Pawtucket next in fight over 1st Amendment

Posted on February 22, 2012 by tduvally

Mark McBurney has penned an Op-Ed regarding an upcoming fight in Pawtucket, RI regarding a 1st Amendment Violation.  Here is that Op-Ed in full.

PAWTUCKET AND CRANSTON ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT
by Mark McBurney

Cranston’s residents acted unchristianly when the Federal Court ruled January 11 that Cranston West’s High School prayer banner violated the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Sixteen year old plaintiff Jessica Ahlquist received hate mail and death threats, a state representative called her “an evil little thing” and even local flower shops refused to make deliveries to her. The national news media (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News) fairly portrayed Cranston as “throbbing with raw emotion.” It was not Cranston’s, or Catholicism’s, finest hour.

Pawtucket’s turn in the First Amendment limelight is next. Two similar First Amendment Establishment Clause cases are pending in RI Federal District Court, both dealing with the City’s policy of covertly providing preferential and free use of athletic fields to St. Raphael Academy since 1967. While it is hard to imagine St. Ray’s parents behaving as badly as Cranston’s, it won’t take much for the national news media to come swooping back.

Litigation was eminently avoidable: If Mayor Grebien hadn’t flip-flopped on the issue once he got into office, or if he now changed a single word in City policy; if Pawtucket City Councilors had shown an ounce of leadership instead of going Missing in Action; if Bishop Tobin had simply instructed St. Rays to stop taking subsidies from a near-bankrupt city; if St. Rays had paid token rent to use our fields instead of building itself a multi-million dollar gym it refuses to share. Each juncture offered an opportunity to avoid litigation. Each time, these ‘leaders’ thumbed their nose, rolled the dice and sacrificed the First Amendment for their own advancement. And why not? Like Wall Street Bankers, they are gambling with our money, not theirs. If Pawtucket gets embarrassed, like Cranston, they just don’t care.

It seems as if RI cities only make national news for their misdeeds (bankruptcy, corruption, death threats against teen agers, reactionary “Christian” rage). It would be a shame if Pawtucket joined that ilk for an issue so easily avoidable. With a $13 million dollar debt, we shouldn’t be subsidizing anything, least of all a religion in violating of the First Amendment. If a Muslim school asked for taxpayer subsidies the same way that St. Rays has demanded them for the last 50 years, would City leaders, or St. Ray’s parents, be as generous? We might just find out.

(The author is lead attorney in Arneson vs. Grebien, one of the two First Amendment suits against Pawtucket pending in RI Federal District Court).

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Appeal

Posted on January 24, 2012 by cdwan

I won’t be able to attend any of the hearings of the Cranston school board as they try to decide whether or not to appeal their loss in the recent lawsuit. Here are some thoughts from a distance.

I’ve read the comments both in the Providence Journal and in other forums. Discounting the disgusting attacks and the barely disguised bigotry, there is still a clear and vocal population who object to the outcome itself. Their objections, from what I can tell, do not center on the facts of the case. The facts are simple and undisputed. The objections also do not center on the technical matters of the ruling. The law itself, as well as the legal precedent all the way up to the Supreme Court are abundantly clear. There was little space for opinion in the judge’s ruling. He identified the relavent facts, applied existing legal precedent, and turned the crank.

An appeal is a complete waste of time. This outcome is a result of current law applied to actual facts. Nobody is claiming that the facts are different, or that the law was incorrectly applied.

I think that the community objects to the law itself. There seems to be a vocal minority who think that public schools should be allowed to have a school prayer on the wall. They say that, far from being a historical artifact, that prayer should be respected as a symbol of the school. Part of the community yearns for a return to an imagined time when civic life in Cranston was explicitly Christian. I read the commentary as saying that public schools, and government at large, should acknowledge and endorse the majority religion. Minority groups, including atheists, should certainly be tolerated, but we should know our place and accept that place with gratitude. Gratitude and, more importantly, silence.

I disagree with this perspective rather strongly, but it’s good to clarify what they’re saying. I encourage them to skip the appeal, leave the school board out of it, and pursue a constitutional amendment to change the law.

