engage in a religious practice can leave the meeting is to acknowledge that the activity is religious activity, which should not be sponsored, promoted, or established by a government body under the Constitution.

I have never understood the mindset of public officials who believe that they have the right as elected officials to impose their religion and religious practices, or anyone’s religious practices, on the citizens by virtue of their public positions.

The author, editor, political commentator, and blogger Andrew Sullivan is a devout and ardent Roman Catholic. In a colloquy with atheist author and neuroscientist Sam Harris in 2007, they addressed the question of how a person of such strong belief as Sullivan can resist inflicting his religious beliefs on others. His answer is relevant to elected officials who assume the right to do this very thing to us all.

Sullivan responded to the question posed:

You ask legitimately: how can I, convinced of this truth (about Christianity), resist imposing it on others? The answer is: humility and doubt. I may believe these things, but I am aware that others may not; and I respect their own existential decision to believe something else. I respect their decision because I respect my own, and realize it is indescribable to those who have not directly experienced it.

That's why I am such a dogged defender of pluralism and secularism -- because I believe secularism alone does justice to the profundity of the claims of religion. The attempt to force or even rig laws to encourage others to share my faith defeats the point of my faith -- which is that it is both freely chosen and definitionally dealing with matters that cannot be subject to common consensus.

If public officials believe that religious worship is important, perhaps they should meet in a conference room before the meeting and pray together with their chosen clergy. Then, filled with righteousness from their religious worship, they can enter the meeting room in the frame of mind of their choice, gavel the meeting to order, and get on with doing the people’s business, without subjecting the people to forced religious worship.

In this way our elected officials can show respect for the pluralism of this society, the U.S. Constitution, and the conscience of every citizen.

The Bill of Rights became a part of our Constitution over 220 years ago. It is time that all of the First Amendment of that Constitution was followed. No one has a constitutional right to use the government to sponsor, promote, or establish religion; but everyone has the constitutional right to be free from government sponsorship, promotion, or establishment of religion.

It should not be too much to ask that this freedom be honored. That would be true religious liberty for all.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Texas Cheerleaders for Jesus

Kountze High School cheerleaders with banner at football game. Image from Atheist Camel.
Cheerleaders for Jesus:
Texas politicians jump
on religion bandwagon

Can cheerleaders who represent the Kountze Independent School District, while acting in their official capacities as school cheerleaders, promote their personal religious views?

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / October 24, 2012

SAN MARCOS, Texas -- It seems that it is still popular to beat up on atheists and agnostics in Texas, in spite of gains in acceptance of both groups. At least, politicians have found that they can stir emotions and benefit politically from standing up for God and Jesus, whether or not God and Jesus want their help.

Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott recently jumped on the religion bandwagon yet again to denounce atheists and, by implication, their partners in non-belief -- agnostics, freethinkers, infidels, and secular humanists. Abbott directly attacked the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) as an organization from out of state.

While it is true that FFRF’s headquarters are in Wisconsin, FFRF has 700 members in Texas, including me. At its recent annual conference, there were members from 46 states in attendance. It is a national organization with affiliated groups in Texas and members from virtually every state.

The “outside agitator” description has been used forever to denounce anyone or any group that is not from the particular community where a controversy has arisen. In this case, the community involved is Kountze, Texas, located in Hardin County between Beaumont and Woodville, in the heart of what is known as the Big Thicket, an ecologically diverse and sensitive part of southeast Texas.

There is even a national park located there dedicated to preserving the unique natural environment of the area. Members of my family have lived in Hardin County for over 50 years, and I have done legal work there.

The current controversy in Kountze concerns a straight-forward constitutional question: Can cheerleaders who represent the Kountze Independent School District, while acting in their official capacities as school cheerleaders, promote their personal religious views?

Reasonable people might differ on their answer to this question (more about that later), but there is nothing reasonable about Perry and Abbott, both of whom have used religion to gain political advantage. On October 17, Perry and Abbott held a joint press conference to proclaim their undying support for Jesus and the Kountze cheerleaders’ right to press their religious beliefs on everyone attending football games while representing Kountze High School.

Gov. Rick Perry said, “We will not allow atheist groups from outside of the State of Texas to come into the state, to use menacing and misleading intimidation tactics, to try to bully schools to bow down at the altar of secular beliefs.”

Attorney General Abbott chimed in with, “After receiving a menacing letter from an organization with a reputation for bullying school districts, the Kountze [school superintendent] improperly prohibited high school cheerleaders from including religious messages on their game day banners.”

