The ACLU has won a preliminary injunction against the Town of Enfield, barring the Town’s Board of Education from holding graduation ceremonies in a church.
I’ve attached Judge Hall’s decision, for anyone who cares to read it. Her description of “The Cathedral” is quite good. It perfectly conveys the fact that one any non-believer or non-Christian would feel like an outcast at those ceremonies.
I always find it interesting, in cases such as this, that “religious, and thereby by their own lights at least, moral and upstanding people, tie themselves into knots by trying to claim that religion has nothing to do with their actions, despite the fact that their claims are so clearly untrue.
In the Enfield case, among other things, the chair of the Board pretty much conspired with a fundie church trade group to get the graduation in the church. The church’s principal minister also claimed that it’s collection of religious art was actually just “eclectic”. This because the religious symbolism in some was muted enough to make the pictures arguably secular.
Maybe intellectual dishonesty isn’t a sin.
I know I would have been furious had I had to enter “The Cathedral” in order to see my kids graduate. This is a one small victory for the Constitution.
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