To sum up the discussion so far:
- FFRF Objects to Religious Symbol at the Ohio Capitol (18 Jul)
- Hemant Mehta (as usual) weighs in first (18 Jul)
- Larry Tanner (a Jewish atheist ) responds at Skeptic Ink (25 Jul)
- Wendy Hughes (also a Jewish atheist) also responds at Skeptic Ink (27 Jul)
- Dan Fincke weighs in several times (26-28 Jul)
- James Croft weighs in (27 Jul)
- Adam Lee weighs in (29 Jul)
I’m sure that there have been several other articles and comments elsewhere, these are just the ones that popped up in my feed while I was paying attention.
Some of the key questions that have been asked so far:
“[D]oes anyone think Bible Belt legislators wouldn’t try to erect Christian memorials in their own states after seeing how this played out?”
“Is Such a Monument a Threat to the Separation of Church and State?”
“[W]ould a reasonable person viewing the monument consider it to be a government endorsement of the Judaism as a religion?”
My answer to all these questions is in the negative. Bible Belt legislators will doubtlessly see this monument as a helpful precedent for future state funding of religious symbolism, and that can be true even if the monument is not a direct threat to constitutional separation in and of itself. I don’t see how a reasonable person can view the monument as an explicit endorsement of Judaism as a system of religion in the same sense that that Oklahoma Ten Commandments monument is an explicit endorsement of Judaism and (its hybridized memetic offspring) Christianity. The Oklahoma monument doesn’t just contain religious symbols, but starts off with an explicit affirmation that the Hebrew God is the only one to be worshipped.
I fully expect that the Ohio memorial will withstand legal challenge, because no reasonable person would conclude that the government of Ohio is endorsing anything beyond the right of the Jewish people to exist. I also expect, with much less confidence, that the Oklahoma monument will fail to withstand legal challenge, because it is difficult to see that monument as anything other than an explicit endorsement of Judeo-Christian religious doctrine, rather than just another historical marker as it was in Van Orden v. Perry. Incidentally, if you want to be able to predict the outcome of endorsement cases such as these, at the federal level, you would do well to read Breyer’s highly contextual concurrence in that case.
My sympathies tend to lie with Hemant and Adam in this ongoing argument, because any public funding of religious symbolism will invariably be used as precedent for expanded future efforts. As Adam put it, “The church-state barrier has to be defended vigilantly, because any chink in it will soon be pried wide open.” That said, it has to be noted that when it comes to religious monuments on public land, there is already a gaping hole in the wall of separation, right at the intersection of Van Orden and Perry, and until we can seal the breach at that point, the tiny chink in the wall under discussion in Ohio should take significantly lower priority, especially since it would require an improbably expansive reinterpretation of the endorsement test in order to patch it up. (I’ll gladly eat crow on this one if I’m wrong.)
So much for legal strategy, what of the ethical questions raised by Fincke and Croft? Croft has asked whether we should wish to live in a society which prohibits such memorials if publicly supported. I would ask, instead, whether we should wish to live in a society which encourages such memorials if privately supported. I do wish to live in such a society, and if Hemant’s approximate numbers are correct, only 13% of the project is currently projected to be state-funded. Since there is already Supreme Court precedent on the books which creates a highly legalistic loophole for donations of federally-owned land to religious groups, and since the Supreme Court is unlikely to create a new category of taxpayer standing just for conveyances of state-owned land, it would appear that the State of Ohio should have relatively little trouble fully privatizing this project, should they choose to take that course, and they wouldn’t even have to change the location of the proposed memorial. My question for Dan and James is this: What benefit, if any, is to be had by making this a publicly managed and funded project instead of a completely private enterprise? If it is possible to reap all the benefits of the proposed memorial without any of the (admittedly speculative) future costs of official endorsement in this case, why not go that route instead? I would happily chip in myself.