FFRF does not bully anyone. What it does is routinely send letters to governments after receiving a complaint about practices that violate the separation of religion and state, practices which are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. In response to such a letter from FFRF, the Kountze ISD sought legal advice and concluded that because the cheerleaders were representing the school when they placed bible verses and religious messages on a banner prepared for the football team to burst through at the beginning of each school-sponsored game, the practice should stop.

The cheerleaders, through their parents, then sued the school district in state district court, represented by the Liberty Institute, a fundamentalist legal organization in Plano, Texas, that seeks to inject religion into government at all levels. FFRF is not involved in that law suit, but the group makes a handy whipping boy for political gain by Perry and Abbott. FFRF explained the issue this way:

The Constitution and FFRF are not "preventing freedom of expression," we are defending freedom of conscience. The Constitution differentiates government (public school) speech from individual speech. Those cheerleaders are free to worship as they like, go to the church of their choice, but not to exploit a public school event, and their school-sponsored podium, to push their personal religious views on an entire stadium. That’s just plain bad manners.

Dan Barker, co-president of FFRF, added,

Since the state’s top law enforcer, Attorney General Greg Abbott, and its highest executive officer, Gov. Rick Perry, have openly expressed contempt for atheists and the Establishment Clause, this leads to a climate of intolerance. It takes courage to face down the full apparatus of state government, but we need those brave few to contact FFRF. Don’t let collusion, politicking, and religious fervor in Texas destroy respect for keeping public schools free of religious divisiveness.

Most people seem not to understand that the Constitution is not a self-enforcing document. Unless there is someone willing to ask a judge to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred, the violation will continue unabated, sometimes for decades or centuries. We had segregated schools until the mid-50s, when several parents stepped forward to contest the separate and unequal public educations afforded their children.

Unless someone is willing to challenge government practices, most politicians are too unprincipled to stand up for the Constitution and end unconstitutional practices, especially when those practices are popular with a vocal group. When it comes to government support of religious practices, fundamentalist and evangelical citizens make their voices heard, and politicians usually acquiesce to their vehemence and emotion.

The closest case to the Kountze cheerleader situation involves having public prayer at football games sponsored by the school district -- a government entity established by the state. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the importance of preserving the secular nature of such high school functions in Santa Fe ISD v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000).

Santa Fe ISD is a school district near Houston. The school had a policy of electing a Santa Fe High School student to serve as student council chaplain, who would deliver a Christian prayer over the public address system at the beginning of home football games. As explained by FFRF,

One Mormon and one Catholic family filed suit challenging this and related practices as violations of the Establishment Clause, because the policy clearly favored the predominant Protestant viewpoint to the effective exclusion of non-evangelical students and audience members.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion in Santa Fe ISD, which held that student-led, student-initiated prayer at school events violates the Establishment Clause. The school had claimed that the prayers were a student choice, and that attendance at an extracurricular event like a football game is voluntary. The Court found this rationalization unpersuasive because the prayers were authorized by the public school and took place on public school property at a school-sponsored event.

These salient facts lead a reasonable person to conclude that the school endorses the message of the students, making the students' remarks public speech, not private religious expressions. Proponents of student-led prayer believe that students should have to choose between attending school functions or not attending to avoid school-sponsored prayer. The Supreme Court disagreed, writing,

The Constitution, moreover, demands that the school may not force this difficult choice upon these students for it is a tenet of the First Amendment that the State cannot require one of its citizens to forfeit his or her rights and benefits as the price of resisting conformance to state-sponsored religious practice.

An earlier U.S. Supreme Court case in 1992 affirmed nearly four decades of court precedent against school prayers. In Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, the court held that prayers at public school graduations are an impermissible establishment of religion. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority, "if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people."

While neither of these cases is exactly like the Kountze situation, they raise such similar issues and arise from such similar facts that it is logical to conclude that they control the behavior of the Kountze cheerleaders when they act in an official capacity on behalf of the Kountze ISD. Attorney General Abbott has not explained why these cases should not apply to the Kountze controversy, but he jumped at the chance to intervene officially in the case.

FFRF has noted these two cases, as well as six others that seem to provide adequate precedent to conclude that what the Kountze cheerleaders are doing violates the rights of other students. They include cases concerning prayer at high school graduations, prayer in public schools, devotional Bible-reading in public schools, and pre-football game invocations at public high school football games.

Clearly, the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have concluded that public schools have a legal duty to remain neutral toward religion. If the Kountze ISD allows official school representatives -- the cheerleaders in this case -- to promote religion through the display of signs that include both Bible verses and religious admonitions much like prayers, the Kountze ISD fears that it will be seen as promoting religion. For now, the state district court has ruled that the religious banners can continue. A trial on the issue is set for next summer.

