Back in January: City of Boston happy to fly rainbow and Islamic flags, but not a Christian group’s flag
Today in the NYT… “Supreme Court Rules Against Boston in Case on Christian Flag”:
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Monday that the city of Boston had violated the First Amendment when it refused to let a private group raise a Christian flag in front of its City Hall.
One of the three flagpoles in front of the building, which ordinarily flies the flag of Boston, is occasionally made available to groups seeking to celebrate their backgrounds or to promote causes like gay pride. In a 12-year period, the city approved 284 requests for the third flag.
It rejected only one, from Camp Constitution, which says it seeks “to enhance understanding of our Judeo-Christian moral heritage.” The group’s application said it sought to raise a “Christian flag” for one hour at an event that would include “short speeches by some local clergy focusing on Boston’s history.” The flag bore the Latin cross.
The Appeals court decision says that the lawsuit was originally filed in 2018. Thus, to avoid the horror of a Christian-themed flag blocking a billboard for one of the city’s “essential” marijuana dispensaries, the City of Boston paid lawyers for years to defend a policy that not even a single Supreme Court justice found constitutional.
The Appeals court document is also interesting for the list of organizations who hate seeing a Christian flag so much that they’re happy to toss out the U.S. Constitution. Examples of folks who filed amicus briefs in support of the city’s unconstitutional behavior:
- Anti-Defamation League
- Central Conference of American Rabbis
- Hindu American Foundation
- Maine Conference, United Church of Christ (they also hate Jews in Israel)
- Men of Reform Judaism
- National Council of Jewish Women
- Christ; People for the American Way Foundation (it is not “the American Way” to follow the American Constitution?)
- Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association
- The Sikh Coalition
- Southern New England Conference, United Church of Christ (again with the Israel-haters; I’m not sure that this name is accurate because I never heard anyone in New England who attended a UCC church mention either “Jesus” or “Christ”)
- Union for Reform Judaism
- Women of Reform Judaism
Not strictly related, but why do we Jews have so many different organizations? And why isn’t there a Reform Judaism-related group for those who do identify neither as “Men” nor “Women”? Also, what happens when a member of Men of Reform Judaism becomes a “woman” (as the term is defined by Ketanji’s panel of biologists)? Does she have to switch to the “Women of Reform Judaism” group?
The Person of Color (identified as such by the media) who is the current Boston mayor gets into the spirit of Islam today:
See also “Boston City Council approves protest restrictions proposed by Mayor Wu” (Boston Globe, March 30, 2022) for how Mx. Wu has enhanced freedom of speech.
“Not strictly related, but why do we Jews have so many different organizations?” Quick search showed that all mentioned Jewish organizations are somehow related to Reform Judaism, except ADL which is now run by a far left political operator. Which flies contrary to my experience with Reform here in almost hinterland where members are often have served in military, former police and other law enforcement with large participation of Jewish-Christian mixed families where different children may attend different religious services as the fell right. So my assumption that most or all “Reform” there are either astro-turfed by far left or primary represent far-left folks who for some reason felt need for something other then state religion with CDC for holy synod.
perplexed: That’s a good point. The Jews who hate the Christian flag are not practicing what Orthodox Jews recognize as Judaism.
You’ll note no Muslim organization filed an amicus brief in Boston’s favor.
Isn’t there an old joke about how a town with two Jewish families has three synagogues? The first family’s, the second family’s, and the one no one goes to.
“Islam is peace” said a noted scholar, so maybe the Muslim organizations didn’t want to get involved in the non-peaceful activity of litigation! (see https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html )
Fazal Majid, clearly followers of Islam are missing on a lot of GDP-increasing, world-improving opportunities for not having significant Reform movement that could serve as a magnet to the folks who like to improve world and increase GDP with peaceful litigation.
So the more Jewish someone is (for example, Orthodox), the more they respect the right to show a Christian flag? That means either Orthodox like Christians more, or it means Orthodox respect freedom of speech more. I was told by the NYT that it is Democrats who most cherish freedom of speech.
> The City of Boston paid lawyers for years […]
What is the total amount of academic salaries that were spent in order to determine whether to fly a piece of cloth that hardly anyone has ever heard of (the “Christian flag” is entirely unknown in most parts of the world, probably also in the US …)?
$10 million? $30 million? Why hasn’t Mx. Wu ordered to build affordable apartments instead?
This is ingenious! You gave me a grant idea. A bunch of lawyers can create a civic organization, it is their constitutional right, or declare themselves member of religion that has no negative selection criteria and promote insane demands of hurt feelings and get paid litigating it all way to the supreme court! Who says that happiness of lawyers is less then happiness of folks that require free multi-million dollar housing units? If I knew it when I chose my career I would become a lawyer.
