Ethics

Abuse of Church/State Plaintiffs, Part 1

By Ed Brayton

A few weeks ago, I interview Joann Bell on my radio show about her experiences when she filed a lawsuit over school prayer in Oklahoma. She was assaulted by a school employee, had her own obituary sent to her in the mail and had her house firebombed. But she's hardly alone. I'm gonna post some other stories, taken from a brief filed by Americans United in a court case asking that their client be allowed to remain anonymous in a church/state lawsuit.

In almost every church/state lawsuit I'm aware of, there is harassment and intimidation of the plaintiffs. In most of them there are also threats of violence. In many, there is outright violence and vandalism. Here are a couple of older examples from famous Supreme Court cases:

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on March 29, 2009 (boomark / email).