For those people who want government to promote religion, court interventions are a hindrance to their theocratic ambitions. But there is no excuse for the Governor and the Attorney General of Texas to play politics with government promotion of religion. They know what the federal courts have held, but they choose to ignore the holdings -- a sort of modern day interposition and nullification intended to undermine the U.S. Constitution, which both have sworn to uphold.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Marilyn Katz : What Every Woman Should Know (About Paul Ryan)

Rep. Paul Ryan faces moderator Martha Raddatz in the vice presidential debate. Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP / GettyImages.
One sure thing:
What every woman should know

Paul Ryan has voted 59 times to support legislation that ranges from declaring a fetus a human being with full legal rights to allowing hospitals to refuse treatment to a woman needing post-abortion care -- even if she will die without it.

By Marilyn Katz / The Rag Blog / October 15, 2012

Paul Ryan offered few details on most issues of domestic and foreign policy in his debate with Vice President Biden, but there was one on which he had both a clear position and a clear path: women's ability to control their pregnancies.

While women had mostly feared the advent of a Ryan/Romney SupremeCourt that might overturn Roe v. Wade, Ryan let the nation know that his administration would also pursue a congressional strategy to outlaw abortion as well as end federal funding for contraception (already outlawed for abortion) and, by overturning Obamacare, eliminate the guaranteed insurance coverage of contraception and other reproductive health services.

This actually should come as no surprise as, while Ryan would like to be known these days for his economic policies, the only issue on which he has consistently put forward bills in Congress is that of reproductive choice. According to The Progressive, "Of the 81 bills Ryan has sponsored or co-sponsored in this congressional session, only three have dealt with the economy," while 10 have as their aim the control of women's bodies.

In fact, his position during the debate was somewhat moderate as, during his 13 years in Congress, Ryan has voted 59 times to support legislation that ranges from declaring a fetus a human being with full legal rights to allowing hospitals to refuse treatment to a woman needing post-abortion care -- even if she will die without it.

Ryan is not alone -- his bills are the stock-in-trade of a slew of Republicans, from California's Issa and Missouri's Todd Akin to Illinois' Walsh, Roskam, and Schilling. In fact, during this congressional session -- where the most bills put forth by Republicans were about women's health -- each bill received the unanimous vote of House Republicans.

And as in the Congress, so to in the 26 state legislatures now under Republican control, in which more than 1000 anti-choice bills have been introduced, and many passed, over the past two years.

While they may hide their positions under the cloak of religious freedom, we should be clear -- it is about anything but. No one is telling Catholic women that they must choose abortion or use contraception (although all estimates say that 98 percent of Catholic women of child-bearing age who have ever had sex have) but the law does say that the vast majority of non-Catholics who use or work for Catholic hospitals and schools should not have to give up their religious freedom and beliefs (nor their right to full health care) in order to keep their jobs.

Nor are there any Republican-sponsored bills to compel Christian Scientists to vaccinate their children or bills that outlaw vasectomies. It is somewhat ironic and important to remember that this is the party that, in 1960, railed against the possibility of a John F. Kennedy presidency, saying that it would violate the nation's ethos and open the door for Vatican control of our nation.

What it is about is Paul Ryan and the other Republicans attempting to impose their personal religious views on the rest of us -- imperiling women's health and the separation of church and state on which this nation was founded. Women comprise approximately 58 percent of America's vote. They can determine the fate of this election and, in doing so, will determine their own.

This article was cross-posted to The Huffington Post.

[An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the Vietnam War, Marilyn Katz helped organize security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention. Katz has founded and led groups like the Chicago Women’s Union, Reproductive Rights National Network, and Chicago Women Organized for Reproductive Choice in the 1960s and 1970s, and Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in 2002. The founder and president of Chicago-based MK Communications, Katz can be contacted at mkatz@mkcpr.com.  Read more articles by Marilyn Katz on The Rag Blog.

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Lamar W. Hankins : Playing Politics with Religion in Hays County, Texas

Photo by Alamy / The Telegraph.
Hays County officials play politics
with religious invocation

Individual rights of conscience and religious diversity cannot be maintained when the government promotes one religion over others.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / October 1, 2012

SAN MARCOS, Texas -- On Tuesday, September 25, the Hays County Commissioners Court held a public discussion to receive comment from citizens about a legal and constitutional issue that none of the speakers knew much about, but they all had opinions, some quite emotional.
The issue concerned the court’s mostly Christian prayers used to open their meetings. Not surprisingly, those who spoke overwhelmingly favored having the court continue to promote Christian prayers at its meetings.

