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LGBT

The Arguments Against Marriage Equality Apparently Have Nothing To Do With Gay People

By Zack Ford on May 21, 2013 at 10:50 am

Andrew Walker and Ryan Anderson

The Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson, a disciple of National Organization for Marriage former chairman Robert George, has become a national spokesperson for opposition to marriage equality. In a new piece for Focus on the Family co-written with Heritage’s Andrew Walker, they make “a Millennial case for marriage,” citing a litany of arguments about the importance of not “redefining marriage.” Strikingly, not one of their arguments actually addresses the lives of gay people, and in turn, not one of their points would actually be compromised by same-sex couples marrying.

Here are some of their claims, many of which derive from an arbitrary definition of marriage that “men and women are different and complementary”:

Children Need To Have Fathers

Borrowing a tactic from NOM, Anderson and Walker invoke President Obama’s concerns about how growing up without a father has a significant negative impact on children.  They conclude, “fathers matter, and marriage helps to connect fathers to mothers and children.” But abandoned single mothers have nothing to do with same-sex couples, and studies about “fatherlessness” do not even include lesbian families in their samples. Heterosexual men deserting their families is a legitimate societal concern, but it has nothing to do with same-sex families.

Children Do Best With A Mother And Father

Without referencing a single citation — not even Mark Regnerus — Anderson and Walker proclaim, “For decades, social science has shown that children tend to do best when reared by their married mother and father.” It may be true that children do better with both of their parents as opposed to only one, but social science has found that committed same-sex couples are just as capable of effectively raising children.

They later acknowledge that a “relatively small number” of gay or lesbian couples “would be” raising children — avoiding the reality that they already are — but offer no thought as to how those families would actually benefit from the protections of marriage outlined throughout the rest of the post.

Men Will No Longer Stay Committed To Their Wives

This continues to be one of the most absurd arguments against marriage equality: “Redefining marriage would diminish the social pressures and incentives for husbands to remain with their wives and their biological children, and for men and women to marry before having children.” Whether men will cheat on their wives has nothing to do with whether same-sex couples can marry.

Marital Norms Will Dissolve

Anderson and Walker’s slippery slope suggests that if marriages were reduced to just “intense emotional regard,” they would not have to be permanent, limited to two people, sexually exclusive, or oriented to raising families. But all of these points are already true of opposite-sex couples: many divorce, some practice polygamy, plenty cheat or are open, and none have any obligation to raise children. This argument also undercuts the important protections that couples themselves gain from marriage through that “intense emotional regard,” particularly as they age. Because they don’t have access to marriage, older same-sex couples struggle economically and face extra hurdles to care for each other.

Marriage Equality Discriminates Against Christians

Somehow marriage equality “further marginalizes those with traditional views and erodes religious liberty.” Anderson and Walker are concerned that people who are prejudiced against same-sex couples marrying will be perceived as prejudiced, which just isn’t fair. Borrowing another popular talking point, they claim that Catholic Charities in Massachusetts was “forced to discontinue adoption services,” when in fact they voluntarily shut down because of their insistence on discriminating. They’re also afraid elementary school children will learn that same-sex couples exist, ignoring that they’ll already learn that if their classmates’ parents are same-sex couples. The underlying objection here seems to be that marriage equality will make it harder for Christians to discriminate against the gay community — discrimination for discrimination’s sake.

Society Will ‘Self-Correct On Marriage Over Time’

Anderson and Walker conclude their piece by constructing a narrative of momentum for opposition to marriage equality, imagining “Americans committed to marriage coming out of the shadows.” This optimism for their cause ignores that people of all ages are increasingly supporting same-sex marriage, a trend driven most robustly by the young people they claim to represent. Their hope is that when young people marry, they’ll appreciate the “gendered nature of parenting,” but what seems more likely is that they will only further appreciate just how much respect and security is denied to same-sex couples.

Justice

The Supreme Court Agreed To Hear A Case Today That Will Probably Nuke Separation Of Church And State

By Ian Millhiser on May 20, 2013 at 5:15 pm


Eight years ago, in an opinion warning of the “violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government,” retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor offered a challenge to her fellow conservative justices eager to weaken the wall of separation between church and state: “[t]hose who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”

Today, there are five justices on the Supreme Court who would trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly. And they just announced that they will hear a case that gives them the opportunity to make this swap a reality.

