The U.S. Supreme Court Rejects
America's Founding Fathers

"This Court, however, squarely has rejected the proposition that the Establishment Clause is to be interpreted in light of any favoritism for Christianity that may have existed among the Founders of the Republic."

Suppose you decided to leave your estate to your church, and stated so in your will. Upon your death, an insolent and greedy relative, who makes many times more per year than the pastor of the church you named in your will, challenges your will, asking the court to ignore your bequest to the church and to direct your estate be used to supplement this relative's already bloated income. The probate court agrees, saying that to "endorse" religion by enforcing a will which "discriminates" against atheists would violate the "separation of church and state."

Is this a legitimate interpretation of the provisions of your will?

Neither does the U.S. Supreme Court engage in legitimate interpretation of the Constitution.

http://laws.findlaw.com/US/492/573.html

U.S. Supreme Court

ALLEGHENY COUNTY v. GREATER PITTSBURGH ACLU,

492 U.S. 573 (1989)

COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY ET AL. v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION,
GREATER PITTSBURGH CHAPTER, ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 87-2050.

Argued February 22, 1989
Decided July 3, 1989*

V

A

[p. 604]

JUSTICE KENNEDY'S reading of Marsh would gut the core of the Establishment Clause, as this Court understands it. The history of this Nation, it is perhaps sad to say, contains numerous examples of official acts that endorsed Christianity specifically. See M. Borden, Jews, Turks, and Infidels (1984).[53] Some of these examples date back to the Founding of the Republic,[54] but this heritage of official discrimination [492 U.S. 573, 605] against non-Christians has no place in the jurisprudence of the Establishment Clause. Whatever else the Establishment Clause may mean (and we have held it to mean no official preference even for religion over nonreligion, see, e. g., Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U.S. 1 (1989), it certainly means at the very least that government may not demonstrate a preference for one particular sect or creed (including a preference for Christianity over other religions). "The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another." Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982). There have been breaches of this command throughout this Nation's history, but they cannot diminish in any way the force of the command. Cf. Laycock, supra, n. 39, at 923.[55]

 [Footnote 53] Among the stories this scholar recounts is one that is especially apt in light of JUSTICE KENNEDY'S citation of Thanksgiving Proclamations, post, at 671:

    "When James H. Hammond, governor of South Carolina, announced a day of `Thanksgiving, Humiliation, and Prayer' in 1844, he . . . exhorted `our citizens of all denominations to assemble at their respective places of worship, to offer up their devotions to God their Creator, and his Son Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world.' The Jews of Charleston protested, charging Hammond with `such obvious discrimination and preference in the tenor of your proclamation, as amounted to an utter exclusion of a portion of the people of South Carolina.' Hammond responded that `I have always thought it a settled matter that I lived in a Christian land! And that I was the temporary chief magistrate of a Christian people. That in such a country and among such a people I should be, publicly, called to an account, reprimanded and required to make amends for acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of the world, I would not have believed possible, if it had not come to pass' (The Occident, January 1845)." Borden 142, n. 2 (emphasis in Borden).

Thus, not all Thanksgiving Proclamations fit the nonsectarian or deist mold as did those examples quoted by JUSTICE KENNEDY. Moreover, the Jews of Charleston succinctly captured the precise evil caused by such sectarian proclamations as Governor Hammond's: they demonstrate an official preference for Christianity and a corresponding official discrimination against all non-Christians, amounting to an exclusion of a portion of the political community. It is against this very evil that the Establishment Clause, in part, is directed. Indeed, the Jews of Charleston could not better have formulated the essential concepts of the endorsement inquiry.

[Footnote 54] In 1776, for instance, Maryland adopted a "Declaration of Rights" that allowed its legislature to impose a tax "for the support of the Christian religion" and a requirement that all state officials declare "a belief in the Christian religion." 1 A. Stokes, Church and State in the United States 865-866 (1950). Efforts made in 1797 to remove these discriminations against non-Christians were unsuccessful. Id., at 867. See also id., at 513 (quoting [492 U.S. 573, 605] the explicitly Christian proclamation of President John Adams, who urged all Americans to seek God's grace "through the Redeemer of the world" and "by His Holy Spirit").