A little background might be helpful in sorting out the chafe from the wheat about this issue. This has not been a long-standing practice in Hays County. Some 150 years after Hays County was created, County Judge Jim Powers, in 1998, began the prayer practice. Several times since then, I have reviewed the invocations (mostly prayers, but sometimes a moment of silence) offered at Commissioner Court meetings.

In the prayer invocations, the use of the following phrases were common:

• “In the name of Jesus we pray;”
• “We pray all these things in Jesus’ name;”
• “In Jesus’ name;”
• “In Jesus’ name I pray;”
• “In His name;”
• “In God’s name;”
• “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;”
• “In the name of Jesus we ask;”
• “Our Father in heaven we thank you for Jesus, thank you for the precious blood shed on Calvary;”
• “Hope in Jesus and His precious name;”
• “We come in the precious name of Jesus;”
• “Where two or three are gathered, you are in the midst, in the precious name of Jesus.”

Clearly, these phrases and many others in the invocations create an appearance that the Commissioners Court is promoting Christianity, and in some cases, a particular brand of Christianity. Such actions also convey the message that the meetings of the Hays County Commissioner’s Court are in some way blessed by the God approved by the members of the Commissioners Court, but not by the gods that other Hays County citizens believe in and worship.

It is inappropriate for these county politicians to introduce their religion into the governing of Hays County in this way. While members of the Commissioners Court may decide issues that come before the court on the basis of many considerations, including their personal religious views, it is inappropriate to give the impression that the Commissioners Court acts in the name of the Christian God, which is the impression given when their meetings are opened in the name of that God.

The leading Supreme Court case dealing with what is often termed “legislative prayer,” Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), allowed prayer to open a session of a legislative body providing that it met certain criteria. The prayer must not “advance any one religion, disparage any other religion, or proselytize.”

In Marsh, the invocation prayers were directed only to legislators in the Nebraska Legislature and were offered by the Legislative Chaplain. The prayers never included any reference to Jesus or other Christian symbols or language, so they did not “advance” Christianity. Under these narrow circumstances, the Supreme Court concluded that the prayers did not violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Generally, these kinds of prayers are referred to as nonsectarian. But even nonsectarian prayers make clear that the sponsor of the prayers (the Hays County Commissioners Court in this case) favors religion over non-religion. When the prayers use the name of Jesus, or include Christian symbols and language normally identified with Christian doctrine or belief, a reasonable conclusion would be that the Commissioners Court favors Christianity over other religions.

When Jim Powers began this prayer practice, he set about to promote his own brand of religion through his elected position. He probably did not intend to attack the religious liberty of everyone who held different religious views, but that was the effect of his having almost exclusively Christian prayers at the beginning of each regular meeting of the Commissioners Court. Two subsequent Hays County Judges, with the acquiescence of a majority of the County Commissioners, have continued the practice.

By forcing the religious practices of a particular religion on those in the county who don’t follow the tenets of that religion, the Commissioners Court deprives those citizens of their religious liberty. While everyone under our constitution has the right to follow whatever religion they choose, the members of the Commissioners Court do not have the right to use their governmental power to force their religious beliefs on everyone.

Commissioners Court members have taken the position that they have the right to compel their favored religious practices on others and they use public funds, buildings, and resources to do so. In effect, the Commissioners Court says that if it is not allowed to open its meetings with mostly Christian prayers, the members’ own religious liberty will be harmed or will be at risk. But a person’s religious liberty is not at risk because that person can’t force others to participate in his or her religious practices.

They fail to appreciate that no religion should be given status as the official faith of the county or the country, even for one meeting. Neither the county government, nor the federal government can constitutionally elevate any religion to such a status.

But nothing about the Marsh decision prevents a person from praying or engaging in whatever religious practices suit them so long as the government is not promoting those practices. The government should be neutral in matters of religion, neither favoring nor disfavoring any religion.

Another aspect of the Marsh decision that should be noted is that the chaplain for the Nebraska Legislature directed the opening nonsectarian prayers to the members of the Legislature, not to other Nebraska citizens.

By contrast, those who pray mostly Christian prayers before the Hays County Commissioners Court direct their prayers not only to the members of the Commission, but also to the audience of citizens in attendance (and those watching on video) without regard for the audience’s religious beliefs.

