WASHINGTON -- Gary Bauer, former Republican presidential candidate and Campaign for Working Families Chairman, issued the following statement regarding today's Supreme Court ruling that public school districts cannot let students lead stadium crowds in prayer.
"The Supreme Court's anti-prayer decision today amounts to an aggressive attack on personal religious liberty. In fact, this decision should be interpreted as a hostile attempt by the Court's majority to silence students who choose to pray at public school sporting events.
"This decision drips with hostility to public religious expression. In my mind, it proves that a majority of the Court is at war with the religious tradition of America. The sad fact is that of the six justices who were in majority, four of them were appointed by Republican presidents. This underscores that my Party has got to be more serious about the men and women we put on high bench.
"It is a nearly unprecedented thing for the Chief Justice of the United States to actually personally attack the tone of the majority's opinion. But Chief Justice William Rehnquist writes in his dissent that the majority has actually written an opinion that 'bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life.' That should give every single American a cold chill. In my opinion, this ruling actually undermines the Constitution's guarantee of personal religious liberty.
"The terrible irony here is that poll after poll shows that Americans believe the biggest problem facing our country is the breakdown of reliable standards of right or wrong.
"In a time when our country is already reeling from a breakdown in moral standards -- out-of-wedlock births, increasing sexual assaults, violent crime in our big cities -- the Court in the face of all this sees the enemy as religious faith, which should be the basis of moral renewal," said Bauer. |
