Dan Barker vs. MY City Council (HOORAY)
Offline http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/sep/01/guest-commentary-why-were-suing-memphis-city/
Guest commentary: Why we're suing Memphis City Council over prayers
The city of Memphis cannot use the 1983 Marsh v Chambers Supreme Court decision as a defense to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's complaint about prayers before council meetings.
Marsh, which allowed the Nebraska legislature to continue with attenuated ceremonial prayers, was decided on very narrow grounds, none of which excuses Memphis.
Nebraska had been praying since the beginning, and Memphis only since 1968, we understand. Such prayers, by the way, did not stop the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or prevent Memphis from falling into serious problems, but in any event, tradition does not change unlawful to lawful.
If something is unconstitutional — such as the segregation of public schools was — then the "honored" longevity of the unlawful practice only makes it worse.
(Rest of the open letter can be found at the link. I am glad somebody is finally taking on the religious nutbags that are running my city. I wished I had known about this in advance or I would have been much more involved in my spare time).
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
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Cool.
There's a similar situation happening not far from me, made slightly more complicated by the fact that our constitution doesn't clearly separate church and state the way the US constitution does.
And yet, the average American doesn't seem to understand the concept, while the average Canadian does. So even without a clear separation of church and state, we usually have more support from the population to keep them separate. Kinda odd.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Christians will whine about being persecuted, even though they are the majority, and defying principles of secularism at the expense of everybody else.
Secularist, Atheist, Skeptic, Freethinker