-----Original Message-----
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
On Behalf Of Francis Beckwith
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 9:21 AM
To:
Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Re: Alito Views SCOTUS
Doctrine as Giving Impression of Hostility to Religious _expression_
I
don’t want to be too picky here, but Alito is saying “impression of hostility,”
not necessarily “hostility.” So, in a sense, he does not disagree with
Marty. Alito says “impression,” and Marty says “misperception.” A
misperception is in fact an impression, but an inaccurate one.
I do think
that Alito is correct that there is an impression of hostility. Now whether that
impression is justified is ever or always justified is another question. But
clearly Alito is justified in saying that many ordinary people in fact have that
impression.
I'm going to suggest that a large part of this misconception is the result of the almost unrelenting rhetoric we hear from the right claiming that the courts are hostile to religion, want to stamp it out from society, have "thrown God out of the schools" and so forth. I've had countless conversations with people who are shocked to find out what the courts have actually ruled on various religious _expression_ cases, people whose sole source for information about the courts are religious right leaders who engage in the most inflammatory rhetoric about "judicial tyranny" and "unelected judges" who are busy "destroying America's Christian heritage" and so forth. Inevitably, these folks are sure that no student can dare to speak about their religious views in a public school, and when I point out to them the various rulings by which the courts have explicitly protected the rights of students to choose religious subjects for papers, to use school facilities for bible clubs, to hand out religious literature to their fellow students, etc, some of them simply can't believe that I'm telling them the truth because they're so convinced by this extreme rhetoric. As Marty points out, the courts have done more to protect religious _expression_ in a wide variety of ways in the last few decades than any other form of speech, which I generally applaud as a good thing. But the fact is that most Americans know nothing at all about actual court rulings and get their information from less than reliable sources. And when their only source of information on this subject engages in inflated and wildly inaccurate rhetoric about the courts, it's small wonder that there is such a misperception out there.
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