Often those citizens in attendance are asked to stand, bow their heads, and even pray with the speaker. Sometimes they are asked to join in the prayer by saying “Amen” at the end of the prayer, as in, “And all God’s children said Amen,” a usual practice of one of the ministers who has given the invocation at Hays County Commissioners Court meetings several times in recent years.

In a constitutional democracy such as ours, the majority cannot run roughshod over the constitutional rights of a minority. Public opinion has no role in determining what is constitutional; otherwise, blacks, Jews, and other minorities would still be prohibited from living in many communities.

 So it is fair to ask what the purpose was of conducting a public hearing on whether citizens favor Christian prayer over other kinds of prayer? The only answer that comes to my mind is that County Judge Bert Cobb and others on the Commissioners Court are playing politics with the religious liberty of us all.

It doesn’t matter what the majority says about religion; each of us is entitled to our own religious beliefs, practices, and preferences, without interference, direction, influence, or promotion by county officials.

One of the clergy who sometimes offers public government-sponsored prayers in Hays County asserted that “it can’t hurt to have a prayer.” On the contrary, the freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment necessarily carries with it the right to be free from religion imposed by the government, just as the freedom of speech does not permit the government to require me to speak, nor does the freedom of association require me to associate with those the government wants me to associate with.

When the government uses the religious practice of prayer while carrying out its civic functions, it compels all citizens who want to participate in our civic life or observe its government in action to partake of that religious exercise.

The late Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona had great insight about government sponsorship of religious practices:

Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?...

By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars. Throughout our two hundred plus years, public policy debate has focused on political and economic issues, on which there can be compromise. ...

Most of those who cooperate with government bodies to promote prayer do so with noble intentions bereft of an appreciation of how their use of government to advance religion violates the rights of those who have different religious beliefs.

For instance, no one should have to participate in another’s religious practice in order to participate in their government, but this is exactly what the Hays County Commissioners Court compels them to do by its sanctioning of official prayer at its meetings.

The early American patriot, abolitionist, and Baptist minister John Leland said,

[W]henever men fly to the law or the sword to protect their system of religion and force it upon others, it is evident that they have something in their system that will not bear the light and stand upon the basis of truth.

Derek H. Davis, the former Director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, Baylor University, and author of Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774-1789: Contributions to Original Intent, wrote,

The framers [of the Constitution] sought to divorce religion from government. ... [T]o make religion dependent upon government was to depreciate true religion; to rely upon government to throw its weight behind religion was to declare God impotent to further his purposes through voluntary means.

A long line of America’s founders, patriots, and U.S. presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter appreciated the need to keep government out of religion, but that history is meaningless when no member of the Hays County Commissioners Court will rise to the defense of our forebears and the Constitution and oppose government sponsorship of religion in our civic life.

We live in a country that welcomes people of many faiths and of none. In countries where religion and government are commingled, the government usually oppresses those who do not follow the tenets of the dominant religion. Our history has shown that the principle of separation of church and state protects the religious freedom that we all have.

Individual rights of conscience and religious diversity cannot be maintained when the government promotes one religion over others. The neutrality toward religion that is found in our Constitution protects the freedom of us all.

One of the greatest ironies of this government prayer promotion is that the most prominent proponents of it are the Christian evangelicals, who believe most literally in the words of the Bible. None of them have ever explained publicly how their behavior can be reconciled with the teachings of Jesus to pray in secret and not in public where they can be seen by others as pious.

If all who call themselves Christian followed the admonitions of Jesus, we would not have a problem with sectarian prayers at government meetings in Hays County and throughout the United States. Any religion that needs the imprimatur of government to fulfill its purposes is trivial at best and tyrannical at worst.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Religious Unrest, Violence, and Intolerance

Demonstrators outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, September 11, 2012. Photo from Reuters / MarketWatch.
Religious unrest, violence, and intolerance

A society where great umbrage is taken by large numbers of people to criticism of a particular religion and that umbrage leads to violence is not a free society.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / September 18, 2012

The killing of a U.S. ambassador in Libya by armed men has become political fodder for Mitt Romney to attack President Obama in an attempt to blame the President for the actions of Islamist reactionaries, perhaps terrorists. All the facts haven’t been sorted out and may never be. What we do know is that religious-based violence and intolerance is nothing new, whether in this country or elsewhere.

I was uncomfortable with Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith when it was released eight years ago. I spoke out against his using so-called holy books, the Koran and the Bible, to define Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Few people follow literally all of the precepts, examples, and teachings found in either book. But Harris used the words of the books to paint those religions as both absurd and dangerous.

