Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Time’s Up for the Endorsement Test?

At the First Things site today, I have a post on The American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the Maryland Peace Cross case, in which the Court granted cert last month. I argue that the Court could use the opportunity to get rid of the endorsement test in Establishment Clause cases. Here’s an excerpt:

Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to consider an important Establishment Clause case from Maryland, The American Legion v. American Humanist Association. The case, which presents a challenge to a Maryland cemetery’s use of a 40-foot cross as a public war memorial, gives the Court a chance to clarify its views on the constitutionality of state-sponsored religious displays. In particular, the case provides an opportunity for the Court to do away with the so-called “endorsement test,” which holds that a display violates the Constitution if a hypothetical, reasonable observer would see it as an endorsement of religion. Conservatives have criticized the endorsement test for decades, and with a new majority on the Court, they may finally have the votes to discard it. American Legion could turn out to be one of the most significant Establishment Clause cases in a long time.

American Legion is also the subject of a recent “Legal Spirits” episode Marc and I recorded. But you have already listened to that. Right?

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 1 Comment

Faith or Tradition? A Bolognese Easter Controversy

Here’s an interesting story about an Italian controversy concerning the giving ofGIOSUE-CARDUCCI a blessing at the public Giosuè Carducci Elementary School in Bologna in advance of Easter. Apparently there is an objection by a parent to the blessing that has generated a law suit against the school. In a lovely exemplar of the privatization of religion, the objecting parent opined, “Everything has a place, and the school is not the place for these blessings.” One wonders whether the public square is the place for San Petronio. And in a clear echo of the “endorsement test’s” concern for offended feelings and excluded sensibilities, there is this: “‘Is it fair that everyone has to see this, even if some students are Muslims, Buddhist or atheists?’ asked Adele Orioli, legal adviser to Italy’s Union of Atheists and Rationalistic Agnostics.” There is also some dispute among the school board members about where the blessing should be given, whether in a central garden location or instead in a less central (and probably danker and less sweet smelling) gymnasium. Finally, there is this from the Reverend Raffaele Buono, who oversees religious education in Bologna’s schools:  “It is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of belonging to a tradition.” Must it really be either/or, Reverend Buono?

Welcome, Italy, to issues that have plagued the United States for the last quarter century! You had your first taste with Lautsi, but believe me when I tell you that these will be sources of limitless acrimony and contention for you. We over here are waiting with bated breath to see whether Bologna will be compelled to rip down its statues of San Petronio and house them in privately owned palestre. (parenthetically, Carducci himself (pictured), a late Risorgimento nationalist writer whose poetry I have generally found to be abominably pompous, would almost certainly have held the Christian blessing in the greatest contempt).

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 2 Comments

More on Subway “Viewpoint” Ads

Here’s a follow up to last week’s post about disclaimers on “viewpoint” ads in the New York City subway. In the post, I complained about the unfair treatment the policy affords to ads with religious messages, like the one I described from Marble Collegiate Church.

As Perry Dane explains, though, the disclaimer policy is not directed at religion per se. It applies generally to noncommercial ads that express viewpoints on “political, religious, or moral issues or related matters.” The Metropolitan Transit Authority adopted the policy after losing a 2012 lawsuit over display of anti-Islam ads. A federal district court ruled that, because the subway is a public forum, the MTA could not constitutionally refuse to display the ads. So the MTA decided to add the disclaimer to them and all other “viewpoint” ads, in order to avoid any implication of government endorsement. (The sponsor of the 2012 ads, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, is currently suing the MTA over display of a new anti-Islam ad, which the MTA refuses to display even with the disclaimer, on the ground that the ad may incite violence).

Still, whatever the formal policy, the MTA appears to apply it in a rather arbitrary way. I did a little research over the weekend. From what I could find, the policy has been applied to the AFDI ads; an ad for a Spanish-language Catholic television station; an ad from the Brooklyn Diocese featuring Pope Francis; and the Marble Collegiate ad I wrote about last week. All religious. What about disclaimers on ads that express viewpoints on political, moral, and related matters? Perhaps there are examples, but I couldn’t find any. More importantly, in no time at all I found three such ads without disclaimers.

