Darth Wong wrote:Please justify your claim of harm. I'm not seeing that this case has done anything to make atheists' perceptions go any lower. According to Gallup, Americans are LESS likely to vote for an atheist today than they were 20 years ago, and a solid majority believe that all atheists are untrustworthy and immoral. How is "pushy" going to make that noticeably worse?
If this were a case to shoot down intelligent design as creationism in a clown suit, or overturn state school board decisions to remove evolution from mandatory science cirricula, or religious requirements for public office, I'd agree that whatever harm our public image takes, the potential judicial gains are worth it. The gains, in this case, are NOT worth, in my opinion, even a marginal amount of bad publicity, especially bad publicity that paints us as anti-American or unpatriotic.
Those were not federal cases. The wall of separation has been established to the satisfaction of those with brains, but an explicit ruling at the federal level would be good for shutting people up.
Ah, so winning at the federal level means nothing, but losing at the federal level is an absolute disaster. Right
This fight had to take place at the federal level sooner or later. What would have been the benefit of waiting, and what would we have been waiting for? A new administration to come in and turf out the idiots? Perhaps, but I don't get the impression that this new administration is waiting in the wings.
All of my quotes have been snipped.
I'm assuming you mean those cases involved state laws, not that they weren't decided in Federal courts (they all were). It doesn't matter that they addressed state laws and not Federal ones, because the Constitution applies more stringently to the Federal government than it does to the states, and all these cases were decided on First Amendment grounds. If the First Amendment says the State of Louisiana can't do something, the Congress of the United States can't do it, either. Saying these cases don't matter because they didn't involve Federal laws is like saying Roe v. Wade doesn't matter because it only involved abortion law in Texas. And anyway, in Welsh v. United States, the Court ruled that it was a violation of the establishment clause to limit conscientious objection to military service to religious grounds only, establishing strict separation in a case involving Federal law. Case precedent has established that the original intent of the founders in adopting the first amendment was to establish a wall of separation between church and state. Anyone who says otherwise needs to actually read the Founders once in a while and take a conlaw class.
But if Newdow loses, suddenly, the momentum will shift. It will be a very serious reversal. If Newdow wins, on the other hand, he's added one more case to the pile in favor of separation and given fundamentalists a reelection issue, and probably created a movement to add "under God" to the pledge via Constitutional amendment.
I don't think you're being realistic about our existing public image.
Perhaps not. Making it worse for little or no judicial gain doesn't make sense either way.
I seriously think I would have been a better figurehead for this thing, and given the bluntness with which I would approach publicity, that's saying something.
You probably would be. You'd make an entertaining talk show guest, at any rate.