 I certainly agree that some of the adherents of all three of those religions are dangerous, and I find their supernatural beliefs beyond reason, but that is no cause to paint them all with the same brush, as Harris does.

We know that there are many variations of belief among Muslims and among Christians. The World Christian Encyclopedia reports that there are 34,000 separate Christian groups around the globe. There may be as many variations among Muslims, as well. Many such variations arise from disagreements about the meaning of portions of the holy books, from personality differences among adherents, from cultural preferences, and for a multitude of other reasons.

It is not possible to judge the beliefs of any religion by merely reading its holy book, but it is easier to ridicule various religions or condemn them for their beliefs by using their traditional stories, as well as their religious practices, to explain what is wrong with them.

For instance, I’ve never known a Jew or a Christian who was willing to sacrifice his first-born son because of the story about Abraham’s apparent willingness to do so in obedience to a command by God. My view is that any God that would require me to take such an act is not one I could respect or follow.

Extremists will use that story to support absolute adherence to what they think or claim God wants them to do. That is one way some people justify the killing of abortion doctors by some Christian extremists. And portions of the Koran are used by Muslim extremists to justify stonings and murders and terrorism.

The apparent cause of the most recent violence toward the personnel working in the American embassy in Libya is a video clip found on YouTube from a film that purports to tell the truth about Islam and its prophet Muhammed. I watched a few minutes of the video before its absurd, ridiculous, amateur production made me realize what a waste of time it would be to watch the whole 14 minutes.

Apparently, some Islamist extremists took a different view. Outraged, they vented their fury by committing acts of violence against people who had nothing whatever to do with the video, except that they represented the U.S., the country where the video apparently originated, supported by Christian extremists.

The video did not cause the violence. A decision by a group of armed extremists caused the violence. All of us may become outraged occasionally, but if that outrage leads to violent acts, that is the responsibility of those who commit the violence.

It is just as likely, however, that the video was just a convenient excuse for some extremists to engage in violence for their political purposes, completely unrelated to the video. One thing we know for sure: religious liberty is not an ideal prized by all people around the world.

Religious liberty is, however, a fundamental principle of American life. I am not a religious moderate, as Sam Harris likes to call people who accept religious pluralism. I am non-religious, which is a life-stance that is supported by the same precept of religious liberty that supports Jews, Christians in all of their manifestations, Muslims in all their variations, Hindus, Janes, Taoists, Sikhs, Wiccans, and all of the other 19, 20, 21 or 270 identified faith groups, depending on how they are classified.

Worldwide, out of a population of about 7 billion, around 1 billion people follow no religion. In the U.S., I am one of about 50 million non-believers. Since I am in the minority, I am interested in better understanding what other people believe even though I haven’t found their beliefs appealing or convincing so far.

Because religious liberty is such a fundamental value in my life, I don’t try to talk people out of their religious beliefs no matter how I may view those beliefs. This doesn’t mean that I am unwilling to discuss religion. Quite the contrary. Over the past 10 years, I have read and discussed with others as many books about religion as about politics.

This study and the importance of religious liberty in the founding of our nation -- a political decision made by our forebears -- has led me to want to find ways to mix religion and politics effectively and respectfully.

Recently, the public interest group People for the American Way issued its third edition of a pamphlet, “12 Rules for Mixing Religion and Politics.” It provides a direction that can be useful to the nation and to the world in securing religious liberty for us all.

Author Salman Rushdie expressed his views about mixing religion and politics in an interview with Bill Moyers in 2006 (as quoted in Moyers’ introduction to the “12 Rules”):

Citizens of a free society do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow citizens’ opinions, even their most cherished beliefs. In free societies you must have the free play of ideas, there must be an argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammeled. Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent, and full of radical disagreement. You can’t cry foul when your ideas are challenged, even when you assert your ideas of God.

Rushdie knows something about this topic. Many will remember that in 1989 Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini demanded Rushdie’s execution because of the way he portrayed the prophet Mohammed in his novel The Satanic Verses.

Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie demonstrates the same extremist impulse that has given rise to countless acts of terrorism by Islamic extremists throughout the world, though I recognize that religious grievances are not the impulse for much of the terrorism. Instead, the interpretation of the Koran by Islamic terrorists is used to justify much of the terrorism instigated for political reasons, sometimes intertwined with religious purposes.

The section of the “12 Rules” about the discussion of religion in the political arena presents several rules that are relevant to much of the religious extremism that manifests itself in violence:

Political discourse should respect religious pluralism.

Political figures and the media should not treat religious constituencies as monolithic; political and religious leaders should not claim to speak for an entire religious community on public policy issues.

