Supreme Prejudice: Scalia Says Government Can Promote Religion [View All]

The U.S. Supreme Court is gearing up to come back into session Oct. 5, and just in time for that, Justice Antonin Scalia has decided to pop off in the media about how much he hates church-state separation - again!

In what is billed as an "Historic Exclusive Interview" in the Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish newspaper Hamodia, Scalia attacks one of the core concepts of church-state separation - the idea that government must remain neutral between religion and non-religion.




To Scalia, this is all stuff and nonsense. He believes the government should be able to prefer religion. Government neutrality on religious matters, he says, "is not an accurate representation of what Americans believe."

Scalia goes on to assert that in the 1960s and `70s, when the high court was much more separationist than it is now, it was in fact "hostile" to religion.

"I am not sure how Orthodox Jews feel about the Establishment Clause, but I assume they do not like driving God out of public life," he observes.

Admittedly, I don't move in Scalia's rarefied circles, but I see little evidence of God being driven out of public life. It's true that government is not supposed to promote religion, but people still can - and they do.

Scalia denies that his personal religious views have influenced the way he votes, but then he cuts loose with this gem: "There is a quote attributed to various people from Bismarck down to Charles de Gaulle. I prefer to attribute it to Charles de Gaulle because it sounds like him. `God protects,' he said, `little children, drunkards and the United States of America.' I think it may be true. And the reason may be because we honor Him as a nation. We invoke Him in our country, our Presidents invoke Him, my court open its sessions with `God save the United States.' Those things are not insignificant." (...)

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/9/24/111742/739

Original:

http://www.hamodia.com/inthepaper.cfm?ArticleID=370