Vol.5 No.10

In This Issue:

• A Message from the Executive Director
• Announcing a New Contest Series! “FI and Me”
• High Court Hears Salazar Cross Case
• Religion Under Examination at CFI Indiana
• The Serious and Silly Season for Religion
• In the Media

A Message from the Executive Director:
Tom Flynn

Attention Leaders of Humanist/Atheist/Freethought Groups!

One of organized humanism’s best-known local group programs is being rekindled. And we hope your group will take part!

Since the mid-1980s the organization now known as the Council for Secular Humanism, publisher of Free Inquiry magazine, has invited local secular humanist, humanist, freethought, and atheist/agnostic groups to join a loosely structured national network. For some years it was known as the Alliance of Secular Humanist Societies. Later on, it was perhaps too loosely structured. Rumors flew that the Council’s local-groups program was being supplanted by the Centers and community groups then being organized by our supporting organization, the Center for Inquiry. Not so!

The Center for Inquiry has a superb outreach program, but we recognize that interest remains strong in a program for autonomous, volunteer-led local groups – groups that appreciate their independence and may wish to be affiliated with multiple national humanist or atheist organizations. To better serve these groups and their memberships, we are rekindling the Council for Secular Humanism’s Affiliated Local Groups Program.

As we upgrade our program to recognize and support affiliated local groups, we invite local secular humanist, humanist, atheist, agnostic, or freethought groups to join with us.

Membership is open to groups of all types interested in secular humanism and related causes: humanism, freethought, atheism, agnosticism, and the like. It doesn’t matter whether your group is incorporated or not, whether it has elected officers, whether it publishes a newsletter, or whether it has a certain number of meetings each year. We have just three hard and fast rules: (1) To be recognized, a group must publish a postal (i.e. surface-mail) address located within the geographic area the group serves. (A Post Office box is sufficient.) Whatever combination of Web site, e-mail, and telephone numbers you care to have on top of that is up to you. (2) Your group’s activity must focus primarily on members of the general population not located on a college or university campus. (We steer campus-based and student groups to our sister organization and its Center for Inquiry / On Campus program.) (3) Every so often (for example, now), we need a physical piece of paper for our files, signed by a real person, affirming that your group wishes to take part in our program.

Beyond those three requirements, it’s none of our business to tell you how to run your group ? so we won’t. Of course, there is no charge or fee for belonging.

What Are the Benefits? Member groups of the Council’s Affiliated Local Groups Program will enjoy the following benefits:

1. Listing in a new, user-friendly Local Group Finder database at the Council’s Web site, www.secularhumanism.org. When visitors to the world’s foremost secular humanist Web site seek information on a local group, they’ll be furnished with the name of the member group nearest them, along with its contact information. Your listing can also serve as a coming-events page to promote your next lecture or event. When the redesign of the Council’s Web site (now in progress) is complete, the leader of each member group will be able to add or edit content in the group’s listing at any time. 
2. New group leaders’ listserv. There’ll be a new listserv exclusively for leaders of affiliated local groups. We’ll use it to share new information from the Council; leaders will use it to exchange ideas on new sorts of events, winning promotional strategies, targets for activism, and the like. 
3. Subscription discounts to Free Inquiry magazine. Members of your group will be eligible for special discounts not available elsewhere when they subscribe to the nation’s top-circulation secular humanist magazine at your group meetings or events. 
4. Speaker support. From time to time, your group will be offered opportunities to book national-level speakers – Free Inquiry senior staffers, authors, or prominent spokespeople for humanism and related causes. Depending on logistics, national speakers may sometimes be available at no cost. 
5. Resource packages. About twice a year, each member group will receive a support package including selected materials from the Council. This may include lecture or seminar DVDs, educational audios ideal for personal listening, unpublished articles on topics explored in Free Inquiry, in-depth materials relating to legal action and other activism by the Council, and more! 
6. Free Inquiry issues and Discussion Guides. Each member group will receive one complimentary subscription to Free Inquiry magazine. Accompanying each issue will be a special Discussion Guide prepared by Free Inquiry’s editorial department. (Our August/September issue and its Discussion Guide are enclosed.) Across the country, some local groups have had great success hosting discussion groups that examine each new issue’s cover feature. Now each local group will receive an exclusive Discussion Guide, so setting up a Free Inquiry discussion group can be a snap for any group, however informal. 
7. Conference discounts. Members of your group can enjoy exclusive personal discounts on registration for national conferences of the Council for Secular Humanism and its supporting organization, the Center for Inquiry. 
8. Fund-raising opportunities. From time to time, member groups will be offered opportunities to purchase educational programs on CD or DVD at a deep discount. Resell them to your individual members at a profit and use the income to strengthen your group’s finances.

