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Man who sued to stop pledge explains reasons for suit
SF Chronicle via AP ^ | 6/26/02 | STEFANIE FRITH

Posted on 06/26/2002 5:52:22 PM PDT by I_Love_My_Husband

Edited on 04/13/2004 2:40:26 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow said Wednesday he was trying to restore the Pledge of Allegiance to its pre-1954 version because no one should be forced to worship a religion in which they don't believe.

But if the threatening messages on his answering machine are any indication, the American public is not thanking him.


(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 9thcircuitcourt; flag; pledge
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To: demlosers
This guys hobby is filing suits against God.

Thats okay, he'll have to represent himself on judgment day...as the old saying goes, there are no lawyers in heaven :)

21 posted on 06/26/2002 6:05:24 PM PDT by Sender
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To: grlfrnd
"Justice O'Connor said nobody should be made to feel like an outsider...."

And THIS is suppose to make him feel more wanted!!

I bet all those God Bless America bumper stickers post 9-11 really had him in a tizzy.


22 posted on 06/26/2002 6:07:20 PM PDT by lizma
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To: AppyPappy
Real reason: He's a Fundamentalist Atheist who wants to force his beliefs on everyone else and suppress free speech and free thought.

AppyPappy, isn't it amazing that only weirdos, leftists and certified loonies have a right to free speech? I am so d@mn tired of millions of Americans being denined THEIR rights because something might offend one person or one small group that I could spit.Where are my rights???

23 posted on 06/26/2002 6:08:09 PM PDT by zip
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To: grlfrnd
Newdow ???

Now what kind of name is that???

24 posted on 06/26/2002 6:09:17 PM PDT by DensaMensa
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To: grlfrnd
Even though his daughter wasn't forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, it was wrong to require her to listen to it when she doesn't believe in it, he said.

What does his daughter feel when she walks around the mall during the Christmas holidays and sees all the Christmas decorations.

And what about when she's driving down the street and sees crosses on churchs and around people's necks.

25 posted on 06/26/2002 6:09:33 PM PDT by chaosagent
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To: dennisw
Perhaps he is Madelyn Murray O'Hare reincarnated. Atheists hate the fact that the US was founded by Christians. The Christian ethic has been a better basis for us than the atheist ethic of say, Communist countries.
I don't know where atheists could go; most of the Communist countries are failing, and for sure they couldn't go to a Muslim one.
Doesn't it tell them something that an atheist state has never succeeded?
26 posted on 06/26/2002 6:10:41 PM PDT by speekinout
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To: zip
denined=denied. sorry 'bout that.
27 posted on 06/26/2002 6:10:51 PM PDT by zip
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To: grlfrnd
I'm sure he's going to bed early tonight so he'll be fresh for his GMA, Early Show, Today Show, blah blah Explainathon. I say bring him on. Just p*ss the American People off just a little bit more. Keep on with the inyourface nonsense. At some point, soon, very soon, there is gonna be a group "OK. THAT'S IT. We've had ENOUGH".
28 posted on 06/26/2002 6:11:53 PM PDT by small voice in the wilderness
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To: grlfrnd
Even though his daughter wasn't forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, it was wrong to require her to listen to it when she doesn't believe in it, he said.

He should homeschool. That's what Christians have to do so their children don't hear the worship of sodomy and mother earth.

29 posted on 06/26/2002 6:12:19 PM PDT by concerned about politics
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To: grlfrnd
"Even though his daughter wasn't forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, it was wrong to require her to listen to it when she doesn't believe in it, he said."

He doesn't believe in it - so that makes it absolute that She doesn't believe in it? She might parrot, but that does not yet make it to believe or not to believe.


30 posted on 06/26/2002 6:12:46 PM PDT by GGpaX4DumpedTea
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To: grlfrnd
"Justice O'Connor said nobody should be made to feel like an outsider"
If she actually said this,its time to put her out to pasture.
31 posted on 06/26/2002 6:13:12 PM PDT by John W
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To: grlfrnd
SET ASIDE THE DECISION
OF THE 9TH CIRCUIT COURT

FR Thread on the same

32 posted on 06/26/2002 6:16:44 PM PDT by Jeff Head
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To: grlfrnd
I hope decent, real Americans make this guy's life a living hell. Maybe he will find more kindred spirits in, say, North Korea.
33 posted on 06/26/2002 6:16:59 PM PDT by Morgan's Raider
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Comment #34 Removed by Moderator

Comment #35 Removed by Moderator

To: grlfrnd
...it was wrong to require her to listen to it when she doesn't believe in it.


