The attack on the Boy Scouts continues. Read about it here, at the blog Stones Cry Out.

Arguments in a major Boy Scouts case unfolding in Pasadena, Calif., before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – a case that is certain to be headed for the Supreme Court -- centered on the contention that the revered organization is actually a religion and should therefore not be given a lease of public land.

There are two things wrong with this contention. First, the idea that an affirmation of God makes an organization a religion is ludicrous. "God" and "religion" are not synonyms.

Equally ludicrous is the notion that the Constitution requires a local government agency to discriminate against a group based on religion or an affirmation of God. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires such discrimination; in fact the free exercise clause prohibits discrimination based on religious belief. If the city had a rule that only religious or God-affirming groups could lease space, that would clearly be unconstitutional. The converse, excluding groups based on religious belief, is equally discriminatory. So the judge has things completely backwards.

There is nothing in the Constitution, or the intent of those who wrote it and ratified it, that requires the state to banish God from the public sphere. Those who are pro-banishment have twisted the constitutional prohibition of establishment of a state church to absolute absurdity.

Also linked at The Mudville Gazette blog.