Religious and political leaders should not "cry wolf" about religious persecution.

This latter rule involves the hyper-sensitivity to criticism of many religions, especially that manifested by Muslim extremists. A society where great umbrage is taken by large numbers of people to criticism of a particular religion and that umbrage leads to violence is not a free society.

Libya, for instance was under despotic rule for decades. It appears to be in the midst of a religious-driven civil war that will not lead to a free society. The attack on the American embassy seems to have been caused more by Libya’s internal conflicts than by the disrespect shown to Islam and its Prophet promoted by some Christian crackpots in America or by people of other religions who have their own religious and political agendas.

The people who commit unjustified violence for either religious or political reasons should be held accountable. Wherever such violence is a real threat, the U.S. is entitled to protect its citizens. Of equal importance is the need to have a discussion and debate in this country about America’s role in the world. Since World War II, we have not done a good job in the world by using our military dominance to bend the world to our will.

We failed in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East at large. The closest we came to a successful conclusion was the limited war directed by George H. W. Bush to push Iraq out of Kuwait.

Maybe there is a lesson there. Maybe U.S. military power will work if used for limited and clear objectives. It has not been effective when used in wars waged with constantly-changing objectives, or launched for bogus motives.

If we apply our own stated values to the rest of the world’s people, we should never again send our troops to mold the world -- or a part of it -- into our vision of progress or stability, especially when our purpose is often to control natural and economic resources, not to protect human rights.

It is time to stop assuming American exceptionalism, and start dealing with the world with respect for everyone’s rights. This is especially so if you consider them God-given rights.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Jessica Ahlquist and the Modern Day Puritans

Sixteen-year-old Jessica Ahlquist sued Cranston High School in Cranston, Rhode Island, for displaying an eight-foot tall prayer banner in the school gym. Photo by Gretchen Ertl / NYT / Facebook.
'City upon a hill':
Our modern-day Puritans and
the saga of Jessica Ahlquist

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / February 21, 2012

For those who don’t remember their grade school history lessons, during the 1600s, the Puritans were persecuted in England for trying to purify the Church of England according to their standards. King Charles I didn’t agree with the dissidents and 20,000 of them headed to the New World to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony to create an example for all. As John Winthrop, one of the colony’s governors, explained, echoing the words of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount: “We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

The problem with that “city upon a hill” was that the people would not tolerate other religions. They believed in freedom of religion only for themselves. The Pequot Indians were seen as heathens, so it was no big deal to massacre 600 of them in 1637, including burning alive many of them. The Puritans’ Rev. John Cotton believed it wrong to practice any religion other than Puritanism. To do so would be helping the devil. The only tolerance Cotton was interested in he defined as “the liberty ... to tell lies in the name of the Lord.” I guess he wanted God and his fellow citizens to tolerate his lies.

But the Puritan minister Roger Williams had other ideas. He said, “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.” He was against churches taking money from the government, forcibly taking Indians’ land, being intolerant of the religious views of others, and using the power of the government to compel obeisance to a particular religion: “[It is] against the testimony of Christ Jesus for the civil state to impose upon the souls of the people a religion . . . . Jesus never called for the sword of steel to help the sword of spirit.”

Of course, most Puritans couldn’t tolerate such views. Williams was banished and fled to what became Rhode Island to found a refuge for people of all religions and of none. So, long before anyone declared irony dead, we have in our own history a quintessential bit of double irony – a persecuted religious group flees its country to set up shop, where the group proceeds to persecute others for their religious beliefs, forcing one of their own flock to flee, seeking actual religious freedom elsewhere.

Now, we have another irony arising from Rhode Island, once the land of religious tolerance. A 16-year old girl, Jessica Ahlquist, represented by attorneys from the ACLU of Rhode Island, sued the Cranston High School in Cranston, Rhode Island, for continually displaying an 8-foot tall prayer banner in the school’s gymnasium. A federal judge held against the school in January and the school board decided a few days ago not to appeal.

Perhaps they were visited by the ghost of Roger Williams, who explained the state’s history to them. Because the question of prayer in public schools has been settled law for nearly 50 years, the school board made a wise decision. An appeal would have been a waste of taxpayer money with costs estimated by the school’s attorney at $500,000. As it is, the school may have to pay $173,000 in court costs and legal fees to Ahlquist’s attorneys for the initial litigation.

