Stephen Bainbridge makes a good point:
In arguing the Pledge case, plaintiff Michael Newdow opined that:
His daughter would be singled out by not saying the Pledge, and would be coerced to participate. “Imagine you’re a third-grader in a class of 30 kids. That’s enormous pressure to put on a child” to conform, Newdow said.
I wonder if he’s given any thought to how his daughter would feel if she goes down in history as the kid who took down the Pledge of Allegiance? Talk about being singled out! I wonder if he knows the story of William Murray, whose mother Madalyn Murray O’Hair got the Supreme Court to throw prayer out of the schools?
Today, William Murray is a born-again Christian, “the No. 1 spokesman for prayer in the schools,” in the words of U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. He is also the author of five books, the most recent being “Let Us Pray.”
Before his mother died, Murray observed of his family that:
Jesus says that “following me will cause brother to hate brother and separate mother from son.” In the case of my family, that is an absolute truth. Most people who study that passage see it abstractly, but in the case of my family . . . it has been split in a variety of ways because of my desire to follow Jesus. My brother, my oldest daughter, and my mother. . . .
Newdow, of course, may have a response: He might argue that he’s defending the Constitution, defending the Constitution is the right thing to do, and he wants to teach his daughter to do the hard things even if it causes some social tension. He may also be a better judge of just how his daughter is likely to react on this. On the other hand, he might not be such a good judge of that; people with burning causes (even worthy causes) sometimes aren’t quite as clear-sighted on such matters as they could be. Hard to tell for sure.
Note, incidentally, that Joe Roth, one of the children on whose behalf the leading school prayer case Engel v. Vitale was field, grew up to be chairman of Twentieth-Century Fox, run Disney Motion Pictures, and now head his own Revolution Studios. According to a Newsweek article (May 25, 1992), “‘Joe had to stand up at a very tender age,’ a friend says. ‘It made him dogged . . . very tough.'” I’ve seen no articles reflecting his own views on being involved in the litigation; if anyone knows of any, please pass them along.
UPDATE: Clayton Cramer (who isn’t wild about the Court’s attempts to restrict religious speech by the government) notes that in his books, Murray does not come across as generally supporting teacher-led school prayer in classrooms, at least of the sort that the Court struck down in 1960s; Murray’s views are apparently more complex — he would endorse some prayers, such as graduation prayers, but not others. More in Cramer’s post.
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