O’Connor was the Court’s leading supporter of the view that government cannot endorse a particularly religious belief or take action that might convey such a “message of endorsement to the reasonable observer,” and this view put her at odds with the four other members of the Rehnquist Court’s conservative bloc. When she left the Court, she was replaced by staunchly conservative Justice Samuel Alito, and most Court observers expected decades of precedent protecting against government endorsements of religion to fall in very short order.

Instead, the Roberts Court’s majority has thus far been content to chip away at the wall between church and state a piece at a time. In Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Court immunized many Executive Branch actions from suits claiming they violate the Constitution’s ban on “law[s] respecting an establishment of religion.” And in Arizona Christian School v. Winn, they empowered government to subsidize religion so long as those subsidies are structured as tax benefits and not as direct spending. But the core question of whether the government can “demonstrate . . . allegiance to a particular sect or creed” likely still must be answered in the negative.

The case the Court agreed to hear today, Town of Greece v. Galloway, is likely to change that. The ostensible issue before the Court is whether a municipal legislature violated the Constitution’s ban on separation of church and state when it began its meetings with overtly Christian prayers roughly two-thirds of the time. Yet the case also explicitly tees up the question of whether a government “endorsement” of religion of the kind rejected by O’Connor is permitted under the Constitution. If you’re placing bets, the odds are overwhelming that five conservative justices will say that such an endorsement is permitted.

With O’Connor gone, the much more conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy becomes the swing vote on questions of church/state separation. Kennedy has held that “government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise,” but it is not clear that he would forbid much else under the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion. By the end of the next Supreme Court term, however, it is very likely that his views will carry the day.

Health

Why Faith Leaders Are Teaching Their Communities About Obamacare

By Sy Mukherjee on May 15, 2013 at 1:00 pm

(Credit: Flickr)

Faith leaders were an important group pushing red state leaders to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. And with open enrollment for Medicaid and the law’s insurance marketplaces inching closer, they’ll be crucial to making sure that Americans know how, where, and when to sign up.

To that end, Maryland officials are currently holding a summit with over 150 faith leaders in which they explain the nuances of the law — and urge religious leaders to distribute that information by educating their congregants and communities. Faith leaders are enthusiastic about the plan, since their day-to-day dealings with their communities gives them a unique perspective on Americans’ needs and struggles:

The Rev. Janet Craswell, of the Salem United Methodist Church in Brookeville, described the summit as very helpful. Although her church is in a small Maryland community, Craswell said she has been hearing from a wide variety of people who will be impacted by the overhaul, including families with unemployed and uninsured young adults, people with disabilities and small business owners who are confused and concerned about how the law will impact their businesses.

“We see people every day,” Craswell said. “I mean, we are dealing with people week to week, and we’re also dealing with people at the point of crisis where they’re in hospitals and in hospice and they’re having to deal with major life issues.”

In fact, coordinating Obamacare enrollment efforts with faith leaders could be great news for another population that has largely been ignored in all the hubbub and politics of the expansion: Americans who already qualify for the program, but have never enrolled. In a 2006 report, the Commonwealth Fund estimated that 62 percent of Medicaid or CHIP-eligible children were not enrolled in either program, and 66 percent of Medicaid-eligible low-income parents were not enrolled.

Much of that discrepancy has to do with underwhelming state outreach efforts stemming from a lack of adequate funding, as well as the reality that many Medicaid-eligible populations simply don’t know they have the resource available to them. “Even in states that have more of a commitment to bringing new populations in, they don’t have the budget to do outreach and take out ads,” said Melinda Dutton, a partner at a health consulting firm assisting states with Obamacare implementation, in an interview with American Medical News.

But with the renewed national push for Medicaid enrollment ramping up this year, some health advocates hope that these previously unenrolled Americans will get swept up in the effort and “come out of the woodwork.” That’s where faith leaders are crucial to the undertaking, since they have greater access to the rural or isolated communities that Medicaid may have overlooked.

