The stupidity of the masses...

I keep reading stories on news sites about people's objections to various religious references in public places. Most recently where a street in NY was named "Seven in Heaven" to honor firefighters who died on 9/11. To quote one of the complainers: "The attacks on 9/11 were an attack on America. They were an attack on our Constitution and breaking that Constitution to honor these firefighters is the wrong thing to do." 

How have we gone so far astray in our country in our misinterpretation of the First Amendment to our Constitution concerning the separation of church and state? Our forefathers left England to escape, among other things, the imposition of the monarchy-mandated Church of England. To prevent that from happening again, the framers of the Constitution added the Bill of Rights amendment that states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

We have turned that reasonable prohibition of a state-sponsored religion into a crusade against all aspects of Christianity (still the country’s major religious contingent) in virtually every public institution – the courts, the schools, local government, federal government. While we seem to be able to approve the building of an Islamic mosque within eyeshot of the former World Trade Center, we are now not supposed to list the Ten Commandments in public places, use the phrase “one nation under God” in our pledge of allegiance, do not permit voluntary prayer time in our schools, and are under pressure to take “in God we trust” off our currency and coin.

What does this have to do with the disallowance of a government establishment of religion, let alone free exercise of it? Nothing! It has to do with political correctness run amok, catering to any minority that expresses objection to what another group feels is important. This is a significant misinterpretation of what is actually written in the Constitution.

I am neither a religious zealot nor a constitutional authority, but the wording quoted above, to me, specifically allows the expression of Christian faith in public places as it also allows the building of a mosque in New York, the celebration of Kwanza, or the rights of Jews to celebrate Hanukkah or Yom Kippur in a public place. If, for example, the Jewish community wants to place a menorah in front of the Courthouse for Hanukkah or Muslims want to have a public celebration of their faith during Ramadan, they should be given that opportunity if they meet the requisite rules just as Christians should be allowed to have a nativity scene on display during Christmas. The same holds true for Hindus, Buddhists, Jews or Animists – and, yes, even Atheists. But to allow any one of those groups to protest an equivalent celebration by another and to have such protests agreed to by the authorities violates the Constitution, is discrimination in the extreme and should not be tolerated.

I totally concur with the principle of not permitting a state-sponsored or even a state-supported religion. But that disallowance does not extend to the public celebration of a faith (or lack of faith).