IMG_20141221_174338_374First, there’s this ad for New York Cares, a volunteer organization that runs an annual coat drive. The ad clearly expresses a moral viewpoint, namely, that many New Yorkers go without winter coats, and the community has a moral obligation to respond. In fact, the ad’s use of the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of America and the refuge it has provided for the world’s “huddled masses,” adds a political dimension. How can we tolerate such poverty in this great republic of ours? To be sure, these messages are non-verbal, but that’s what makes them so powerful. There’s no MTA disclaimer.

08-airbnb-2.w529.h421.2xOr take this ad for Airbnb, a website that helps people rent space in their apartments to strangers for short stays. This ad campaign, which features New Yorkers saying how great Airbnb is for the city, has a political message as well, though you might not spot it if you’re not from New York. The company is trying to get the state legislature to loosen a law that restricts the use of private apartments as hotels. The ads are an obvious attempt to win public support for that effort. Still, notwithstanding the ad’s political implications, there’s no MTA disclaimer.

HillaryFinally, here’s the latest ad campaign for Manhattan Mini Storage. The company is famous for ironic, edgy ads that appeal, I guess, to sophisticated New York subway riders. Here, the political message seems pretty clear. True, this might be just another ironic ad (“Can you believe she’s running again?”) but I don’t think so, given the partisan messages in the company’s past ad campaigns, like ones poking fun at Michelle Bachmann and advocating gay marriage. Yet, again, no MTA disclaimer.

Now, the MTA would presumably defend its choice not to put disclaimers on the Airbnb and Manhattan Mini Storage ads because the policy formally applies only to noncommercial ads. But that seems arbitrary. As Marc DeGirolami pointed out last week, it’s very difficult to disentangle “commercial” from “noncommercial” expression. To my mind, the Hillary ad is the most obviously political, even though its sponsors are only trying to make money. Besides, the New York Cares ad is surely noncommercial–it’s for a volunteer organization.

As I say, perhaps the MTA has put disclaimers on non-religious viewpoint ads and I simply haven’t found them. It’s significant, though, that it’s so easy to find the disclaimer on religious viewpoint ads, and so easy to find political and moral viewpoint ads without the disclaimer. Here’s a thought: perhaps the MTA should stop trying to distinguish among ads and put disclaimers on all of them–commercial, noncommercial, political, moral, and religious. That would solve the appearance-of-endorsement problem, if the problem genuinely exists, and free up MTA resources for doing something important: running the subway.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 4 Comments

Disapproving Religion in the NYC Subway

Here’s a post about two advertisements I happened to see while riding the New York City subway this past weekend. The ads reveal much about the subtle disparagement churches and other religious organizations sometimes experience from government agencies in the Big Apple.

subwayTake a look at the photo on the left. It shows an ad for Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. As far as I can tell from its website, Marble is a mainline, Protestant congregation, committed to progressive causes like diversity and same-sex marriage. Marble, the ad proclaims, is “church the way you always hoped it would be.”

Pay particular attention to the bottom of the ad, which contains a disclaimer added by the MTA, the government agency that runs the subway. The disclaimer is in bold type and takes up about 25% of the ad space. It is unsightly, in a different font and format from the rest of the ad, and definitely distracts the reader. It says: “This is a paid advertisement sponsored by Marble Collegiate Church. The display of this advertisement does not imply MTA’s endorsement of any views expressed.”

This is very odd. True, the Supreme Court’s “endorsement test” provides that government may not take actions a reasonable observer could understand, in the circumstances, as an endorsement of religion. (This explains why local governments are so careful about Christmas decorations on public property). The MTA presumably insisted on the disclaimer to make clear to subway riders that, by posting Marble’s ad, it did not endorse the church’s underlying religious message.

But the endorsement test does not require a disclaimer here. No reasonable observer could think the MTA had endorsed Marble’s message by posting its ad. There are ads in subway cars for a variety of businesses and nonprofit organizations. Nobody thinks the MTA vouches for the truth of those ads, or even the good faith of the sponsors. Will cosmetic surgery “change your life?” Will Foursquare “lead you to places you’ll love?” Who knows? But the MTA doesn’t think it necessary to attach disclaimers. No one would expect it to do so.

For example, here’s an ad my brother pointed out to me, for a company boozecalled delivery.com. The ad says the company will deliver beer, wine and liquor on demand, thereby allowing customers to “Booze Wisely.” There’s no MTA disclaimer in this ad. But why not? If reasonable people could think the MTA had endorsed Christianity by posting Marble’s ad, why couldn’t they think the MTA had endorsed drinking by posting delivery.com’s? If anything, the danger of misunderstanding is higher. The delivery.com ad offers a 30% discount to people who include the word “SUBWAY” with their orders. Marble didn’t trade on the name “subway” or offer special treatment for straphangers.