I think that the school board should vote to not appeal the decision. Their role as elected public servants is to run the school district as best they can in accordance with existing law. It took a Federal judge to clarify that law, but that’s done now. The school board is not the correct body to advocate for changes in the law. Besides the obvious conflict of interest, much time and effort has been wasted on what is really a comparatively small matter. The school board should turn their attention to more pressing matters with a direct impact on many more students.

The Atheist community should also support the school board in their mission by bringing this matter to a dignified and swift conclusion. We do ourselves no favors by rabble rousing and distracting a government agency from their core mission.

Some members of the community are looking for a fairly substantial change in the law. I suspect that what they want would require a constitutional amendment at the federal level. If this is important to them, I honestly encourage them to pursue that route. Democracy works best when all options are on the table, debate is open and honest, and all perspectives are represented.

The community should take on that task. Let’s hear them state their proposal clearly. Then we can find out what the majority actually has to say about their supposed majority religion and it’s supposedly wonderful effects on government. That’s a bet I’m ready to take.

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Prayer Banner, Redux

Posted on January 15, 2012 by cdwan

Jessica Alqhuist is a student at West Cranston High School in RI. I’ve written about her before. She’s the one who noticed that her school still displayed its “School Prayer” (a relic from the 50′s) on a large banner (a relic from the 60′s) in the auditorium. Initially, the prayer was a mandatory daily recitation by all the students in place of the Lord’s Prayer. From “Heavenly Father,” right on through to “AMEN.” In the early 60′s they stopped the prayer recitation in favor of a moment of silence but never bothered to take down the banner. This year, Jessica asked that it be removed. School officials said “no,” so she took it to the school board. After a couple of raucous public hearings where people said horrible things about and to her, the board voted (against its own written policy) to retain the banner. Jessica, with her family’s support, approached the ACLU – who helped her to bring a lawsuit to force the issue.

This week, a Federal judge issued a judgement that the banner must come down immediately. The full text of the judge’s decision is a clear, lucid, and highly readable summary both of what happened and what the law says about all parts of it. It’s a good read, and I highly recommend it.

The touchstone for our analysis is the principle that the First Amendment
mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between
religion and nonreligion. When the government acts with the ostensible and
predominant purpose of advancing religion, it violates that central Establishment
Clause value of official religious neutrality, there being no neutrality when the
government’s ostensible object is to take sides.

Or, if that’s too long, he says it again later on: The Government must not appear to take sides on issues of religious beliefs.

He notes that public schools are held to a higher standard because kids are impressionable, and wraps up. As I mentioned back in April, this is a simple case.

Between the lines, the judge is pretty clear that Cranston shot itself in the foot with all the bible thumping and yelling that took place at the hearings. “The Court concludes that Cranston’s purposes in installing and, more recently, voting to retain the Prayer Mural are not clearly secular”. He’s being polite. People at the school board meeting professed their own Christian faith, screamed at Jessica, called her a witch, and told her to go to hell. The school board members themselves felt compelled to make declarations of personal faith prior to casting their votes. If the townspeople had come out and calmly said, “it’s a historical artifact, religion has nothing to do with this,” it would have been a slightly harder sell. As it is, the town revealed its religious purpose in the banner, and thus were forced to take it down.

Or, as the kids say: P0wned.

I got to meet Jessica back in June, shortly after the kerfuffle started. I’m an occasional contributor to Freethought RI, an atheist radio show. I happened to be in the studio when she stopped by to share her thoughts on the air. She’s a well spoken and charming person who seemed honestly surprised that this has become such a big deal.

At the time, I recall that I downplayed the situation to her. I remember encouraging her to not get too hung up on it. Jessica is completely in the right on this one, which is rare in life. When you’re absolutely, completely correct, my opinion is that you should go ahead and run with it. In the grand sweep of things the prayer banner is a small matter. Any actual injuries the banner’s presence caused her are incredibly slight. There are much larger fish to fry, even in the ongoing squabble between theists and non.

Unfortunately, my analysis missed something. I’ve lived in the North, in big University towns for a long time. I live in a safe little bubble where even the guy who works the cash register at the gas station probably has a college degree and some mature thoughts on current social affairs. I had forgotten what I learned growing up in the South: There are some incredibly violent knuckle draggers out there. People exist, right here in America, who will actually, literally take you in the woods and beat you to death for crimes like failing to be Christian enough, being gay, dressing the wrong way, loving the wrong person, being the wrong color, and so on.

