Posted by
Joe Knippenberg on Monday, July 23, 2007 6:30:37 PM
Author Peter Irons offers the
ACLU view of significant recent battles over public religious displays. For him, it's often a matter of insiders vs. outsiders, with those who challenge the displays becoming outsiders, if they aren't already. Of course, his account is calculated to evoke sympathy for the challengers, but if they were more "tolerant" of these rather anodyne displays, they wouldn't have to become "outsiders."
I do not by any means condone the bad behavior of those who can't find it in their hearts to treat these dissenters well, but their dissent is also a form a bad behavior. They choose to make a stink about something that ought not to offend anyone (I draw the line, however, at something like Judge Roy Moore's massive monument), and thereby divide a community in which everyone had hitherto more or less gotten along.
Shouldn't we teach, not that everyone should be thin-skinned, but that getting along requires a rather thick skin, a willingness to put up with points of view with which one doesn't agree? The First Amendment "endorsement"doctrine that Irons supports--which owes its origin to Sandra Day O'Connor--encourages thin-skinnedness and litigiousness. This is what's really divisive, not the occasional passive publci religious display.
For more on this, go
here.