That logic would make Katie Couric unconstitutional.

36 posted on 06/26/2002 6:18:21 PM PDT by Fintan
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To: grlfrnd
America seems to have done pretty well up until the 50's without the "under God" and "In God We Trust" plastered all over the place. After all, it was the Knights of Columbus, not the founding fathers who got the words added to the Pledge of Allegiance. [link]

And has anyone bothered to repost the the story of the origin of the Pledge of Allegiance yet? I found that one quite interesting when it was posted last year. For those to lazy to read the story, the Pledge of Allegiance was authored in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a socialist utopian.

The only thing I'll miss about the PofA is that it was probably the only time the kids heard the word "republic" throughout their school years. Maybe a few of them asked what it meant.

Me? I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, or what's left of it.

37 posted on 06/26/2002 6:18:40 PM PDT by snopercod
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To: grlfrnd
If I lived next to this idiot, I'd hang a very large flag on my property and say the pledge with my family every morning, loud enough for him to hear.
38 posted on 06/26/2002 6:19:04 PM PDT by pubmom
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To: grlfrnd
Even though his daughter wasn't forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, it was wrong to require her to listen to it when she doesn't believe in it, he said.

But... but.. I've been assured by the resident atheists that this ruling was NOT intended to stop my freedom to mention GOD. This man's own words prove otherwise.

39 posted on 06/26/2002 6:19:06 PM PDT by Helix
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To: grlfrnd
Newdow has a history ...


Freethought Today, November 1999

"Under God" Under Appeal
Physician Michael Newdow of Broward County, Florida, has appealed the dismissal of his 1998 lawsuit seeking to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance and restore its original language dating to 1892. The part-time resident of Fort Lauderdale is suing on behalf of his daughter, 5.

U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages dismissed the case because his daughter wasn't yet school-age. Newdow argues that permitting his daughter to sit out the pledge, as provided for by a 1940's Supreme Court case, still subjects her to outsider status and religious dogma in school. The court has not considered the pledge since it was amended to include "under God" in 1948, although it recently let stand a federal court ruling dismissing a similar challenge out of Chicago. The U.S. House didn't open each daily session with the pledge until 1988, and the U.S. Senate didn't follow suit until June 24 this year.

New Times Broward-Palm Beach
September 30, 1999
One Nation, Divisible Under God
For 45 years the Pledge of Allegiance has included a mention of the Almighty. Atheist Michael Newdow is suing for removal.

BY BOB NORMAN

Penned in 1892 by a socialist minister turned journalist named Francis Bellamy, the Pledge of Allegiance originally read: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands -- one nation, indivisible -- with liberty, and justice for all."

But Broward County's public schoolchildren -- who are led to recite the pledge every morning by school board decree -- say more than that, of course. Through the years the pledge has been altered to include the United States of America and God. The former was added in the '20s as a reminder to new immigrants of just whose flag they were pledging allegiance to. And in 1954, when the U.S. was frostbitten by the Cold War and godless communists were invading its institutions, Congress, with President Eisenhower's blessing, added "under God."

Taken in this historical light, the pledge is not something Michael Newdow wants to mess with; he wants to restore it. In June 1998 the 46-year-old physician filed suit against President Clinton, the U.S. Congress, and the School Board of Broward County in hopes of getting "under God" deleted from the pledge. That act of 1954, he argues, violated the First Amendment, which forbids Congress from making a law "respecting an establishment of religion." Newdow, a part-time resident of Fort Lauderdale, also argues that his five-year-old daughter, whom he's raising to be an atheist like himself, shouldn't be subjected to the pledge every morning. It will only make her feel like an "outsider," he says, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot endorse religious belief precisely because such an endorsement alienates nonbelievers.

Newdow's suit was dismissed in December. He appealed the case this past spring, and the appellate court is slated to render its decision any day now.

Newdow is no kook. In fact, he's highly educated -- with degrees from Brown University, UCLA medical school, and University of Michigan's law school -- and argues a mean game when it comes to church-state issues. "Every constitutional lawyer I talked to told me, 'There is no question it is unconstitutional, and there is no question that you will lose,'" Newdow says.

