Separation of Church And State

Evil SCOTUS

There’s a particular trait that’s common among conservatives and that is for them to explain their positions, they have to lie. Have you ever heard anyone defend Donald Trump without lying? Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is a liar. But then again, the six extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist justices that are the majority on the highest court in the land are proven liars.

In the ruling that came down today allowing a Washington state football coach to pray at a public school event, Gorsuch, who wrote for the majority, lied. It’s as if he didn’t pay any actual attention to the case and decided it’d suit his needs better if he just made some shit up. Naturally, this is one of Donald Trump’s appointees.

Gorsuch repeatedly claims in his writing for the majority that Joseph Kennedy, a former public school football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington state who prayed at the 50-yard line following football games, who was often joined by his players, members of the opposing team, and members of the general public, “offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.” That is a lie. The layman’s term for this is “bullshit.”

And once again, this court has thrown out precedent. This court has overruled Lemon v. Kurtzman, the 1971 decision that previously governed cases involving the Constitution’s language prohibiting an establishment of religion. This establishes, as usual, Christianity on government property in a government function. Do these fucks even know what “secular” means?

The coach did not pray silently. Anyone can pray at school or any other government facility. Prayer is not banned. Establishing a religion is banned which rules out public prayer. Kennedy held very public prayers on the 50-yeard line while players from both teams kneeled around him while he held up helmets from both teams as if he were the Moses of football.

One student’s father complained since his son felt compelled to join in despite being an atheist. There’s peer pressure and the fear the coach will sit you on the bench if you don’t worship Jesus with him. So, the school district told Kennedy to knock it off. Kennedy did not knock it off. Instead, the coach went on a media tour and even made an appearance on Good Morning, America. At the next game, there was what’s been described as a stampede to pray with the coach on the 50-yard line to help him with his “commitment to God.” It was so bad that even members of the high school band got trampled. You don’t see that shit at band camp.

But, I’m sure it was a very private stampede.

The 1971 case held that the government’s actions “must have a secular legislative purpose,” that their “principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion,” and that the government may not “foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’” A stampede for Jesus on a public school’s football field at the 50-yard line is NOT secular.

You don’t need God to play football anymore than you need the national anthem for sports.

Justice Gorsuch did not base his opinion on the Constitution. It’s why he lied. He even dismissed the photographic evidence of the prayer huddles. Since Gorsuch lied, it leaves me to speculate that he would have had a different ruling if the coach wasn’t Christian.

What if the coach was Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, or even worse…a Satanist?

The Church of Satan doesn’t literally worship the devil because Satanists are atheists. Satanists don’t believe in God or the Devil. They chose Satan as their symbol which makes sense as this country is supposed to guarantee the right to freedom of religion. That right also protects your freedom to be an atheist, so Satan is being used here as a symbol for atheists…and it freaks people the fuck out.

And that’s what I want. To freak people the fuck out…specifically, religious zealots who believe their religion takes priority and has greater rights than other religions. I want a liberal football coach somewhere in this nation (there has to be at least one) to conduct a Satanic ceremony after a public school’s football game on the 50-yard line. Neil Gorsuch rules that a coach can do that so I’m sure the school district won’t fire a coach for leading a Satanic prayer at a football game. And, even if that prayer summons a demon, Justice Gorsuch says that demon is allowed at a public school setting. Maybe a demon would enjoy a high school football game. Do demons like hotdogs? And, it wouldn’t be the first time someone summoned a demon to help with their football game. Ask Tom Brady.

And quite frankly, this public school demon needs to be raised and Neil Gorsuch and the rest of his troglodyte fundamentalist majority of hypocrites should be forced to live with it. The only problem is that it wouldn’t be fair to the demon.

Creative note: I read my lettering out loud just to hear how it sounds. For some reason, every time I said “Beezelbub,” my Amazon Echo device, Alexa, would light up. So, if you don’t get a new cartoon from me tomorrow or see any activity from me, it might mean I inadvertently summoned a demon. I should probably clean my bathroom.

Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.

Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.

Tip Jar: if you want to support the cartoonist, please send a donation through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.

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SCOTUS Erode Us

The far-right troglodyte court of religious zealots had a very busy week.

