Shadow Boxing in the Dark
How can you fight something that isn’t there?
A law suit has been filed by a civic minded atheist named Michael Newdow to have the words “So help me God” removed from the oath of office for the upcoming presidential inauguration. He is being joined by several likeminded groups such as the American Humanist Association and the Freedom from Religion Foundation in insisting that these words be omitted and that no prayer or invocation be permitted during the swearing in ceremony.
Mr. Newdow and these other groups are preparing to go down the well trodden road of claiming that their rights as atheists are somehow being infringed upon by the inclusion of God’s name and the request for His assistance during the inauguration.
His lawsuit, an advance copy of which was conveniently posted online, claims that “There can be no purpose for placing ‘so help me God’ in an oath or sponsoring prayers to God, other than promoting a particular point of view that God exists.”
Mr. Newdow is a doctor and a lawyer and is evidently able to grasp the fairly obvious hypothesis that praying to God does indeed promote the concept that God exists. I concede councilor; I believe you broke the code on that one.
I won’t even bother debating the point that this country and its constitution are based on freedom OF religion not freedom FROM religion. What I find most interesting is that these self-made men and women find that the mere mention of God’s name somehow infringes on their beliefs. To the best of my knowledge nobody is insisting that that anybody pray along, get on their knees, fold their hands or even bow their head. Nobody is even asking that you think differently much less act differently than your beliefs dictate. So where is the unconstitutional harm? They claim that the inclusion of God’s name forces them to make a decision of either not watching the ceremony or somehow being forced to endorse God simply through the act of viewing somebody that does. Wow, that’s a bigger stretch than debating what the definition of “is” is.
Mr. Newdow is adept enough to see that his lawsuit doesn’t have a chance in hell, if there was such a place, of succeeding. “I have no doubt I’ll lose” he was quoted as saying. And he is a man who speaks from experience having already lost this same lawsuit twice prior with the inaugurations in 2001 and 2005.
Now don’t get me wrong, I believe everybody has the right to seek protection from the courts if they feel they are being unconstitutionally injured. I even have a certain amount of envy in the level of faith an atheist has. To believe that something was created from nothing, that life came from a chance combination of inanimate elements and that every living thing that has ever lived, every DNA helix, every plant and animal mutated from a single nondescript water borne mother cell and that every organ, every sense, every ability and the very structure of every plant and animal was developed by some long since hidden ability for cells to determine independently how they would mutate is actually a far greater bit of faith than I am able to muster.
But I am civic minded myself and I find that a lawsuit that is filed for the sole purpose of getting your name in the paper and your face on CNN is a frivolous lawsuit. If you have filed the same suit twice before and been unsuccessful in prevailing than you should be responsible for paying the court costs of your repeated unsuccessful attempts. The constitution has not been rewritten or amended and the argument is the same. Claiming, as they do, that they deserve some special minority status is simply not legally credible. And I, as a taxpayer, don’t feel I should be expected to pay the costs of this folly.
Now, if you want to file lawsuits about politicians talking about things that are not constitutionally protected and that actually do not exist I may even join you.
Let’s start with manmade global warming and work our way from there.