The initial dismissal of his suit, however, was based not on the merits of his legal arguments but on a technicality. U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages agreed with federal lawyers who argued that Newdow lacked proper standing to sue because his daughter wasn't yet in school. Newdow says his daughter now may wind up attending school in another district altogether, but he hopes that the appellate court will rule that he has standing based on his assertion that he's still a taxpayer in Broward County.

In the original case, assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Stuart also argued that, even if Newdow was qualified to file the suit, nobody was going to force his daughter to recite the pledge; she could simply sit it out. Newdow posits that, even if his daughter were to sit the pledge out, she would still be subjected to "religious dogma" in school and probably be considered an "outsider."

"At age five," he writes in his appeal, "this harm is especially acute, since she will be unable to… deal with its consequences."

Stuart also cited a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case in which Justice William J. Brennan suggested that "under God" does not violate the First Amendment because the religious meaning has been "lost through rote repetition." Other Supreme Court justices, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, have written that the pledge is "consistent with the principle that the government may not endorse religious belief," and that its reference to God doesn't make the pledge a "religious exercise."

Newdow counters that the Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the act of 1954, or the phrase "under God" in the pledge, a point the government concedes. All the Supreme Court citations used by the government were made as side issues in other church-state cases. In his legal briefs, Newdow cites more than 50 cases to bolster his argument, including the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman case, in which the court ruled that Congress is forbidden to pass laws that advance religion or have a religious effect.

"But how does he respond to the Judeo-Christian birth of this nation and to the fact that that we're a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles?" asks Gene Kapp, spokesman for the American Center For Law and Justice, which is aligned with the Christian Coalition.

Newdow addresses this issue in his court filings, noting that the founding fathers made no reference to God in the Constitution or its preamble. The First Amendment's insistence on the separation of church and state, he argues, is the most glaring proof that the founders didn't want religion commingling with government.

The Newdow case isn't the only controversy the pledge has faced of late. In Texas a school district recently banned the pledge to avoid potential lawsuits over its religious nature. The district has since lifted the ban, but the issue -- and the constitutionality of the act of 1954 -- remains unsettled, says Steve Benen, the spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Americans United For the Separation of Church and State (AU).

"Clearly Congress was trying to use religion as a political tool in 1954, and that raises serious church-state concerns," says Benen, whose organization boasts 60,000 members nationwide. "It's a sound argument, but Mr. Newdow likely won't prevail. The courts are just unwilling to consider the controversy, as evidenced. There may be many judges that fear political consequences. It would be outrageous to so many religious people if 'under God' was taken from the pledge."

Benen says that AU won't join the pledge fight for strictly pragmatic reasons. There are more timely and winnable battles in which to engage, he says. For instance, the AU is currently arguing a case in Florida against the use of vouchers that allow tax money to be used to send kids to Christian schools.

Newdow says his pledge fight -- unlike AU's strategic battles -- is essentially personal. The act of 1954 infringes on his own religious freedom, he claims. He's a minister of atheism, ordained by the Universal Life Church, a controversial California entity that has ordained millions of ministers of all stripes and beliefs at the mere asking. Newdow says he'll be opening his church, the First Amendment Church of True Science (FACTS), soon, likely on the Internet. Atheists, he argues, shouldn't have to pledge to a God in whom they don't believe. He compares his refusal to that expected of Christians, who would surely refuse to pledge allegiance to "one nation under Allah." Atheists, he says, are among the last groups in the U.S. that are fair game for hatred and discrimination. (At least six states still have laws barring atheists -- who make up between 4 and 13 percent of the U.S. population -- from holding public office.)

He concedes that there isn't much sympathy for atheists in mainstream America and that his cause, which has been unpublicized until now, is likely to be met with popular derision. Still Newdow says he's certain that the appellate court, on the strength of his exhaustive arguments, will have to rule with him. If it does, the case could eventually land in the Supreme Court, where the act of 1954 would get its final challenge.

If the appellate court rules against him, Newdow says he'll refile the case in another district. "I'll just have to start over," he says. "I'm not going to stop banging my head against this wall."
40 posted on 06/26/2002 6:19:13 PM PDT by TomGuy
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