Jewish organizations joining in attack on Christians’ freedom to exhibit religious symbols is very bad optics. Crap like that is what promotes antisemitism.
Everyone knows the Jews killed jesus!
The amicus brief is apparently about separation of Church and State, which is reasonable (as long as it will also apply to the Rainbow Cult in the future …):
https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/endorsement/amicus-brief-affirming-boston-policy-against-endorsing-religious-symbols
Optics are a different matter of course, but as I wrote above, I don’t think many people care about this particular flag at all. I never even knew of its existence before the law suit.
averros: I wrote a related post on this topic in 2019… https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/12/13/white-men-correctly-perceive-american-jews-as-their-enemies/
(Right before Covidcrats, many of whom were Jewish, shut down the lives of working class white men!)
I (a white nominally Orthodox Christian, but agnostic in reality) don’t perceive Jews as an enemy; but for some reason there’s over-representation of Jews in the Left. I asked my Jewish friends (including a rabbi) to explain to me what could be the reason for that but still have no clue (neither do they beyond “זה מה שזה”). This actually fits the Soviet pattern, too, – most Bolshevik and NKVD/KGB leadership were Jewish, probably for the same reason.
Philip, your old post from 2019 makes some points but also somewhat misinforms. Around here in the near fly over land, local Jewish congregants match broader population – rare local lawyers and successful car dealers and local college professors , more frequent small business owners including repair and rebuild shops, plumbers/electricians, and more blue collar workers, former/present military and law-enforcement. There are more affluent local Christian congregations around. There are definitely many more Catholic liberal lawyers then Jewish liberal lawyers around here.
averros, you exhibit Russian mentality. Get an American breed dog.
Good point. They should cower in the corner and hope no one kills them because some have different opinions from the majority. If they had paid more attention to “optics” maybe the Germans would have been more understanding.
philg: Quite a bold satirical post from 2019! The white workers (insofar they really exist in large numbers and are not just false flag Internet bots to discredit Trump) are probably wrong:
Europe had exactly the same anti-worker policies under “social” “democrats” Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder (massive outsourcing, wage dumping by influx of Eastern Europeans, destruction of the welfare state, crony capitalism, privileged civil servants/lawyers/doctors) without any visible Jewish politicians or voters.
Trumpism actually also started here long before in the U.S. in France, The Netherlands, Austria and Italy as early as 2000-2010. In 2016 it took hold in the U.S. and then also Germany (12% AfD) after the Merkel immigration debacle in 2015.
In 2022 Zemmour (Jewish and technically “Person of Color”) represented white workers in France.
The Chief Scientist and Science Himself St. Fauci was educated at a Jesuit school. I hear that the alternate Internet theory is that the Jesuits are really in charge of everything! 😉
Jack: Everyone is censoring him/her/zir/themself. Donald Knuth has said that admitting to be Christian at universities would be met with mild derision, whereas other Religions were fine.
April 26th – “slipped on ice”
Wouldn’t have happened if she had moved to the Florida free state.
The most amazing thing to me is that Shurtleff never objected to any other flag that was displayed – he just had one of his own (which I’ve never seen, if someone has a picture of it that would be cool.) I’m sure the Legal Eagles will dissect this for years to come and Boston will amend its rules so that it can’t be embarrassed this way again, but to the best of my knowledge, Shurtleff himself didn’t want to stop anyone else from having their flag flown.
I’m very unsophisticated but I think the Court decided correctly and it was unanimous.
I just don’t think the intelligentsia in Boston likes Hal Shurtleff much at all. I’ve had a law school dean rip down posters in a law school drawn by a student organization whose leader she didn’t like, so I’ve seen this kind of bullshit before.
Addendum: By the way, the Dean that did so was my boss at the time and dragged me along for the ride to witness it and help her enforce it. It was in her power to do so because the law school (which is where the posters were displayed, and they were very mild) wasn’t a “public space” and so she stamped her foot down HARD and ripped them off the wall, then made me throw them away.
Afterward I had to ask myself: “Is this what the Free Speech Movement from the ’60s has become? A bunch of reactionary lunatics?”
Kind of stupid, Phil, to encourage some of this enlightening conversation.
I am a bit confused as to why so many Jewish organizations are anti-Christian when the most prominent Christian organization, the church, is officially excepting of Judaism https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/catholic/2000/10/official-catholic-church-teaching-on-the-jewish-people.aspx