Now, supporters of the MTA’s disclaimer policy might argue there’s no real harm here. The disclaimer merely reminds people of an important constitutional principle, namely, that civil government does not take positions on the truth of religious propositions–like whether Marble really is, as its ad claims, what people would hope from a church. At worst, the disclaimer is a bit unnecessary. What’s the cause for complaint?

It’s this: Requiring church ads–and only church ads–to include disclaimers is a kind of disparagement that places churches at an unfair disadvantage in the marketplace of ideas. The inescapable implication is that there is something uniquely impolite and dangerous about religion–more than doubtful cosmetic treatments, consumer fantasies, and boozing it up at home–and that government must keep its distance. The MTA’s policy doesn’t suggest state neutrality respecting religion, but disapproval. For the record, the endorsement test prohibits that as well.

UPDATE: Perry Dane points me to the MTA policy, which actually extends to ads with “political” and “moral” content as well as “religious.” I’m surprised, because I’ve seen plenty of ads with political and moral messages that don’t carry disclaimers, but maybe the MTA just hasn’t gotten around to labeling everything. Still, the differential impact on religious messages has implications under the endorsement test.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Removing Christmas (and Everything Else) from the School Calendar

Here’s a lesson in how to irritate everybody. Last week, the Board of Education in Montgomery County, Maryland, a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC, voted to remove references to religious holidays from its public school calendar. Starting next year, students will have off for “Winter Break” rather than Christmas, “Spring Break” rather than Easter, and two unnamed holidays rather than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The decision came after a Muslim group requested that schools also close for a Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha. Rather than declare Eid a holiday, the board decided to remove religious references altogether.

The board apparently believed that retaining the names of religious holidays is constitutionally problematic. That is not so. Naming school holidays after widely celebrated religious observances does not violate any of Supreme Court’s many Establishment Clause tests, even the so-called endorsement test. Consider Christmas, for example. Closing on December 25 does not endorse the religious meaning of the holiday. It simply acknowledges the fact that most students and staff would stay home. And as everybody, including the state and federal governments, refers to the holiday as Christmas, it’s natural for the school calendar to do the same. In fact, expunging the word “Christmas,” after it has been in the calendar for so long, suggests hostility to the religious meaning of the holiday. Such a suggestion itself creates problems under the endorsement test.

What about the fact that the schools recognize the holidays of some religions, but not others? Doesn’t that suggest hostility for religions the schools ignore? Obviously some Montgomery Country Muslims took it that way, and one must respect their feelings. But there’s a very good administrative reason why Montgomery County schools don’t close on Eid. Only about 1% of the county’s population is Muslim. There are simply not enough Muslim students and staff to justify closing the schools–just as there are not enough Hindus to justify closing schools on Hindu holidays, or Buddhists to justify closing schools on Buddhist holidays. That’s not a reflection of disrespect for those religions, but an acknowledgement of demographic reality. It’s worth noting that the Montgomery County schools excuse absences for Muslims who observe Eid.

I could explain why the other Establishment Clause tests also would allow schools to close for some religious holidays but not others, but there’s no point belaboring things. The Constitution does not require what the board did. But the board’s decision is worse than wrong; it’s pernicious. Striking the names of religious holidays has only served to create religious conflict. Many Christians and Jews have expressed dismay, as has the Muslim organization that requested the Eid holiday in the first place. That organization now worries, not implausibly, that angry parents and students will blame Muslims for the board’s decision. That would be unfair. The organization didn’t ask the board to rename these other holidays; that was entirely the board’s doing. But many people will ignore that fact.

In a pluralistic society like ours, respect is a crucial value. Respect for religious traditions other than one’s own promotes harmony and social peace. But recognizing a religious holiday that many students and staff observe doesn’t express disrespect for other religions, and the board’s decision to rename Christmas–as well as the other holidays–has done nothing to promote religious harmony. The board has created an entirely unnecessary, uncomfortable situation in which everyone feels aggrieved. One could hardly call that progress.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Bloomberg Law Interview About Town of Greece and Elmbrook School District

I was interviewed today on Bloomberg Law about the petition in the Elmbrook School District decision out of the Seventh Circuit and the possible effect of the Supreme Court decision in Town of Greece. You can download the podcast here. My segment starts at about the 7.30 minute mark.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 1 Comment

The Return of the Jurisprudence of Tradition: 10 Points on the Kennedy Opinion in Town of Greece

Having read the decision, I thought I’d write up three separate posts on Town of Greece v. Galloway. This first post discusses Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court. The next one will talk about Justice Kagan’s dissent and Justice Alito’s concurrence. The final post will discuss Justice Thomas’s concurrence (joined in part by Justice Scalia).

