Suit against sectarian prayers as official House business

I noticed a couple of news items about the ICLU suit over sectarian prayer as official business of the Indiana House of Representatives. The Terre Haute Tribstar has an editorial entitled Prayers for state lawmakers shouldn’t be blatantly sectarian. The TribStar says:

We don’t think this ever should have gone to court.

Instead Bosma and the Indiana legislature should have heeded advice from the National Conference for Community and Justice about prayers and public entities.

Formerly known as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the NCCJ notes that the prayers should be given from the perspective of the entire group, not a single individual, should use language and symbols that are not offensive, and suggests that public prayer is not an occasion for preaching or testifying.

We suspect that the judge will tell both parties to the dispute pretty much the same thing as the NCCJ. If so, Bosma and fellow lawmakers need to quickly adopt guidelines for their sessions to start with non-sectarian, non-offensive prayers.

It isn’t an issue of religious freedom, but one of respect for people of differing faiths.

But, for Representative Bosma, this might not be about faith. Rather, it’s about politics. Nuvo’s Laura McPhee suggests that this is more about Bosma’s desire to set himself up as some kind of martyr for a certain segment of his constituency. McPhee reports that, whereas the ICLU originally sued “The Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” Rep. Bosma took the extraordinary action of asking the Court to be personally listed as the Defendant. Then he turned around and issued a flurry of press releases all containing some variant of “Speaker of the House Brian C. Bosma who is named as the defendant in the lawsuit.”

[T]he ICLU’s case is simple. “We are not asking the speaker to review the prayers and we’re not asking the speaker to censor anyone,” explains attorney Ken Falk. “The speaker needs to go on record as having a policy that comports with the First Amendment.”

Ironically, that policy already exists — every guest who gives an opening prayer is sent a letter from the Indiana speaker of the House with instructions that the prayers should be non-denominational. Speaker Bosma just refuses to enforce his own policy.