First, they ruled that religious private schools can receive taxpayer money. Naturally, this violates the separation of church and state which is in the Constitution.

Claiming they can actually comprehend the Constitution, SCOTUS’ next move was to allow people to carry concealed guns in New York City. I’ve been looking but I can’t find “concealed-carry” in the Constitution but I did find “well-regulated.”

Finally, SCOTUS did exactly what we expected them to do and that was to overturn Roe v. Wade based, not on the Constitution, but on their religious zealotry. If you’re a right-wing gun-humping religious zealot who wants to control women and tell them what they can and can’t do with their bodies, then you had a good week.

SCOTUS is overriding their function. They are legislating. Take the abortion case for example. They were hearing a case about banning abortions after a set number of weeks. Instead of just issuing a decision on that case, they created new laws. This is literally legislating from the bench.

The case they were hearing didn’t ask the court whether abortion is or isn’t constitutional, probably because most of the justices on the court have said that abortion is precedent and settled law.

The scary thing is, this is establishing a new precedent (irony abounds) for the court to strike down laws they’re not even hearing arguments about.

What will the Supreme Court strike down next that nobody’s asking them about?

Music note: I listened to a bunch of girl rock while drawing this (which took a while). I jammed to Paula Cole, Alanis Morrisette, the Cranberries, Melissa Etheridge, and Soul Asylum. Siri thinks Soul Asylum are girls.

Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.

Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.

Tip Jar: if you want to support the cartoonist, please send a donation through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.

Watch me draw:

Slithering SCOTUS

I love that conservatives are strict constitutionalists except when they’re not. Conservatives say they love the Constitution and it needs to be interpreted as it was written by the Founding Fathers, but they really only care about one amendment, the Second, and they even ignore half of that one. Hell, they can’t even say the complete sentence they’re always quoting.

Texas Republicans want to throw out the 16th Amendment which means they’re not constitutionalists at all. And when it comes to the First Amendment, conservatives love to take a crap on that one. They don’t care about freedom of speech except when it’s their speech. They don’t care about freedom of the press and want today’s media severely restricted. And, they truly believe in the separation of church and state only when it applies to other religions.

Case in point, the Supreme Court took a huge dump on the separation of church and state this week by ruling that taxpayers should fund church schools. I don’t think six religious zealots on the court interpreted “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State” the way Thomas Jefferson intended.

I don’t believe those six justices combined are as intelligent as Jefferson.

The 6-3 fucknut religious zealot majority ruled on a case in Maine, that if that public funds intended to support the education of students for whom a public option was not available, then those funds be made available to parents who wished to use them to pay for a religious school’s tuition. The court just ruled that taxpayer money must be used on religious education. What happened to no establishment of religion?

Under the Establishment Clause, the federal government and all governments under it, cities, states, territories, etc, are prohibited from establishing or sponsoring religion. Giving taxpayer money to church schools is the very definition of sponsoring.

Justice Stephen Breyer argues in the dissenting opinion, the opinion that makes sense, “The very point of the Establishment Clause is to prevent the government from sponsoring religious activity itself, thereby favoring one religion over another or favoring religion over nonreligion.”

This ruling by the court orders states to sponsor religion. But, can you see Texas, Kentucky, Mississippi, or Florida pumping tax money into a private Muslim school? Hell, funding a private Jewish school is probably out of the question in yee-haw states. This ruling will be abused. It’s not just that yee-haw fuckers will favor one religion over another religion, they’ll also favor their religion over no religion. So much for being a secular government.

I’m agnostic and I love that the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion because that means we have the freedom FROM religion…but maybe we don’t anymore because six religious fucknuts just based a Supreme Court decision on their dogma.

How would these six justices have ruled if the school in Maine was a Muslim school? They wouldn’t have ruled at all because they would have refused to hear the case. So, no public funding for Hogwarts.

We’re joining Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many other authoritarian nations in setting laws based on religious mandates.

This country needs more people like Thomas Jefferson…and less like Amy Coney Barrett.

Music note: I decided to give Taylor Swift’s “Evermore” album a chance so I listened to about five songs from it while drawing this. I didn’t really get into it but it might be one of those things that grow on me.

Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.

Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.

Tip Jar: if you want to support the cartoonist, please send a donation through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.

Watch me draw: