Posted on 07/17/2002 11:39:08 AM PDT by ancientart
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that including the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance amounts to an unconstitutional establishment of religion. "A profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,' because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion."
Now if the court is right in this, it's clear that, in order to ensure religious neutrality, we must do a lot more than simply eliminate the "under God" portion of the pledge. We need to purge from the schools reference to all objects of worship - including, especially, the sun.
The sun is, after all, one of the most worshipped of all gods. In the ancient Egyptian and Persian religions, the sun was the chief object of worship, and there are few religions in history in which worship of the sun does not play a major role.
Today, too, one finds sun-worshippers everywhere: among the Hindus, among many African tribes and along the beaches of Southern California and Florida.
Classroom references to the sun make those who are not sun-worshippers feel uncomfortable and excluded, and this is not the kind of thing we can permit in our pluralistic society.
If we're serious about being inclusive (and we certainly are!), we must eliminate anything that might tend to favor sun worship. References to Sunday have got to go. Teachers should instead refer to the first day of the week by some non-religious name. We can call it Sleeplateday or Soccerday or Playday. Or maybe we can just call it Oneday. Or Fred.
Yes, it will confuse children to change the traditional name, but to retain in any way the idea that there is a day on which the sun should be venerated creates an unacceptable risk of offending non-sunnists.
And we're going to have to be careful about the songs we have our children singing too. Good Morning, Merry Sunshine? Definitely an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
Furthermore, we absolutely must edit our patriotic songs, including, especially, the Star-Spangled Banner. First Amendment zealots have long been uncomfortable over the references to God in our national anthem. But notice that sun-references are even more extensive: "Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light/What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?" Two sun-references in two lines! If kids sing songs like this in school, the Constitution is clearly in trouble.
And science is already in trouble, threatened by the nefarious forces of religion. Notice that we've actually been teaching our children that the sun plays a vital role in things like plant growth - allowing a religious idea to invade the scientific arena. That, fortunately, we can fix in a hurry: we can simply eliminate all references to the sun in our science texts and classrooms.
In Lynch vs. Donelly (1984), Sandra Day O'Connor warned us to watch out for "the myriad, subtle ways in which the Establishment clause can be eroded." But it's clear that she and her fellow justices have not been vigilant enough. Sure, they've protected us from prayers at graduation and at sports events, but they've obviously missed some of the more subtle ways in which religion has invaded our classrooms, doing nothing at all to stop those activities that encourage sun worship.
This is outrageous. Requiring belief in the sun isn't neutral in respect to religion and can never be made neutral. Tradition or no, solar references have got to go.
And what difference does it make anyway? After all, who needs the sun?
All your SUN belong to us
"Tut Tut. 'Tis but a passing wind."
"What fools these mortals be."
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