Jessica lifted a rock and exposed a nest of those sorts of people in Cranston. She’s endured some truly vile treatment, in person and online. The comment stream on the Providence Journal articles covering the story are an open sewer of bigotry. One blogger has captured a few dozen of the juiciest pieces of online asshattery. It’s nauseating. The police are investigating the online threats that she’s been receiving, and so on.

So while I still think that Jessica should wrap this up and turn her considerable talents to more important things – I was wrong to downplay the banner. Perhaps I’m wrong to think of prejudice against non-christians in America as a solved and trivial problem. Turns out that when you go after one of their symbols, theres still a decent slice of that community who get spitting mad. Of course, they’re not running campaigns of punitive rape or using child soldiers to raze villages. What we have in Cranston are first world problems, but they are serious problems nonetheless.

The silver lining is that when the world at large looks at the situation, it seems to come down squarely on Jessica’s side. Reddit held an “Ask me Anything” for Jessica and it’s really smart. Beyond Cranston and Providence, in the broader world, commentators are incredibly supportive. That night in June on the radio show we received a record number of calls from all over the country – every single one of them expressing support.

Unless we can talk openly and honestly about things, we’ll never change any minds. It’s hard to get the bigots out in the open. They’ve learned to keep to themselves as the culture matures. You draw a lot of heat and fire when you pull them from their holes. Hopefully at least one of the violent idiots Jessica exposed will look around at some point and see that the world is laughing at them.

Changing minds would be the real victory. The banner itself is small change.

Also posted on my personal blog.

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Our Governor’s Mistake

Posted on December 7, 2011 by tduvally

So, by now everyone is thoroughly familiar with the Rhode Island Holiday Tree Debacle. There have been phone-calls. There have been articles. There have been people shouting down the voices of young children. This may be the first big battlefield in the annual “War On Christmas” (trademark Faux News).

With a tree paid for by our taxes and placed on Public property, Governor Chafee had a good idea to try and make this government sponsored celebration a little more open to the people of his state who are not Christian. His evocation of Roger Williams’s desire for full religious tolerance is as patriotic and modest a request as a man can ask. In reaching out a hand to his fellow Rhode Islanders who are not of the same faith as him he seeks to bring the promise of a secular government back into view.

This was not his mistake.

As we have seen around the country for the last several years holiday displays have become very controversial. From the FFRF’s signs in Wisconsin, Washington and Illinois to a “Knowledge Tree” in Pennsylvania and Washington, non-believer groups have been getting their message added to the seasonal displays due to the legal requirements that a government not discriminate on matters of religion. This has led municipalities to make the stark choice: include everything or nothing at all.

This was also not Governor Chafee’s mistake.

The Governor was trying to make inclusive something that was exclusive.  He was attempting to apply an open, tolerant and peaceful desire to a closed and insular symbol. Forget the changing nature of the history of the Christmas tree itself, it has a current meaning to many people as a Christian symbol of a central Christian doctrinal celebration. And as much as the songs and homilies speak of “Peace on Earth” and “Good Will Toward Men” many Christians expect peace as the result of Christian domination of the world. The words are kind, but the history of deeds is more telling, and that history is of a closed and tightly controlled doctrine.

And as ignorant as the critics sound when they asked if a Menorah would become a “Holiday Candle Set”, they might actually have a good point. Is it OK to re-purpose a cultures symbols for new uses? Lincoln Chafee, as a Catholic, is reworking his own symbols, but as a governor his “secular culture” is doing the co-opting. Is it unreasonable to expect Christians to not see that as slight against their religion?

Sure, sure, sure… I know that many (if not most) Christian symbolism is itself lifted from some other source, most notably European paganism, but does this mean it’s OK to steal it from them?

Well, symbols are symbols, not property or person. They have no feelings nor desires. Akin to art, they mean what you want them to mean.  And like art they evoke emotion. That may, in fact, be their only purpose and what you do to a symbol will, without fail, evoke even more emotion. Not all of it positive. I suppose it all depends on the result you were going for.