For example, the homeless — or those on the cusp of entering transitional housing programs — often do not enroll in Medicaid due to barriers such as a lack of proper identification or a Social Security card. These populations also tend to distrust government institutions — but faith leaders and community organizations could help walk them through the process in a way that the government can’t, helping secure their medical stability. And with over 25 million Americans expected to gain coverage under Obamacare in the coming decade, state, federal, and public health officials will need all the help that they can get.

Justice

Texas Judge Permits ‘Bible Banners’ To Be Displayed At Public School Football Games

By Ian Millhiser on May 10, 2013 at 4:10 pm

Last year, a Texas judge issued a temporary order permitting cheerleaders at a Texas high school to display banners emblazoned with Bible verses and other religious messages during football games. On Wednesday, the same judge made that order permanent. As a result, signs such as this one will continue to be a regular fixture at these public high school football games:

As ThinkProgress previously explained, this case is troubling in no small part because these cheerleaders are receiving favorable treatment compared to another Texas cheerleader who alleged that she was raped. In the alleged rape case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a cheerleader could be required to cheer for her alleged rapist because in her “capacity as cheerleader, [she] served as a mouthpiece through which [her school] could disseminate speech namely, support for its athletic teams.” Public school cheerleaders, according to the Fifth Circuit, speak on behalf of their government-run school when they cheer.

But, in the Supreme Court’s words, the “First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” If cheerleaders are speaking on behalf of their public school, then they cannot display religious banners because doing so is not neutral on the subject of religion.

Admittedly, the decision this week came from a state court judge, while the Fifth Circuit is a federal court, so the Fifth Circuit’s decision is not binding on the Texas judge. Nevertheless, the Constitution’s requirement for church/state separation is binding upon state court judges. And, at the very least, alleged rape survivors should not face less favorable laws than everyone else.

Health

The Surprising Link Between Religious Belief And Health Care Spending

By Sy Mukherjee on May 7, 2013 at 6:00 pm

(Credit: The Telegraph)

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine raises a provocative question: can patients’ religious faith — and the spiritual support given to them by their caregivers — influence their decisions on end-of-life medical services and health care spending? The short answer, according to researchers’ findings, is yes — with some caveats.

Dr. Tracy Balboni of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston led the new study, which tracked 343 Americans with advanced cancers from its launch in 2002 up through their deaths. The results were striking. Compared to those who reported a lower level of spiritual support, the 43 percent of study participants who reported “high spiritual support” from religious communities were about a third as likely to receive end-of-life (EoL) hospice care, over two and half times more likely to to receive some form of aggressive — and expensive — EoL service (like being put on a ventilator or pursuing additional chemotherapy), and five times more likely to die in a hospital ICU in their last week of life.

Furthermore, patients who self-reported the highest levels of “religious coping” during their final days were 11 times as likely to receive aggressive EoL treatments and 22 times more likely to die in the ICU compared to those with lower levels of religious coping. Those numbers were also elevated for minority populations, particularly African Americans, who are among America’s most religious ethnic groups.

So what’s at the root of these notable trends — and what lessons do they hold for doctors who want to provide their patients with the best care while also reducing the number of unnecessary procedures they must undergo in their last days? Researchers speculate that the numbers may have something to do with religious Americans’ belief in a higher power and the prospect of God working through medical professionals. “One possibility is that religious people consider medicine to be a primary means of divine intervention,” wrote Balboni and her colleagues. They also mused that strong religious community support could foster the desire to “persevere” through “hope found within suffering” — in essence, the mettle to refuse to call it quits.

But as the study’s findings on these religious community-supported patients’ ICU death rates shows, channeling that faith-based will to live into aggressive medical care isn’t necessarily effective — and, to be blunt, it contributes to wasteful health care spending by Americans and public entitlement programs such as Medicare. EoL hospice care isn’t a huge proportion of total health care spending — but aggressive medical interventions for chronically ill elderly Americans on the cusp of death is, with the top five percent of such patients accounting for over $600 billion in health spending every year.

