Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!
Ah, once again, the Evil Atheist Conspiracy of Judges is censoring innocent, decent people who are just trying to make the world a better place. That’s how Christopher Levenick sees it, anyway. Levenick, who is not a lawyer or a scientist, argues that
Having found that disestablishment applies to all levels of government, the modern courts work hard at suppressing any nonmaterialistic account of human origins. For its part, the ACLU has abandoned its commitment to defending the free speech of those who teach alternative theories and now actively roots out any teacher who dissents from Darwinian orthodoxy.
Of course, this is nothing short of a lie. Modern courts do not “work”at“suppressing any nonmaterialistic account” of anything anywhere. The Free Exercise Clause, the Free Speech Clause, and many state constitutions and laws, protect any religious person’s right to say absolutely anything about a “nonmaterialistic” (i.e., supernatural) account of anything whatsoever at any time and in any appropriate place. By appropriate, of course, I mean, that so long as he is not disrupting the classroom, any religious student has a well-protected Constitutional right to defend his views as to the supernatural origins of human beings in any government classroom in this country. (And the ACLU has been a reliable defender of students who do so.) Likewise, any religious teacher has the right to express his religious views as long_as they are expressed on his own time and not with my money._
Allow me to say this again so that it is perfectly clear: nobody is being suppressed at all. What is being stopped is the attempt by preachers of religion to use my tax dollars and the government classrooms that belong to all—religious and non-religious, Christian and Jewish and Hindu alike—to propagate religious doctrine in the guise of science. Mr. Levenick believes that he has the right to take away people’s money and use it to teach his religion to the children of other people. And when a court dares to stand up and say no, Levenick calls that suppression. How disappointingly common. And how embarrassing to a large portion of the American people that he would call this backwards viewpoint“serious Christian[ity].”
Note, too, that Levenick doesn’t even limit his assertion that religion is being“suppress[ed]“ to the classroom context! He seems to be saying that courts are actively censoring people who simply assert their belief in creationism, anywhere and at any time. This is simply the taunting of a demagogue. Shame on the Wall Street Journal for giving space to such an irresponsible and fraudulent assertion.
Hat tip: Claremont Institute