SCOTUS decision regarding coach prayer misconstrues the facts
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
The statement "misconstrues the facts" itself seems like a misconstruing of the facts. As far as I can tell, it's not the objective facts that are in conflict, it's the subjective interpretation. It's impossible to misconstrue a subjective interpretation.
The words "Quiet" and "Personal" are descriptions that take the form of a subjective statement. There can be no misconstruing a person's assessment of something as Quiet/Personal. Two different people can reasonably see somebody speaking at a volume of 55 decibels and say that they think it was too quiet or too loud and both interpretations would be their subjective opinion.
There's also cases where appearance is important, in that anything giving the appearance of something creates potential abuse of power. That is, at some level it doesn't matter if the coach is praying privately, if he is creating an implicit pressure to join him or suffer consequences, even if unintentional.
In this case, I can't help but wonder if the coach were Muslim or a member of an uncommon religion, what the reaction would have been. I doubt the case would have proceeded the same.
Second, this event happened after the game so it didn't disrupt the game or anything like that.
Third, separation of church and state is not in the Constitution and so it is just a general principle not any sort of binding law.
Fourth, separation of church and state does not mean that a church / religious person cannot use state property. Read Jefferson's letter where he coined the phrase. It means the state cannot interfere with the religious institutions. It was a one way separation.
Fifth, this was a personal ceremony, not an entire mass.
No one said it disrupted the game.
The separation of church and state, known as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, is certainly part of the Constitution. The state cannot interfere with religious institutions, and religious institutions cannot interfere with the state (making a break with European tradition, where churches were often an arm of the state, and religious institutions often controlled government), thereby making it a two way separation.
Not true. Please read Jefferson's letter where he coined the phrase.
Regardless, allowing a government employee to pray on government property is not establishing a state religion. None of the founders would have believed otherwise.
>The state cannot interfere with religious institutions, and religious institutions cannot interfere with the state (making a break with European tradition where churches were often an arm of the state, and religious institutions often controlled government), thereby making it a two way separation.
Depends on what you mean by that? People who are religious can push their religious views. Churches can push for certain policies (though they could be risking their tax exemption depending on the situation).
This is fully allowed. Like I said the separation goes one way according to the guy who made the phrase.