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Alyssa

Justin Bieber Breaks Istanbul Concert For Muslim Call To Prayer

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 6, 2013 at 12:02 pm

Justin Bieber has had what might be politely termed an awkward spring so far, whether he was joking about whether Anne Frank would have been a fan of his—an idea brilliantly satirized in the New Yorker by Yoni Brenner, who sketched out a vision of World War II in which the Nazis are defeated by Belieberism—and ran into trouble with his pet monkey. But as The Hollywood Reporter notes, he appears to have gotten one gesture of international cooperation right:

Amid an international tour plagued with missteps, Justin Bieber is being recognized for doing good during Thursday’s concert in Turkey. The pop star paused twice during his Istanbul performance to honor Azan–the Islamic call to prayer Muslims observe five times daily. “I’m not a Justin Bieber fan but as a Muslim, I got a lot of respect for him cos of what he did,” one Twitter user posted user after E! Online first reported the news. Wrote another, “You can hate all you want, but he earned my respect.” Later adding: “Muslim performers don’t even do what you did.”

There’s a lot of talk about a culture war without the boundaries of the United States itself. But American culture—or in this case, hybrid Canadian-American cultural products—is also a powerful export internationally. If Woodie Guthrie’s guitar was a machine that killed fascists, teenybop pop can produce earworms that transcend religious practice, national origin, and gender. Bieber’s gesture of respect is a proffer of sorts, a suggestion that religious practice and pop music can coexist—and that Christians are perfectly capable of being respectful of the practices of people of other faith traditions—and those who say it can’t are putting quarrels in the mouths of Western artists. If there’s an international culture war underway, a side that offers both the possibility of devotion and opportunities for pleasure may have one up on a party that shuts many participants out of both.

Media

VIEWPOINT: The American Media Needs To Take A Theology Class (Or Three)

By Jack Jenkins, Guest Blogger on May 4, 2013 at 10:35 am

Credit: CNN

There’s no way around it: Religion plays an especially powerful role in American public life. More than 90 percent of Americans profess a belief in God, and one need only examine the recent religiously-infused national debates over religious liberty, access to contraception, and marriage equality to see how crucial religion is to millions of Americans.

Yet religion seems to be having an increasingly hard time getting a fair shake from another major player in American life: the media. The breadth and quality of religion reporting in the United States has atrophied in recent years, with once-robust religion sections now all but erased from the pages of the nation’s leading newspapers. Meanwhile, religion reporters have either been laid off or forced to re-shift their professional focus to covering religion “on the side.”

The result is a mainstream media sorely lacking in quality religion reporting, a fact that calls into question the press’ ability to paint an accurate picture of modern American life. In light of the recent confused coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and Islam, it’s worth reminding the press why they (we) should try harder to get religion right. So, in the spirit of modern journalism, I’ve put together five reasons why journalists need to get working on their religion coverage:

1. Failure to understand religion can lead to embarrassingly inaccurate stories. When Roman Catholic cardinals descended on the Vatican in March to cast their vote for the next pope, journalists were quick to solicit the opinion of Sister Simone Campbell, a Catholic nun who rose to fame last year for her public opposition to Rep. Paul Ryan’s federal budget proposal and her rousing speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. But in midst of her interviews, Campbell was also repeatedly asked another question: Which papal candidate did she intend to vote for?

The question was, well, kind of awkward. Campbell is a woman, meaning current Catholic doctrine prohibits her from holding any priestly position, much less the role of cardinal, which is the only title afforded the right to cast a vote for the next pope. Campbell graciously corrected the reporters before they went to print, but the inane and ignorant questions exemplify the larger problem of facepalm-inducing religious illiteracy that continues to plague mainstream American journalism.

The New York Times, for instance, had to issue a correction in March for an article that botched the definition of Easter. Unfortunately, the correction itself was also wrong, sparking an avalanche of tweets and blog posts mocking the Times and their story. Vanity Fair even offered the Old Gray Lady a few pre-written faux-corrections for other religious holidays, such as, “An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the Jewish holiday of Chanukah. It is the Festival of Lights, not the Festival of Sprite™.”

These kinds of mess ups may seem small, but in a profession where reputation is built on accuracy and where backlash is swift, reporters can’t afford to play fast and loose with religious details.

