Allowing a brief prayer to be said at the beginning of a court case is akin to stoning and beheading people for not following your religion, according to liberal comedian John Fugelsang. On MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” May 6, Fugelsang actually compared the recent Supreme Court decision in Greece v. Galloway to allow prayer in government as reminiscent to Muslim Sharia Law. Really?
Fugelsang called this case “not really about Christianity, it’s about Christian supremacy. This is about a whole different thing: establishing Christianity as the dominant religion.” The commentator went on to say, “The irony is, these are the guys that are praying for a separation of mosque and state over there, erasing the wall of church and state over here. And it’s interesting, with government in religion, Scalia law is a lot like Sharia law.” Get it? They rhyme. And Scalia is a conservative justice. And conservatives are the same as Islamic fundamentalists. Clever, clever, liberals!
Fugelsang went on to claim that “modern right-wing Christianity has become the leading cause of atheism in our society,” He then called “right-wing Christians like Judge Moore,” [Chief Justice of Alabama Supreme Court,] “dumber than a box of myrrh” for asserting the Greece v. Galloway case was about religious liberty. (Fugelsang is full of charming comparisons. Last December, he tweeted, “NAFTA screwed a lot more people than NAMBLA.”)
That got a laugh from Schultz’s other guest, Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Continues after video.
Despite Fugelsang mischaracterizing the issue, Schultz didn’t bother to correct him, and neither did The Huffington Post, or Raw Story, which reported on the segment. But even Lynn admitted that the decision explicitly forbid “discriminating against non-believers, or Muslims or Hindus” so that non-Christian prayers would be still be allowed under this ruling. Lynn also pointed out that if “the legislators themselves” opened with prayers, that could be challenged constitutionally.
Lynn went on to claim that across the country, city councils were going against the grain of public sentiment to religion.
“They’re going counter to the very nature and flow of the country where we try to be more sensitive to people of different belief systems or people who do not have any religious background. The five members of the court yesterday seem to be moving in the opposite direction, trying to prove that because we had a certain kind of prayer 200 years ago, obviously nothing has changed and we don’t have to be more open now.”