Here are 10 points on Justice Kennedy’s opinion. The opinion was joined in full by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. It was joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas except as to Part II(B).

1. By far the most prominent theme in Justice Kennedy’s opinion is the role of tradition and historical practice in validating the practice of legislative prayer. That point is repeated no less than six or seven times in all kinds of contexts. The practice is “part of our expressive idiom” and our “heritage.” Justice Kennedy writes that “Marsh is sometimes described as “carving out an exception” to the Court’s Establishment Clause’s jurisprudence,” inasmuch as no “tests” were applied in Marsh, but in reality, “[t]he Court in Marsh found those tests unnecessary because history supported the conclusion that legislative invocations are compatible with the Establishment Clause” That’s important. It indicates that the mode of analysis in Marsh was not a carve-out, so much as the place where all Establishment Clause analysis begins, and, under certain circumstances, where it ends.

2. Note the emphasis on both history and particularism in the following: “Marsh stands for the proposition that it is not necessary to define the precise boundary of the Establishment Clause where history shows that the specific practice is permitted….A test that would sweep away what has so long been settled would create new controversy and begin anew the very divisions along religious lines that the Establishment Clause seeks to prevent.” Very interesting. The claim seems to be that it is the rigidity of the tests themselves in this area, and their failure to grant a kind of presumptive validity to entrenched social practices and traditions, which itself generates religious division.

3. In keeping with points #1 and #2, neither the Lemon test nor the endorsement test figure in Kennedy’s analysis at all. There is only a whisper of endorsement in Kennedy’s claim in Part II(B) (which JJ. Scalia and Thomas did not join) where he writes that “[i]t is presumed that the reasonable observer is acquainted with this tradition and understands that its purposes are to lend gravity to public proceedings and to acknowledge the place religion holds in the lives of many private citizens, not to afford government an opportunity to proselytize or force truant constituents into the pews.” That certainly doesn’t mean that these tests are dead. They just are largely MIA.

4. Framing: Everybody–Justice Kennedy, Justice Kagan in dissent (of which more soon), and the parties–seems to have accepted the following framing by the Court: “The Court’s inquiry, then, must be to determine whether the prayer practice in the town of Greece fits within the tradition long followed in Congress and the state legislatures.” No member of the Court resisted this framing or opined that this was an inappropriate or wrong-headed sort of inquiry.

5. “Sectarian” prayers: “An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer outlined in the Court’s cases.” The Court here disavows the claim that only nonsectarian prayers are within Marsh’s compass. Again the basis for the claim is in part historical: “The decidedly Christian nature of these prayers must not be dismissed as the relic of a time when our Nation was less pluralistic than it is today.” The growing diversity of the country embraces a kind of deep substantive pluralism as well. The County of Allegheny dictum characterizing Marsh as it did–relying, that is, on the fact that the chaplain in Marsh “removed all references to Christ”–is also repudiated by the Court. Kennedy writes: “Marsh nowhere suggested that the constitutionality of legislative prayer turns on the neutrality of its content.”

6. Entanglement and majoritarianism in supervision: Kennedy further remarks that requiring the Court to supervise the content of prayers would demand government over-involvement in religious matters. The cite here is to Hosanna-Tabor, not to Lemon. It would also inevitably result in majoritarian favoritism, as courts would demand words acceptable only to a majority, the effect of which would be to exclude a minority.

7. Limits: the limits on the acceptability of legislative prayer seemed to be those which “over time…denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion.” Also, where “many present may consider the prayer to fall short of the desire to elevate the purpose of the occasion and to unite lawmakers in their common effort.”

