Comments on: The Fundies Are Right

By: Bella

Bella — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 20:53:19 +0000

How long before this Onion piece on activist judges banning Christmas hits the fundy circuit as the truth?

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43438

By: steve duncan

steve duncan — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 13:21:59 +0000

I’ve met few truly devout, zealous religious people that don’t let their beliefs color and affect everyday decisions. The very depth and strength of their convictions dictates religion MUST be a part of the calculus of all they do. Those people would be questionable candidates for a jury pool as they would likely let such considerations prevail over civil law or a judge’s instructions. Would I want a dozen Pentacostal Baptists deciding whether I’d violated some obscure, poorly written sodomy law by getting a BJ from my wife? Hardly, but after exhausting preemptory challenges my attorney might have to accept just such jurors deciding my guilt. I’d be very comfortable with overt (anti) religious discrimination in such a scenario.

By: Dr. Pants

Dr. Pants — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 21:52:56 +0000

Backfiring? My feeling is that any lawyer who starts using the Bible to justify segregation and racism would be a blessing for his opponent.

As for the War on Christmas crap, I’m going to need to see someone who is prohibited from celebrating Christmas on their own before I’ll believe any of this crap. Just because it’s not being endorsed by the state, does not mean it’s not allowed. If you want a CHRISTMAS tree so badly, put one up in your living room like everybody else. What do you care if the one in town square is a holiday bush?

Morons. Before we were ruled by monkeys. Now we’ve kicked them out in favor of developmentally disabled monkeys.

By: Scott Hack

Scott Hack — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 19:57:34 +0000

As a lawyer and a liberal, I’ll be the first to admit that government entities (particularly towns and school boards) have caused problems for the left (that turn up as anecdotes in bestselling “Christmas War” books) by overinterpreting Supreme Court pronouncements and doing generally stupid things that feed conservative paranoia. But I need a lot more information as to what the man’s lawyer was going to say before I could make any conclusions about this particular case.

Given that there are perfectly good laws on the books that prevent anti-miscegenation discrimination, I can’t imagine what “higher law” the man’s lawyer would need to resort to. And there is also the problem that lawyers generally aren’t permitted to instruct the jury on the law at all – that is the role of the judge in his instructions/charges to the jury.

And I’m really having a hard time imagining what references to the Bible or Jesus or whatever would be appropriate or admissible in any closing argument. This really isn’t an example of taking Jesus out of the courts – While morality and religion inform the creation of laws, we don’t try cases under an Ecclesiastical Law or Sharia or the Old Testament. Appeals to the Bible are not made in court, particularly in a civil case as this one appears to be. References to religion really have no place in the jury’s decision making process.

Without knowing exactly what the man’s lawyer wants to say, its hard to call this one. But given that the request to limit his argument was made before the trial, I suspect that the City attorneys have had prior problems with the plaintiff’s lawyer. Ordinarily, it would never occur to a defense attorney to make such a request before a trial. There’s more to this story….