Though Ahlquist is only 16, she has an engaging intellect. Asked how she felt about those who disagree with her, she responded, “It’s almost like making a child get a shot even though they don’t want to. It’s for their own good. I feel like they might see it as a very negative thing right now, but I’m defending their Constitution, too.” The federal judge noted in his decision that Ahlquist “is clearly an articulate and courageous young woman, who took a brave stand, particularly in light of the hostile response she has received from her community.”

The judge appeared to have no doubts about the correctness of Ahlquist’s legal position, and ended his opinion with some historical observations:

Over the many years of its history, the Supreme Court has turned to the words of the Founding Fathers and the framers of the Constitution to support varying interpretations of the Establishment Clause. Many chapters have been devoted to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington and even Abraham Lincoln, and what their expectations were for the public religious practices of this nation. This Court has tried to resist the temptation of injecting lofty rhetoric into this opinion, but nonetheless was moved by the words, as quoted in Schempp [the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared school-sponsored Bible reading unconstitutional], of Roger Williams, the founder of our state, who left the Massachusetts Bay Colony in pursuit of religious liberty:

There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or human combination, or society. It hath fallen out sometimes, that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked on one ship; upon which supposal, I affirm that all the liberty of conscience I ever pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges, that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.

In addition to unconstitutional discrimination by the school, Ahlquist has been subjected to the most extreme vituperation by adults and fellow students alike. She has been called crude and offensive names for standing up for the constitutional rights guaranteed to all. She has been ridiculed and threatened to the point that extra security has been required to protect her during the school day.

Even her own Congressman, Rep. Peter Palumbo, D-R.I., called the 16-year old an "evil little thing" in an interview on an East Providence, Rhode Island radio show. And Palumbo’s castigation of the teenager continued as he referred to her as a pawn, saying "I think she is being coerced by evil people... she's being trained to do this."

Ahlquist’s case has been followed closely by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), whose Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor called Palumbo's attack "vicious, unwarranted, and irresponsible." They wrote in a letter to Palumbo,

If anything is "evil" it is your inflammatory words contributing to a situation in which an entire community, if not state, appears to be arrayed against one young, brave and diminutive teenager. Your reckless and unprofessional words as an elected state official endanger Jessica’s standing and her security in the community.

I don’t know that all the invective and threats directed at Ahlquist have been perpetrated by Christians, but it is hard to imagine the members of any other group who would be so outraged by Ahlquist’s actions. To their credit, members of several religious groups appealed for “tolerance and civility” in responding to the court decision.

More than a dozen Rhode Island religious leaders spoke about the importance of people of all faiths, as well as non-believers, being able to live free from coercion. Rabbi Peter Stein of Cranston's Temple Sinai and president of the Board of Rabbis said, "This is not about agreement or disagreement. This is about how we treat one another. The personal attacks must stop."

The clergy members included the Rev. William Zelazny of the Ballou Channing District Unitarian Universalist congregation; Imam Farid Ansari of the Muslim American Dawah Center; the Rev. Israel Mercedes of the Providence Bible Institute; and the Rev. Betsy Garland of the Rhode Island Council of Churches.

Now, a complaint has been filed against several floral shops with the State of Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights for their refusal to deliver flowers to Ahlquist sent by the FFRF. The complaint alleges “illegal discrimination based on religion” against the florists. Under Rhode Island law it is unlawful for a place of public accommodation to deny services “on account of religion.”

Altogether four florists refused to deliver flowers to Ahlquist. The FFRF found a florist in Putnam, Connecticut, who would fill the order. To date, that florist has delivered over two dozen orders to Ahlquist and to other organizations in the Cranston area in honor of Ahlquist.

It is unfortunate that some Christians believe their own rectitude gives them the right to foist their religious beliefs on others, treat those with different beliefs with contempt, discriminate against others based on religious belief, and compel the government to promote their version of religious truth. But this is the case throughout the country, not just among the historically confused residents of Rhode Island, but here in Texas as well.

One of my religious correspondents has communicated with me about prayer sponsored by the government at official meetings, writing that “I want prayer at the meetings... Christian prayer... Wiccan prayer, I believe, would bring a spiritual curse on this city... [T]his government was founded by Christians for Christians. It was not for religious tolerance of all religions... I actually believe this nation should be Christian and only Christian.”

There you have it -- an example of our modern-day Puritans. This kind of Christian will be happy only when we are all her kind of Christian. As long as we have this kind of religious intolerance, and the kind displayed in Rhode Island toward a 16-year old girl, this society will never achieve the vision of this country articulated by Ronald Reagan, who was evidently inspired by John Winthrop’s words (though not his actions) when he referred to his hope that America would become “a shining city (on a hill... teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace...”

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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