The Religious Don't Get It

Its typical tyranny by the majority.

Polk County is a hub of religious zealotry and council meetings are started with invocations and prayers of some sort, which I personally find repellent. There has been some recent controversy over the practice by non-believers which the "faithful" of course find stupid and unnecessary. Now the ACLU is getting involved and you can bet there's likely to be lawsuits if the council doesn't change its ways.

ACLU May Enter Fray Over Prayers at City Commission Meetings

Group asks City for records relating to invocations at meetings.

By Rick Rousos

LAKELAND | The American Civil Liberties Union may become involved in what has become a contentious fight over invocations offered before City Commission meetings.

The ACLU's Tampa chapter sent a letter to the Lakeland City Clerk's Office after speaking with the Atheists of Florida, whose leaders were at Monday's meeting, said Rob Curry, executive director of the Atheists.

The letter was signed by Glenn Katon, the Tampa chapter's executive director. It asks for records under Florida's Sunshine Law. Katon said Thursday night that the letter wasn't done at the request of the atheists. He said he has read coverage of the issue and is concerned with the city's stance of starting its meetings with sectarian prayers.

"They're doing exactly as we expected them to do," Mayor Gow Fields said. "This is all part of their strategy."

Fields said there's been "a huge reaction" from people who support the way the city begins its meetings.

The letter the ACLU sent Wednesday asks for records about the commission's policies and procedures for invocations, and which clergy have been invited to address commission meetings.

Katon said the ACLU is gathering information to determine whether it will become involved. But whatever the ACLU does, the city will be sued if it persists in its current course, Curry said.

Another group, Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wisc., is also getting involved. Annie Laurie Gaylor, the foundation's co-president, said she will send a letter to the city calling for an end to the practice. The letter will be sent to Fields and city commissioners. Gaylor said her group became involved because of complaints it received about the practice.

"Calling upon city commissioners and citizens to rise and pray, even silently, is coercive, embarrassing and beyond the scope of secular city government," she said. "City commissioners are free to pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way. They do not need to worship on taxpayers' time."

Government prayer is illegal and unconstitutional because it amounts to an official endorsement of religion and excludes nonbelievers from fully participating in the workings of their own government, Gaylor said.

"The commission compounds the violation when a majority of prayers are to Jesus or a majority of the officiants are Christian or Christian clergy, which inevitably happens."

Gaylor said at this time her group is not contemplating legal action against the city, saying that it was too early to make such a decision.