Tomorrow SCOTUS May Rule Public Prayer by Coaches and Players Is Not an Erosion of A “Bedrock of Democracy” No Matter What the Media Claim – Opinion

There will be several major Supreme Court decisions in the coming weeks that will impact America’s future. The future is what all eyes are on. Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,This was originally an effort by pro-abortists to keep their power to kill more children. However, the leaked draft of Justice Alito’s decision (Politico Tries To Pre-Game SCOTTUS by Publishing Leaked Draft Ofpinion Overturning Roe) may lead to Moloch being throttled. Next, there is a gun rights case that seems guaranteed to dismantle the unconstitutional “may issue” laws that prevent all but a sliver of American citizens from carrying firearms outside the home (Supreme Court Conservatives Maul New York’s Restrictive Concealed Carry Law in First Major Second Amendment Case in a Decade). A school choice case in Maine, “The Left Goes Nuts, as the Supreme Court Seems To Signal that Their Monopoly of Propagandizing Kids is at an End”, will be last. Hosanna-Tabor, Trinity LutheranAnd EspinozaThe Blaine Amendments were destroyed and all private secular schools are prohibited from being treated more favourably than religious schools.

A school prayer case that originated in Washington has received little attention. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. Here are the details. While the facts might seem a bit murky, the argument is quite simple. An American citizen can offer prayers at an event in which no one else is allowed to, but his employer, a school district, could fire him.

It is expected that the decision will be 6-3 for the right to a football coach to pray. This will overturn some other stupid Supreme Court religious decisions. The left views this as an existential emergency. While they arrogate to themselves the right to groom your children, they scream “Armageddon!” at the mention of the name of Our Lord and the spread of His teachings.

The case against a coach of public schools football who wishes to go on-field praying after games will be heard by the Supreme Court.@GregBishopSI on Joe Kennedy, the machine backing him and the expected result: a win for Kennedy and an erosion of a bedrock of American democracy: https://t.co/H8tEoQauZh pic.twitter.com/XCmjK0qQsO

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) June 13, 2022

Although this article has 7,000+ words it seems that the focus of my writing is on Joe Kennedy (the plaintiff) rather than discrediting him. The only reason I slogged my way through the morass of nothingness was to find out how in the hell a man praying in a football stadium could possibly qualify as “an erosion of a bedrock of American democracy.”

Sports Illustrated frames it this way.

[Lead lawyer for Bremerton School District and the president/CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Rachel] Laser’s wider argument starts with a baseline, for both camps: two sides of a country that stand on opposite ends of a vast and growing and existential divide. Both push for their version of “rights.” Both cling to the same document, the U.S. Constitution. Laser draws a vital distinction. How they push. She says that one side relies on facts. They are distorted by the other, she claims. Four scholars concurred. She (and three of the scholars) define the latter side as “white Christian nationalists.” They believe America was created by a preeminence of people like themselves and should always have laws in place that reflect America’s origins.

Many of those nationalists, Laser continues (and four scholars agree), live in a country they claim to no longer recognize, and, many of them see an “other” America that now exists in its place. One that elected its first Black president (2008), embraced the end of a white Christian majority (’14), hailed marriage equality (’15) and elected a record number of women to Congress (124 last year).

Despite its decline in numbers, the Christian conservative base has been reenergized and strengthened over the last seven years. That owes mostly to Donald Trump’s presidency, his proposed Muslim ban and anti-immigration stances, his border wall and inciting rhetoric; and his appointments of religious conservatives to the judiciary’s most powerful positions.

The Christian conservative undertaking—described by three Kennedy supporters to SI as “a war”—led to an informal playbook, a strategy that Laser refers to as “jujitsu” and others (including two scholars) describe as “white Christian fragility.” At its core, they argue, is an intentional misdirection built not on facts but fear. Like when religious conservatives claimed that advocates for same-sex marriage aren’t in favor of equal rights but anti-religion. When groups fighting for genuine equality are described as wanting it, they mean that they want to Take from Christians. This logic twisting renders the arguments null-sum, and concludes that Christian nationists have lost Their rights—all to maintain a culture-war strategy that hinges on a gross oversimplification of stakes.