2. Lazy religious reporting can make stories appear biased. Getting smart about religion requires more than the occasional trip to Wikipedia. Religion isn’t just a bulleted list of facts and names, but a perpetually contested space rife with heated debates over scriptural interpretation, theological nuance, and liturgical practice.

Granted, asking brevity-obsessed journalists to convey complexity is roughly as difficult as asking a southern preacher to shorten her Easter sermon. But when journalists fail to acknowledge the kaleidoscopic character of modern American theological life, they tend to overrepresent the loudest or most conveniently accessible religious voices and position them as the “authentic” representatives of all believers.

During the coverage of the papal selection, for example, MSNBC leaned heavily on the analysis of George Weigel, a Senior Fellow at the conservative Washington D.C.-based advocacy group Ethics and Public Policy Center who supported the Catholic bishops in their campaign against the HHS contraception requirement and continues to agitate against marriage equality. Significantly less airtime was given to representatives of progressive Catholic groups such as Catholics United, organizations that oppose the Catholic bishops on many issues but whose positions better reflect the views of most American Catholics according to polls on topics like marriage equality.

Journalists should obviously be able to recognize that a good story highlights different perspectives on the same issue, and having more voices in the room can have other perks: It wasn’t George Weigel but James Salt, head of Catholics United, who correctly predicted that Jorge Mario Bergoglio would become the next pope — on CNN.
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Our guest blogger is Jack Jenkins, a Senior Writer and Researcher with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative.

Alyssa

‘Game Of Thrones’ Executive Story Editor Bryan Cogman On Sex Scenes, Magic, And Those Amazing Sword Fights

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 3, 2013 at 2:06 pm

We’re halfway through the third season of Game of Thrones, a year that’s seen the elevation of female characters—and consensual sex—suggestions that one religion, the worship of the Lord of Light, could be gaining precedence and validity in Westeros, and some of the best swordfighting the show’s ever seen. I talked to executive story editor Bryan Cogman about how the show’s handled changes in characterization from the page to screen, how he wrote those steamy sex scenes in last week’s episode, and how the action choreography of the show comes together. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

To get started: halfway through the third season, Game of Thrones remains largely true to George R.R. Martin’s novels, but there are diversions in both plot and characterization. As the story editor, I’d be curious what the conversations about those changes look like. And in the case of characterization changes, do they tend to be driven more by the actors cast in the roles? The need to pace the story? Or a mix?

Oh, good you started with an easy one! Well, for one thing, now that we’re in Season Three — a lot of the changes stem from changes/alterations we made in previous seasons. Now, Margaery Tyrell, as we’ve talked about before, is an important character in the novels in terms of plot but she isn’t a point of view character and you don’t really get to know her until later in the saga. And even then, she’s not really driving her own storylines. Now, in Season Two, we always planned to go behind the curtain, if you will, with Renly and his relationships, but even with that, Margaery was still planned to be (more or less) a minor character. Now, Natalie Dormer was original considered for another role. I’m not sure who’s idea it was to have her be Margaery, but casting her immediately changed the character and the possibilites for her before we even started writing. It allowed us to move up the Cersei versus Margaery dynamic–that’s a big part of a later book).

And this solved a few problems we needed to deal with as we started adapting A Storm of Swords. If you break down A Storm of Swords, there isn’t a ton of King’s Landing story in the first half of the book, and virtually nothing for a few characters (Cersei, Littlefinger, Varys) to do. So having Margaery be a greater presence on the show (coupled with her arrival of grandmother, Lady Olenna) allowed us to dramatize the arrival of the Tyrells and their effect on the Lannisters (and Cersei, Joffrey) in particular. And the idea of Margaery as a sort of Princess Di type was very interesting–and that’s definitely in the books–her popularity with the people is mentioned, we just took that ball and ran with it.
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Alyssa

‘Game of Thrones’ Recap: “Kissed By Fire”

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 29, 2013 at 9:03 am

This post discusses plot points from the April 28 episode of Game of Thrones.

Much of Game of Thrones is concerned with the question of how individual players accumulate authority, consolidate their positions, and expend their resources, whether it’s Varys living to spite the man who maimed him and taking delivery of the once-powerful sorcerer in a box, or Dany taking terrible gambles to hatch her dragons and free a slave army that will be loyal to her. But this week’s episode, written by story editor Bryan Cogman, asks a rather different question. If you’re not a major player in the game of thrones, how do you decide who is deserving of your loyalty? And what happens when you withdraw or transfer it?