8. Note the words “over time” in the previous statement. Although plaintiffs presented some evidence that two of the prayer practice occasions did not serve the traditional functions of legislative prayer as formulated by the Court, these two occasions “do not despoil a practice that on the whole reflects and embraces our tradition. Absent a pattern of prayers that over time denigrate, proselytize, or betray an impermissible government purpose, a challenge based solely on the content of a prayer will not likely establish a constitutional violation.” That is quite a different test than any that existed before. Moreover, the fact that nearly all of the congregations in town are Christian and therefore are substantially represented–or over-represented–in the legislative prayer practice does not itself render the practice unconstitutional: “So long as the town maintains a policy of nondiscrimination, the Constitution does not require it to search beyond its borders for non-Christian prayer givers in an effort to achieve religious balancing.”

9. On the claim that this case could be distinguished from Marsh on the ground that civilians are coerced to participate, the plurality says that the principal purpose of legislative prayer “is largely to accommodate the spiritual needs of lawmakers and to connect them to a tradition dating to the time of the Framers….The analysis would be different if town board members directed the public to participate in the prayers, singled out dissidents for opprobrium, or indicated that their decisions might be influenced by a person’s acquiescence in the prayer opportunity.”

10. Finally, Lee v. Weisman, which Justice Kennedy authored, is distinguished on the ground that nobody is dissuaded from leaving the meeting room during a prayer, arriving late, or making a later protest. Such activities occur regularly and pass without notice. Quiet acquiescence, in this context as compared with the school context, “does not suggest agreement with the ideas and words expressed.”

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

CLR Podcast on Town of Greece v. Galloway

Mark and I have recorded a podcast discussing Town of Greece v. Galloway, the legislative prayer case just argued at the Supreme Court, in the Center’s first in a planned series of podcasts on law and religion cases and issues.

We tried to be fairly complete in our discussion of the case, and I think this podcast is particularly useful for students and others interested in an introduction to the issue of legislative prayer and in some fairly detailed analysis of and commentary about the oral argument.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

The Downward Spiral of Legal Insult

Here’s a story about the banning of Halloween festivities in some public school districts in Pennsylvania. Many of the reasons are unremarkable–worries about security and the secreting of weapons under costumes, concerns about taking away from regular classroom instruction.

But at least some of the reasons stem from conceivable First Amendment violations. And these reasons relate directly to the issue of Halloween’s putative offensiveness to Christians. “Right now,” said Professor Charles Haynes, “school officials should be sensitive that for many people witches, ghosts, and demons have religious connotations, however much they may be sanitized in culture.”

The argument appears to track the sort of constitutionalized insult claim that I discussed and criticized in this post. There, I asked the question of who, precisely, could possibly be offended, or confused, by the state’s lighthearted celebration of a silly occasion like Halloween for the sake of schoolchildren. It might seem from this story, and from Professor Haynes’s comments, that, in fact, there are many people who take deep offense at Halloween as a “religious” celebration that is insulting to Christians.

But a close reading of the story reveals that it is not confusion or insult at Halloween per se that is driving at least some such complaints. It’s rather the memory of the government’s perceived marginalization of Christmas on prior occasions–again, ostensibly to adhere to the Supreme Court’s heckler’s veto jurisprudence of offensiveness in this area–that has inflamed a sense of hurt and offense. As Haynes puts it: “If you can’t have Jesus in December, why can we have witches in October?” (emphasis mine) Haynes says that he “understands that claim.” I understand it too but that claim has nothing to do with Halloween itself. That assertion of hurt feelings suggests that it isn’t anything about Halloween or ghosts or dress-up or whatever that is confusing or hurtful for religious reasons. Celebrations of Halloween have been occurring in schools for decades now, and it would be odd to see a sudden “backlash” against Halloween on these grounds.

Rather, it is the perceived marginalization of Christmas by the school district–and the offense and hurt feeling that that has caused–which now bubbles up and finds expression in complaints about Halloween as a “religious” occasion. An occasion that previously was only slightly offensive, or not offensive at all, has become much more offensive in light of the culture of offense that itself is felt to have down-graded holidays like Christmas.

So goes the logic of insult–responsive as it is to tit-for-tat hurts and slights. It would be unfair and probably incorrect to say that the Supreme Court is primarily responsible for cementing a culture of insult in law. But by adopting a jurisprudence of offense in this area, it has set itself up for an untenable downward spiral of legal insult, as more and more occasions, activities, and educational traditions become the object of legal claims of unfairness, inequality, or offensiveness.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 1 Comment

On the Insulting Claim that Religious Displays are Insulting

Hurt feelings are unreliable bases for constitutional law. People are insulted by all Charles_I_Insulted_by_Cromwell's_Soldierssorts of things, their feelings of insult can change at breathtaking speed, and it is difficult to explain what ought to count as a constitutionally cognizable insult, and what ought not to, and why. And there is no area of constitutional law that is more dependent on judicial investigation and perception of insult or hurt feelings than the Establishment Clause–particularly the standard used to evaluate the constitutionality of religious displays by the government. Readers of this blog are probably familiar with the endorsement test, which demands that judges inquire after the degree to which a display might make someone feel like an outsider, or not fully part of the political community. That is a standard that depends on both judicial perception of insult and comparative valuations of insult (not all insults count).