[Footnote 55] JUSTICE KENNEDY evidently believes that contemporary references to exclusively Christian creeds (like the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus) in official acts or proclamations is justified by the religious sentiments of those responsible for the adoption of the First Amendment. See 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 1874, p. 663 (1858) (at the time of the First Amendment's adoption, "the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state"). This Court, however, squarely has rejected the proposition that the Establishment Clause is to be interpreted in light of any favoritism for Christianity that may have existed among the Founders of the Republic. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S., at 52.

"Discrimination:"

The U.S. Constitution ends with this paragraph:

done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,

How does this "discriminate" against Jews? The Declaration of Independence speaks of:

Does this "discriminate" against atheists?

Was the "establishment clause" of the First Amendment really, honestly, historically "designed" to prevent these "evils?"

Taxing unbelievers to support believers is, to be sure, evil.

Christmas as "Hate Speech"

Opinion of the Court, p. 611:

Celebrating Christmas as a religious, as opposed to a secular, holiday, necessarily entails professing, proclaiming, or believing that Jesus of Nazareth, born in a manager in Bethlehem, is the Christ, the Messiah. If the government celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday (for example, by issuing an official proclamation saying: "We rejoice in the glory of Christ's birth!"), it means that the government really is declaring Jesus to be the Messiah, a specifically Christian belief. In contrast, confining the government's own celebration of Christmas to the holiday's secular aspects does not favor the religious beliefs of non-Christians over those of Christians. Rather, it simply permits the government to acknowledge the holiday without expressing an allegiance to [492 U.S. 573, 612] Christian beliefs, an allegiance that would truly favor Christians over non-Christians. To be sure, some Christians may wish to see the government proclaim its allegiance to Christianity in a religious celebration of Christmas, but the Constitution does not permit the gratification of that desire, which would contradict the "`the logic of secular liberty'" it is the purpose of the Establishment Clause to protect. See Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S., at 244, quoting B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 265 (1967).

But if the Christian club wanted to sing Christmas carols before a high school football game, that would doubtless be "unconstitutional."

Of course, not all religious celebrations of Christmas located on government property violate the Establishment Clause. It obviously is not unconstitutional, for example, for a group of parishioners from a local church to go caroling through a city park on any Sunday in Advent or for a Christian club at a public university to sing carols during their Christmas meeting. Cf. Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263 (1981).58 The reason is that activities of this nature do not demonstrate the government's allegiance to, or endorsement of, the Christian faith.

The Court in Santa Fe v. Doe held that if the government does not suppress religious speech, that would amount to an unconstitutional "endorsement."

It was not against the intentions of the Founding Fathers to permit prayer -- or even an entire church service -- in a government building. During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, church services were held every Sunday in Congress. "The Gospel was also preached in the Supreme Court chambers." (Library of Congress)

Equally obvious, however, is the proposition that not all proclamations of Christian faith located on government property are permitted by the Establishment Clause just because they occur during the Christmas holiday season, as the example of a Mass in the courthouse surely illustrates. And once the judgment has been made that a particular proclamation of Christian belief, when disseminated from a particular location on government property, has the effect of demonstrating the government's endorsement of Christian faith, then it necessarily follows that the practice must be enjoined to protect the constitutional rights of those citizens who follow some creed other than Christianity. It is thus incontrovertible that the Court's decision today, premised on the determination that the creche display on the Grand Staircase demonstrates [492 U.S. 573, 613] the county's endorsement of Christianity, does not represent a hostility or indifference to religion but, instead, the respect for religious diversity that the Constitution requires.59

Where does the Constitution -- or any part of America's Organic Law -- say that unbelievers have a right not to have the government acknowledge God or our duties to Him?