James Dobson Is Right

I don't know if it's ever happened before, but James Dobson and I are on the same side on what the Supreme Court's Ten Commandments ruling means. I've always thought that the courts have ruled that religious displays on government property are only acceptable if they're secularized, denatured, and stripped of their religious meaning. Prayers are OK to be offered before a state legislature or Congress if they have no reference to any specific deity and are generic enough that they could be taken for Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Scientologist, or whatever (atheists and agnostics are on their own, I guess). While I don't necessarily have a problem with that, I could never understand why religious people would find it acceptable.

Apparently Dobson doesn't understand that, either. Earlier today, Morning Edition paraphrased his argument: "If people don't have overtly religious reasons for putting up a Ten Commandments display, they're not taking them seriously"; and then actually quoted him on the Supreme Court decision itself: "What it said is that you can only post the Ten Commandments in public buildings if you don't believe it, if it has no meaning, if it's simply an historic document or edifice."

Once we've gotten together on that point, though, we seem to take leave of each other again. He wants to foist his religious symbols on me and anyone else, and I think he should keep his icons in his church, his business, and his home. It seems like they'd still get plenty of exposure there.