Praying man v. "atheist professor" and "leftist secular group"

MORE DASTARDLY "LIBERAL" MEDIA COVERAGE. This morning, the Chronicle of Higher Education finally covered the SOCCCD “prayer” lawsuit. Their report appears to be a truncated version of the OC Register story. It mentions the notorious “Christ” video.

WAGNERIAN RED-MEAT SPINNAGE. Well, it was bound to happen. Don Wagner, Republican candidate for the 70th Assembly, is spinning the “prayer” lawsuit for all it’s worth. According to Allan Bartlett of OC/Red County (Wagner Defends Religious Freedom), Wagner’s campaign has issued a press release:

Wagner Defends Religious Freedom
Leftist secular group American United for Separation of Church and State sues Don Wagner

Irvine, California - The leftist secular group American United for Separation of Church and State, announced … that it is suing Don Wagner … in an effort to ban invocations and any mention of religion at certain college district functions….

The lawsuit alleges that Wagner and the college district's board of trustees ignored repeated demands from atheist professor Karla Westphal and others to stop invocations at district functions. However, Wagner is accurately quoted in the lawsuit as having recognized that, "[h]istorically, at events such as [graduations, award ceremonies, and board meetings,] we . . . take the opportunity to offer a moment of thanksgiving to God." Wagner also noted "that America's founders invoked the name of God, and encouraged and participated in religious ceremonies in government facilities."

American United has filed numerous lawsuits around the country trying to ban mentions of God or religion from the public square. "If you don't believe in God," Wagner said in a speech quoted in the lawsuit, "that's fine. The government has no business trying to convince you otherwise. . . . But if you do believe, I would ask you, personally and not on behalf of the government, to take a moment to thank Him for the many gifts you believe you have received from Him, including the opportunity to pursue an education in a country explicitly founded on the belief that we are endowed by our Creator with the gift of liberty."

Wagner said he is looking forward to defending the principles of religious freedom under assault from the plaintiffs and the so-called "Americans United" group in this case. Constitutional law scholar and Dean of the Chapman University School of Law, John Eastman, is representing Wagner….

John Eastman, eh? That's interesting.

I visited Wagner’s campaign website and, oddly, I could not find the above press release (here) in the “press release” section. Whatever.

Is, as Don suggests, “Americans United” a “leftist secular group”? I would argue that the principle of separation of church and state is neither left nor right, and I suspect AUSCS would agree.

Is it secular? Well, this is more spin. Unsurprisingly, many of AUSCS’s members, including its Executive Director, are theists. The same can be said for some of the plaintiff’s of “Westphal v. Wagner.” I believe that only two of the eight plaintiffs identify themselves as atheists. (I checked: two atheists, two agnostics, one Deist, a devout Jew, a person “raised Jewish,” and someone who is “not religious.” See lawsuit.)

Wagner’s press release (as Bartlett quotes it) fails to mention that, among the incidents cited in the lawsuit are those in which an undeniably Christian—and not just theistic—message was communicated (in a video) and in which student scholarship recipients were compelled to attend a prayerful scholarship event.

Evidently, Wagner also neglects to mention the obvious defiance of trustees in response to polite requests to cease the prayers out of sensitivity to the diversity of faculty, students, and the community. (Don encouraged John to “give ‘em hell” in his prayer. See lawsuit.)

MAYBE THE “MISTAKE” WAS A FAKE? Recently, David Llewellyn, the district’s new “prayer” lawyer, asserted that the showing of the “Jesus Christ” video during the Fall “Chancellor’s Opening Session” was an inadvertent “mistake.” Supposedly, nobody actually watched the video to see what was in it before they showed it.

I’m not buyin’ it.

As it happens, less than two weeks after the Opening Session, there was a board meeting. You can view the meeting yourself by going to the streaming video archives section of the district website. (Click on the link for the video for the August 31, 2009 meeting.)

During the “public comments” portion of that meeting, three faculty raised the “prayer” issue, referring disapprovingly to the August 18 “Christ video” incident. Their comments can be found from 07:30 to 12:54 in the video.

Almost immediately after these comments (at 15:30), Chancellor Mathur responds, explaining that he was not offended by the video and its sectarian message. If, as Llewellyn now claims, the Christian message was an inadvertent mistake, surely Mathur would have made that point then.

He did not. See for yourself.

A few minutes later, trustees gave their reports. Trustee Wagner, who had MC’d the “opening session,” mentions the session in his report (at 18:48), but he makes no mention of any mistake or problem. On the contrary, looking at the Chancellor, he declares the event a “job well done.”

Tsk, tsk.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, here are the comments to the Chronicle article thus far:

• Good.
• And I would counter that prayer at a public event goes AGAINST the founding of the country. You want to pray, go to church, nobody's stopping you, not even us Godless northeastern intellectual liberal Fake Americans.
• So, in this time of deadly budget cuts, the trustees are going to incur large legal expenses on a crusade they are bound to lose. That will be a fine educational experience for the district's students!
• Glad to hear about the suit. Makes me wonder if their god can only hear prayers that are spoken aloud in groups so non-believers have to sit through them. I kinda thought that God was omnipotent and could hear the most silent of prayers. And all are able to pray silently anytime they want.
• unbelievable!
• It is a reproach to ALL sides in this argument that it continues to go on. If the plaintiffs and defendants in this suit would consistently follow the ideals they cite, they would communicate sufficientl to accomodate, rather than litigate.