The Indy Star offers up an ignorant editorial on the House Prayer issue entitled Religious tolerance takes a hit.
In particular, I refer to the passage that says:
The real question in this case is whether a federal judge has the authority to censor the prayers of religious leaders. Hamilton contends that even private individuals give up their First Amendment rights when they stand before “an official platform like the Speaker’s podium.” Yet, if the First Amendment means anything, it is that government, including the courts, does not have the power to regulate a private citizen’s religious or free speech rights. And those rights are not surrendered simply because an individual has entered a government building.
Because the Speaker of the House controlled access to the Speaker’s podium and that podium is not, in fact, open to the public, the speech from the ministers from that podium was government speech, not private speech. This is a vital distinction, one which Speaker Bosma conceded in the court proceedings but deliberately forgets or ignores in his public reaction. Bosma’s ignorance or amnesia has spread to the Indy Star’s editorial board. The First Amendment does not create a limitation on private speech. It does, however, impose a limitation on government speech, which is all the Court did.
It is simply pathetic that the Star chooses to perpetuate the myth that the Court is attempting to regulate private speech. All the Court has done is engage in the limitation of government speech. Limitation of government is the First Amendment’s purpose, and that is how it has been used in this instance.
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