Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly had the right idea but, sadly, the wrong target last week when he delivered an upbraiding to Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire over an atheist display competing these days for space with other, more traditional, holiday messages on public property in Olympia.
O’Reilly’s outrage was focused on a plaque mounted in the state Capitol Building and sponsored by the self-styled Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national group for atheists and agnostics. The inscription reads, in part: “Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”
The display was presumably created as a reaction to a nativity scene erected a few feet away.
O’Reilly, on his top-rated cable news commentary television show, called it “one incredible situation in Washington state,” and “political correctness gone mad.”
He said, “The buck stops with Gov. Gregoire,” and added, “She is a weak, confused leader who is allowing a small fanatical group parity in Christmas displays.”
All of the above may be true, but there also seems little question in this particular case that the state would face a lengthy, expensive and almost certainly futile legal battle if it attempted to exclude the atheist display, no matter how toxic its message.
In response to O’Reilly’s comments, Gregoire and Republican state Attorney General Rob McKenna issued a joint statement noting that, “Last year, after a federal lawsuit was filed against the state of Washington by the Alliance Defense Fund, the state’s Department of General Administration set forth a policy allowing individuals or groups to sponsor a display regardless of that individual’s or group’s views.
“The Legislative Building,” the statement conitnued, “belongs to all citizens of Washington state, and houses the state Legislature, as well as the offices of several state-elected executives, including the governor. The U.S. Supreme Court has been consistent and clear that, under the Constitution’s First Amendment, once government admits one religious display or viewpoint onto public property, it may not discriminate against the content of other displays, including the viewpoints of non-believers.”
In other words, the atheists have just as much right under the law to their expression of contempt and bigotry as church members have to their seasonal message of love and joy.
Is it right? Of course not.
Is it logical? Let’s put it this way: Think anyone would argue with a straight face that a display featuring a burning cross or a swastika deserved such consideration? How about one that openly demeaned gays or women?
Certainly not, because someone would be offended by those symbols. But a plaque bearing wording deliberately calculated to belittle persons of faith is perfectly acceptable because religious believers in general and Christians in particular are the one group everyone can discriminate against with impugnity, it would seem.
Again, in this respect O’Reilly is entirely justified in his anger. It’s just a bit misplaced to direct that anger toward Gregoire, who didn’t request the atheist response and, in all likelihood, doesn’t even agree with its sentiments.
At least one hopes not.
As regrettable as it may be, in this day and age the governor’s options in dealing with small but persistent pressure groups are very limited. In fact, they may be limited to quietly acquiescing to their demands.
But as unsatisfactory a tactic as that is, at least it would deny them the attention their fringe positions could never command on their own — attention critics like O’Reilly ironically provide by actually taking these misfits seriously.