Additional benefits are also on the way, including a comprehensive guidebook on running a secular humanist group, now being revised for release in 2010.

What Are the Restrictions?  Basically, there aren’t any. Member organizations need not be of any specific type or form. A member group can be incorporated or not, have elected officers or not, charge membership dues or not, and can have affiliations with other national humanist, atheist, or church-state watchdog organizations or not. There’s no requirement to have a certain number of meetings per year. Whether your group owns its own building or runs out of a shoebox, it’s welcome to join the Council’s Affiliated Local Groups Program.

How Can My Group Join?  Simply click the Apply Now! Button and supply a valid postal address. We’ll send you a written questionnaire (the legal types say we have to have at least one document on paper signed by an officer of a member group). Fill it out, sign it, and return it, and your group is in.

Let’s rekindle something today!

Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry magazine and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism

SPECIAL REPORT:

High Court Hears Salazar Cross Case
By Derek C. Araujo 

I had the pleasure of spending the morning of Wednesday, October 7 at the United States Supreme Court.  In part I was there to be admitted as a member of the Supreme Court bar, on motion by CFI’s President and CEO, Ronald A. Lindsay.  The real fun, however, came immediately after Chief Justice John Roberts granted that motion.  

Fortuitously, the Court had scheduled oral argument that morning in Salazar v. Buono, an important Establishment Clause case in which CFI had submitted an amicus brief. Ron and I happily remained in the courtroom to hear oral argument.

Salazar v. Buono features a convoluted procedural history, culminating in a Congressional legislative scheme to maintain an eight-foot Christian cross standing in California’s Mojave National Preserve. Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) first erected a cross on federal land in the Preserve in 1934. Over the years the cross was destroyed several times, but was rebuilt each time by private citizens. In 1996, Buddhists applied to the National Park Service (NPS) to erect a shrine near the cross.  NPS responded by promising to remove the cross. Congress got into the act in 2000, however, by passing a law prohibiting the expense of federal funds to remove the cross.

In 2001, Frank Buono, a former Preserve employee and a Catholic, filed suit in federal district court to prevent the permanent display of the cross. Congress responded by designating the cross a national monument. Six months later, the district court held that the display of a Christian cross on federal land violated the Establishment Clause. It issued an injunction permanently enjoining the government from displaying the cross. 

The government appealed this decision, but Congress got into the act yet again. In 2004, before the appellate court could issue its decision affirming the district court, Congress passed yet another statute transferring the patch of land beneath the cross to – surprise! – the VFW, the very organization that had installed the original cross in the first place. The statute also stated that if the VFW ever ceased to maintain a war memorial on the land, the land would revert to the government.
The district court and the appellate court each concluded that Congress’s land transfer was a blatant attempt to violate the injunction, and a shameless stab at circumventing the Establishment Clause by favoring one religious view over all others.  In the words of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the sham land exchange “would leave a little doughnut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve.”  Not content with the prospect of a secular zeppola, the government appealed the Ninth Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Salazar v. Buono could be highly important.  It could be the first major Establishment Clause decision handed down by the Roberts Court. It also could give us a first indication of Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s thinking on the Establishment Clause; throughout her recent confirmation hearings, her views on Establishment Clause issues remained unknown. All of this assumes, however, that the Court will reach the underlying merits of the case. This is far from certain.

