Impressed with this letter to the editor by a paralegal student about a new Indiana license plate (published in The Journal Gazette):
"The pending lawsuit regarding the ‘In God We Trust’ license plates has a few attention-catching flaws. As a paralegal student with a special interest in constitutional law, I found the suit to be a serious mistake.
"The first reason comes from the popular misunderstanding of the First Amendment. Instead of reading, ‘there shall be a wall of separation between church and state,’ or ‘no law that even so much as allows religious liberties can be made,’ the amendment reads: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’
"The claim brought to court is based on the assumption that the state of Indiana (or any other government agency) cannot be religion-friendly in any way. This, however, is false. If you were to go back to the discussion surrounding the formation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, you would find that many of the Founding Fathers were Christians and that all of them, Christian or not, were not concerned with the state or federal governments being religion-friendly, but rather that the governments would enforce a specific denomination (i.e. Baptist, Anglican, Catholic, etc.)."
Read the complete letter & tell me if you’re also impressed with Abigail Snyder’s reasoning.