The outpouring of emotion of the last week has been anything but inclusive. Fueled by sensational news stories and one-sided radio hosts people have attacked the Governor. They see him as trying to take Christ out of Christmas and as bowing down to the forces of “political correctness”. They were angry that his was trying to make the celebration of Christmas match its story.

That was the Governor’s mistake.

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Militant-ism – for your consideration

Posted on October 17, 2011 by admin

(via Friendly Atheist, via LOL God)

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Pascal’s Wager debunked

Posted on October 3, 2011 by tduvally

Even if you don’t know it’s name, you have likely heard Pascal’s Wager.  I would expect that nearly every Christian has used this argument at least once in their lives.  It is the easiest and least complex apologetic (aside from “na-huh”) and seems to be a standard fall-back for any Christian who feels a debate is not going their way.

In case you’re not sure which argument I’m referring to, I will define Pascal’s Wager here.

Even without evidence a rational person should still wager as though God exists since one has everything to gain and nothing to lose.  The “payout” of the belief wager breaks down like this:

  • God exists
    • If true: reward (eternal life)
    • If false: no penalty
  • Non-belief
    • If true: no penalty
    • If false: penalty (hell)

As you can see from this simple breakdown, one would be making a safe bet, were this kind of wager even possible.  Yet this argument is flawed in many ways, both as Pascal formulated it and how it is general used.

Lottery, not “even money”

While Blaise Pascal formulated this as a way to live ones life, it’s general use it based on simple belief. If one believes, on will be rewarded.  But we know this is too simple a wager.

There is no known religion on earth that requires mere belief of it’s adherents. There are quite literally 10s of thousands of Christian denominations, sects, and cults.  All of them exist apart from each other despite all of their members believing in the same God and yet they all require something different.  This is the same an there being 10s of thousands of different Gods, each one a new chance at heaven (and hell).

Now add the 2 other Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, each with many denominations, sects, and cults.  Now the lottery has expanded to 100s of thousands of chances to get it right (or wrong).  And this is all in regards to the same God! Hindu, ancestor worship and animism add thousands upon thousands more. If we add the over 1 million other gods we know of from recorded history, we are now rivaling the odds presented by your standard multi-million dollar national lottery.  Hundreds of millions to 1 odds.  Good luck.

The Safest Bet

Possibly the best betting strategy to use in that sort of lottery is to simply avoid the worst possible penalty.  Essentially you need to determine the worst hell available from all the choices and then believe in that god.  This strategy allows you to automatically avoid the worst possible penalty.  Any other hell is objectively better than your god’s hell.

Considering that no one seems to use this argument for belief in a particular god, it is the clearest indication that Pascal’s wager is merely a rhetorical tactic and not an actual motivation for belief.

Manipulation Through Fear

Pascal’s wager is generally a last line of defense for an arguing theist.  If they have been unable to convince someone with what they consider evidence they will resort to emotional arguments and what amount to intimidation. Expecting someone to agree with your positions because if they don’t they will suffer is not a reasonable argument, it’s extortion.  Now, I will grant that the theist in this case is not the one actually making the direct threat, but they are the one passing it along.  They are letting you know the consequences of not doing what “the boss” wants you to do.  This is the way it seems to be most often used.

The Best Wager: A Moral Alternative

I recently encountered what I consider the best response to Pascal’s Wager.  It turns the tables on the theist using it and forces them to consider not only the wager, but also the motives of their God.  It’s called the Atheist’s Wager.

Consider living your life dedicated to helping others and reducing the amount suffering in the world.  Do this without any belief in or regard for the existence of a god.

If you are correct you lose nothing, but have greatly helped those around you and will be remembered fondly.

If you are wrong, a benevolent god will judge you on the merits of your life and reward you for it.  In fact he may be more inclined to reward you since you lived your good life without expecting one.

This makes much more sense, since it really reducing the options down to 2: non-belief or belief.

And should a theist counter that God requires belief, the response is simple: Then he can no longer be describes with words like “benevolent” and “just”.  The God being discussed can now only be described with words like “vain” and “cruel”.  Even if God required both a good life and belief he will still choose to punish a good person for his own vanity.

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