In addition to the underlying Establishment Clause issues, Salazar v. Buono involves a web of complicated technical and procedural matters the Court could use to duck the Establishment Clause questions. Perhaps most importantly, the U.S. government is challenging Frank Buono’s standing, i.e., the right of the plaintiff to have brought the suit in the first place.  If the government has its way, plaintiffs’ ability to prevent Establishment Clause violations will be seriously impaired. Without proving some sort of “spiritual injury,” they will not be able to get through the courthouse doors. Christian defenders of church-state separation, such as Mr. Buono, would not be able to challenge government endorsements of Christian religious symbols, because they are offended not by the symbols themselves, but by the government’s use of those symbols. If the Court finds that Buono lacked standing to bring suit in the first place, it could allow the cross to remain without even discussing the underlying Establishment Clause violation. The Court also could punt the Establishment Clause issue by limiting its decision to whether the government failed to comply with a final injunction from the district court. The Court could find that the government’s retention of a “reversionary interest” in the land transferred to the VFW means that the government has not sufficiently distanced itself from the cross, and therefore remains in continuing violation of the injunction. Finally, the Court could reach the merits of the case by addressing the proverbial pachyderm in room: the underlying Establishment Clause violation of maintaining a Latin cross in the middle of a federal park.

If oral argument gave any indication of the Court’s thinking, it will decide Salazar v. Buono on narrow grounds, most likely without reaching the underlying Establishment Clause issues. Most of the oral argument avoided discussion of whether the cross on federal land amounts to an unconstitutional “establishment of religion.” Instead, the Justices sparred over the proper disposition of the many technical issues, including Buono’s standing, the finality of the district court’s injunction, and whether the government’s retention of a reversionary interest in the park land means that the government is in continuing violation. 

Barely thirty seconds into oral argument, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg interrupted Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s presentation with a series of probing questions. Thereafter, eight of the Justices targeted the attorneys with an unrelenting fusillade of questions, mainly focused on procedural issues. As is usual, only Justice Clarence Thomas remained totally silent. Throughout the morning, all eyes were on Justice Anthony Kennedy, the possible swing vote in this case. Sadly for diviners of Supreme Court opinions, Kennedy asked only a single question, addressed to Solicitor General Kagan.

Arch-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, on the other hand, made no pretense of indecision. His questions and comments clearly revealed his view that a Christian cross war memorial on federal land is no constitutional violation. Scalia fulminated that Buono and his ACLU attorneys offered “an outrageous conclusion” that the cross commemorates only Christian service members and excludes those of other beliefs. Referring to Christian crosses in war cemeteries, he offered the stunning argument that the Christian cross is a supposedly non-sectarian indication of the “resting place” of the nation’s war dead. This gave Peter Eliasberg, the ACLU attorney arguing Buono’s case, the opportunity to deliver the most memorable quip of the morning. Eliasberg’s retort sent a wave of soft laughter through the usually silent courtroom. “I’ve been in Jewish cemeteries,” said Eliasberg.  “There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”

Fortunately, the Justices’ questioning revealed an apparent general skepticism of the government’s claim that Buono lacked standing to bring his case. Several of the Justices lectured Solicitor General Kagan that the government should have tested the standing question earlier in the case, and was foreclosed from doing so now. With hope, the Justices will leave intact the ability of defenders of church-state separation to protect the Constitution. (In the recent past, however, the Roberts Court has been less kind; its 5-to-4 decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation effectively destroyed taxpayers’ standing to challenge executive branch violations of the Establishment Clause.)

Assuming that the Court will reach the Establishment Clause issues underlying Salazar v. Buono, its decision will probably be very close. We might see yet another 5-to-4 decision, with Justice Kennedy playing his usual role of swing voter.   Regardless of the grounds on which the Court decides this case, it will be interesting to see how the newest member of the Court, Justice Sonya Sotomayor, contributes to the decision.