My aim in this post is not to talk about that category of hurt feeling or insult, but about a related but less prominent argument about insults that one sometimes hears in connection with state-sponsored religious displays. It is the argument that for a religious person, when the government displays a religious symbol, it thereby robs or despoils the symbol of its sacredness. And when government then describes the nature and value of the symbol in non-religious terms (in cultural terms, for example, or in historical terms, or in secular terms), that constitutes an insult to religious people. So, for example, the constitutional category of “ceremonial deism” that is used to describe the phrase “In God We Trust” on money, or the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, is said to be deeply offensive to religious believers. Similarly, the description of the crucifix by Italian judges in the Lautsi v. Italy litigation as a symbol of national historical importance is said to cause hurt feelings among Catholics. By describing (or perhaps defining) a symbol in cultural or historical terms, the government thereby appropriates and degrades the symbol in the eyes of religious believers–and it’s “their” symbol, after all–draining it of religious content. One can see strong traces of the claim and the sense of indignation and insult in Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in Van Orden v. Perry: “Telling either nonbelievers or believers that the words ‘under God’ have no meaning contradicts what they know to be true. Moreover, repetition does not deprive religious words or symbols of their traditional meaning. Words like ‘God’ are not vulgarities for which the shock value diminishes with each successive utterance.” This argument from insult certainly is understandable and it resonates with many people, including some of my friends.

But not with me, I’m afraid. If anything, I find the argument itself insulting. The argument assumes that religious people are so thick-headed, or so culturally illiterate, or so confused about the nature of their faith and its symbols’ meanings, or so hyper-attentive to the government’s activities, or so insular, parochial, and unsophisticated, that they cannot understand the difference among (a) a cross that is displayed in a church; (b) a cross that is displayed at a cemetery; and (c) a cross that is displayed as a Halloween joke. Who doesn’t understand those differences, and the differences in meaning that they convey? Who is confused? And is not the imputation of confusion, hurt feelings, and cultural simple-mindedness itself offensive? Those poor hayseed religious believers, bearing the psychological cross of their egg-shell sensitivities about their symbols! To argue that any act of the state–least of all its display of a cross at a war memorial or some statement about God on money or in a secular national pledge–could adulterate what a religious symbol like the cross means to Christians is to make a very unflattering claim about the strength with which those Christians believe, about the quality of their intellectual awareness and cultural acumen, and about just how little it takes to shake them up and distress them.

The argument also assumes that a government’s decisions about a symbol really command, and ought to command, the attention of the religious. But what difference should it make that government “degrades” a symbol like the cross? Does the government have the power to degrade the Christian meaning of the cross? Do we look to the government to define the Christian meaning of the cross? That meaning is not the government’s to define! To fret about state-sponsored religious degradation is implicitly to acknowledge the state’s authority in an area where it has none. That the government (or anyone else, for that matter) may use a symbol for secular purposes of its own should do nothing to trivialize the Christian meaning, or to destabilize religious commitment or religious understanding, unless the suggestion is that the religious commitment runs no deeper than attachment to the symbol’s secular meanings. Brand dilution may work for trademark law, where all symbols operate and compete at the level of the profane market, but it has little place here.

But as I say, it is difficult to tell someone not to feel hurt or insulted. I can certainly understand the sense of insult at a perceived usurpation of a religious symbol, but it is not a feeling I share at all when the Supreme Court trots out such  coarse euphemisms as “ceremonial deism” to justify and explain the sorts of secular uses of religious symbols and religious language that date back at least to the late Roman empire. For myself, I am more offended by what the arguments from insult imply about religious believers’ savvy and understanding of the world, as well as of their own beliefs.

All of that, I suppose, is to return to the beginning, and to repeat my view that feelings of insult and offense are unsound grounds for constitutional law.

[Image: Delaroche’s “Charles I Insulted by Cromwell’s Soldiers”]