“That’s what this case is about,” Laser says. “A movement that is so determined they are not willing to stop. They are willing to destroy our democracy to achieve their ends.”

The movement, according to Laser and three scholars, is backed by a billion-dollar industry that brands its argument not under “Christian nationalism” but the more palatable “religious freedom.” Laser (and three scholars) say that’s part of the disinformation campaign. The briefs supporting Kennedy at the SCOTUS docket were filed by organizations which have publicly argued for Muslim travel ban, voting rights, LGBTQ rights and overturning Roe v. Wade. She describes the ledger as a “who’s who of religious extremists in this country.” (Responding to that characterization via email, First Liberty special counsel Jeremy Dys wrote, “I have not heard that. All I know is that this would represent. [Kennedy] regardless of his faith.”)

You got it? You are faithful to American democracy and the Constitution if you wish to ban public prayers. If you want to pray in public, you are a “white Christian nationalist” obsessed with “white replacement theory” and quite possibly a virulent racist in the process.

Lawrence Tribe, who, when not talking about Trump, can appear to be lucid, occupies the middle ground of the “experts” interviewed by Sports Illustrated. He doesn’t support the bizarre stance pushed by Laser, but he thinks her view should prevail.

The conservatives gained another member of their team when Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett (a conservative judge) to the Supreme Court’s Supreme Court in 2020. There were more Kennedy rulings, and many appeals. But in Sept. 2021, as foreshadowed, SCOTUS put Kennedy on its docket—only with an even larger conservative majority to weigh in.

To Tribe and three of the other scholars, that’s not a good thing. He predicts SCOTUS will rule, 6–3, in Kennedy’s favor. And if that happens, he says, America “will look much more authoritarian.” He highlights Roe v. Wade, as an example, pointing out that those in favor of overruling the decision are a clear minority (around 33% according to a recent Gallup poll). “Because of gerrymandering, they’re exercising the majority of the power, and they have a court with true believers,” he says. “The country is rapidly heading into a less-and-less situation. It’s less democratic and less inclusive.

“And, in the long run, that will make us all less free.”

I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but the “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution. The way it is interpreted by the Bremerton School District, and many of the experts quoted in this story doesn’t reflect most of the history or any of the founding of the United States. Yes, there were some “Deists” that the left likes to trot out as proof that the Founders weren’t religious, but they were a minority. All the states had to require that office-holders were Christians when the Founding was made. A third of states taxed their citizens to help support an established church. In the Colonial era, most colonies fined people for not attending church, I’m not sure when that ended, but the fact that it was commonplace would have been known to the Founders. Blue laws that covered most commercial activities were in existence well into 1970s. They still apply to liquor sales in almost half the country; they have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Taken in context, Jefferson’s (in)famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association is not referring to the absence of religion from government; he is clearly referring to the necessity of preventing the government from meddling in the affairs of denominations or coercing the conscience of the individual towards a particular faith. In other words, even Jefferson didn’t contemplate barring religion and religious observance from the public square.

The argument of the Supreme Court is not my contention. However, every day Americans face an incessant barrage from proselytizing for Modernist and Secularist denominations. This could be anything, from Marxism or Climate Change to Diversity, Inclusion and Equity. All of them share the same core beliefs: salvation, creation, fallen from grace, redemption and original sin. All of them have commands that must be followed and shibboleths that must be mastered or you will face expulsion. Actually, Coach Kennedy was trying to make an actual religion comparable with existing state-sponsored religions.

What makes this more absurd is the same people who claim a football coach praying alone, or with some members of both teams, on the playing field makes some spectators feel excluded, or uncomfortable are perfectly happy defending “drag queen story hour” at the public library, teaching gay sexual methodology and transgenderism to students, and requiring everyone to agree that there is such a thing as “birthing people” and a woman swimmer named “Lia Thomas,” and calling you a bigot if you object or feel like showering with lighter fluid and a Brillo pad after listening.

I hope the decision in this case starts rolling back Anthony Kennedy’s overly hostile-to-religion jurisprudence that ended up barring prayers from school altogether. The decision will allow us to, as with Dobbs’ and Texas Heartbeat Laws, open the door for the dismantling of unconstitutional or unconscionable limitations on freedom of religion.