In the captivity of the Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya struggles with the idea that judgement should be outsourced to the Lord of Light, who Thoros entreats to “Show us the truth. Strike this man down if he is guilty, and give strength to his sword if he is true,” in the matter of Sandor Clegane. “He’s guilty!” Arya protests when the giant knight survives his trial by combat, and of course, she’s right, she saw him kill Micah. But she is entranced by at least some of what she sees in the cave, particularly Thoros’ resurrection of Beric Dondarrion after the Hound kills him. Every time I come back, I’m a bit less. Pieces of you get chipped away,” the knight tells her. “Could you bring back a man without a head?” Arya asks Thoros, wistfully, thinking of her father. “Not six times. Just once? “I don’t think it works that way, child,” Thoros tells her gently but truthfully—his faith can give her many things, but neither the revenge nor the healing that she wants.

And if Arya’s confused by that, she’s equally upset by Gendry’s decision to pledge his loyalty to the Brotherhood, particularly given the way it exposes the fault lines between them and the difference between Arya’s worldview and that of the man who’s become her surviving older brother. “I’ve served men my entire life,” Gendry tells Arya when she suggests he come with her to rejoin Robb at Riverrun. “I served Tobho Mott in King’s Landing and he sold me to the Night’s Watch. I served Lord Tywin at Harrenhal wondering every day if I’d get tortured or killed. I’m done serving…He may be their leader, but they chose him.” “I can be your family,” Arya protests.“You wouldn’t be my family. You’d be my Lady,” Gendry tells her. Even in the wilderness, Arya’s coming up against the limitations of her family name and her station of birth. She’s one of the few people in the story for whom being downwardly mobile might be genuinely liberating.
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Justice

Mississippi High School Sued For Forcing Students To Attend Religious Assembly

By Scott Keyes on Apr 26, 2013 at 12:00 pm

A high school in central Mississippi finds itself in court after allegedly holding a mandatory religious assembly earlier this month.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed by the American Humanist Association on Wednesday, students were given no advance notice about the nature of the assembly, but were told that attendance was required. It soon became clear, however, when a member of Pinelake Baptist Church opened his presentation by talking about finding hope in Jesus Christ.

The assembly allegedly also warned students against premarital sex, pornography, and homosexuality. As the lawsuit detailed, the program included a video of four speakers explaining how their troubled lives had been saved by Christianity:

The first speaker talked about his addiction to pornography. The second speaker talked about issues with his father. The third speaker also talked about problems with his family,as well as promiscuity and suicide. The fourth speaker said he had a great family that introduced him to the church. He said at first he did not think he could measure up to Jesus Christ so he sought hope in “other things.”

The first speaker said he used to find hope in “cars and clothes.” The second said he “used to find hope in people” and in “other guys.” He looked to these people for “brotherly love” and “fatherly love.” He said he then struggled with suicidal thoughts, and resorted to “cutting himself.” [...]

About five minutes into the video, Speaker One stated: “But now I find my hope in something that’s more eternal that is not in this world.”

In turn, each of the speakers explained how turning to Jesus Christ solved their problems and recommended that other people turn to Jesus Christ as well.

Soon after, “the assembly immediately turned into a full-blown lecture on the supposed miracles, powers, and teachings of Jesus Christ and the Church Representative encouraged all students to find sanctity in him,” and no one was permitted to leave. “The School’s truancy officer, Jeff White (“Officer White”), harassed several students who attempted to leave and told them to sit back down,” read the complaint.

According to the complaint, the school repeated the same assembly for 11th graders on April 10. A few juniors had been tipped off that it would be a religious assembly and “attempted to go to the library or another classroom instead but they were prevented from doing so by Officer White.” A third mandatory assembly was held this Monday for 10th graders, the suit alleges.

The Supreme Court ruled more than 50 years ago in Engel v Vitale that school-led prayer is an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, a decision they reaffirmed in the 1992 case Lee v. Weisman.

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