Pamela Paul’s recent op-ed in the New York Times was notable for two things.
Pamela Paul’s recent op-ed in the New York Times was notable for two things. The first is an incendiary title (“Your Religious Values Are Not American Values”) that fortunately does not convey a tone sustained throughout the piece. Paul ends with a conclusion so tepid that nearly all the religious conservatives she means to denounce could agree with it: “This Fourth of July, let’s bear in mind that what many Americans value in this country is its inclusion and protection of all, regardless of their beliefs.”
The second is this passing smear, the most specific criticism she offers: “Unfortunately, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has demonstrated that, like many Republican politicians, when it comes to freedom of religion — and yes, that must include freedom from religion — those justices are willing to put their own faith above all else.”
The link, where she supposedly demonstrates the accuracy of this accusation, goes to her own op-ed from two years ago furiously attacking the 6–3 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District:
This court’s right-wing majority is following the dictum of our Trumpian age: Objective truth doesn’t matter. Subjective belief — specifically the beliefs of the court’s religious-right majority — does. The Kennedy decision wasn’t based on the facts but on belief in the face of facts. Moreover, those six justices are determined to foist their beliefs on the rest of the country.
Paul believes that the assistant football coach who brought the case, Joseph Kennedy, had coerced players to submit to his proselytizing: “Students who walked off the field rather than take part in Kennedy’s prayers may have risked losing playing time and perhaps a path to a football scholarship. No athlete on a public-school team should have to pray to play.”
Sorry, but none of this is what the case was about — although Justice Sotomayor’s dissent artfully misdirects its readers into thinking as Paul does.
The truth can be found in Justice Gorsuch’s opinion (and also in Ed Whelan’s coverage of the case for NRO). Here’s Gorsuch:
The contested exercise before us does not involve leading prayers with the team or before any other captive audience. . . . At the District’s request, he voluntarily discontinued the school tradition of locker-room prayers and his postgame religious talks to students. The District disciplined him only for his decision to persist in praying quietly without his players after three games in October 2015. [Emphasis in original.]
Maybe Paul would have had a point if Kennedy had continued his previous practice, been disciplined by the district for it, and then gotten the Supreme Court to rule that he had a First Amendment right to flout its directive. But that’s not what happened. The real scandal in the case is that three justices were willing to okay the district’s indefensible behavior — and that for two years running, many in the press, including Pamela Paul, keep distorting the facts of the case. “Objective truth doesn’t matter,” indeed.