DEKALB, Ill. (Christian Examiner) – After feeling repelled and annoyed by a participation of a Bible in their hotel room, co-presidents of a Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent a minute perfectionist a hotel mislay a Bibles on a basement of “proselytization”—to that a hotel complied.
Chief Counsel for a American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) Jay Sekulow finds a non-believer foundation’s claims both unconstitutional and “absurd.”
“Apparently, Gideon Bibles resting in hotel list drawers are usually too most to bear for a self-proclaimed freethinkers, atheists, and agnostics during FFRF,” Sekulow wrote on a ACLJ law blog.
“It’s once again transparent that those holding themselves out to be freethinkers are melancholy smaller institutions with inherent claims that would tumble prosaic in court. FFRF is in a business of creation threats since they know that any time they go to court, they always lose.”
- Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for ACLJ
While visiting Northern Illinois University to give a speech, co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor stayed during a Holmes Student Center Hotel with her father co-president Dan Barker, where they detected a Gideon Bible in their room.
“Nonreligious hotel guest should not have to compensate to be proselytized in a remoteness of their possess bedrooms,” Gaylor said, according to a news recover from FFRF. “The bible calls for murdering nonbelievers, apostates, gays, ‘stubborn sons,’ and women who disobey biblical double standards. What’s repulsive in a private hotel, however, becomes inapt and unconstitutional in state-run lodgings.”
Soon afterward, FFRF authorised warn sent a minute informing a NIU hotel a participation of a Bibles was unconstitutional.
“Who knew a sealed Bible’s small participation competent as proselytizing,” Sekulow comments.
The minute stated: “Providing bibles to Holmes Student Center Hotel guest sends a summary that NIU endorses a eremite texts. Including bibles sends a summary to non-Christian and non-religious guest that they should review a bible, and privately a chronicle of a bible provided: a Gideon Bible. Certainly, if guest wish to review this eremite calm during their stay, they can move their possess duplicate or entrance any of a countless churches or libraries nearby a university.”
Sekulow observed, “Once again, a FFRF seems to forget not usually a definition of a Constitution, though also a definition of difference such as ‘proselytizing.’”
NIU private a Bibles, as did a University of Wisconsin and a University of Iowa after receiving identical letters.
Sekulow says FFRF is “simply wrong” according to a law, recently inspected by a U.S. Supreme Court, that ruled adults “should be means to withstand ‘speech they find disagreeable’ but devising that a Establishment Clause is disregarded each time they ‘experience a clarity of aspersion from a countenance of discordant eremite views.’” Rather, a dismissal of a Bibles creates a meridian of feeling toward sacrament that does not defend a suggestion of a law.
Outraged during a atheists’ arrogance and miss of common sense, Sekulow says a Bibles can't presumably be construed as proselytization, comparing them rather to coupons left by a internal business, that hotel congregation select either or not to use.
“There is no coercion. There is no proselytizing function here,” Sekulow said. “Instead, it’s once again transparent that those holding themselves out to be freethinkers are melancholy smaller institutions with inherent claims that would tumble prosaic in court. FFRF is in a business of creation threats since they know that any time they go to court, they always lose.”
At a finish of a news release, FFRF provides a couple to a squeeze of “Bible Warning Labels,” that exaggerate a skull and crossbones and a text: “Warning: Literal Belief in this book might discredit your health and life.” It is an substantial support to atheists to vandalize Bibles by fixation these stickers on a cover.
“Absurd,” Sekulow said.
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