Roy Moore's Monument

Religion has a place in the public square -- but not an exclusive one.

Cathy Young from the November 2003 issue

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Of course, there are plenty of pro-choice Catholics, including some of the Democrats who opposed Pryor's confirmation; the argument, however, is that an abortion-rights litmus test effectively disqualifies "serious" Catholics from federal judgeships.

Such a litmus test may or may not be wrong, but there is nothing new about politicians opposing judicial nominees because of their positions on issues. Is that a form of "bigotry" if such positions happen to be religiously motivated? Only if religious ideas are being placed into a specially protected category.

There is a streak of anti-religious bigotry among the so-called cultural elites -- the tacit attitude that people with strong religious views must be ignorant, gullible, and narrow-minded. But a streak of religious bigotry is also alive among those who advocate a greater public role for religion.

In one recent poll, 58 percent of Americans said that one must believe in God in order to be moral. This form of prejudice is often openly promoted on the right. (Just watch Sean Hannity badger the atheist guest punching bags on Hannity and Colmes.) To some extent, it is also fed by the fashionable, increasingly bipartisan political rhetoric about religion as the foundation of morality.

As an agnostic, I welcome religious expression in the public square. But the endorsement of religion by the state, be it the exclusionary symbolism of the Ten Commandments or even the political promotion of a broad, non-sectarian belief in God, is something that should have no place in America. Pace Bill O'Reilly, this does not mean that "moral judgments about right and wrong should never be made"; obviously, private individuals can and should make them all the time.

In a way, the conservatives who lament the removal of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse have fallen into a classic "liberal" trap: the assumption that anything worth having is entitled to support from the government.