To the editor:

With regard to your March 1, 2013 article titled “Board votes in favor of non-sectarian prayer” I would appreciate it if you’d have Mr. Halligan, attorney for the school board, send me his copy of the Constitution with the section that “is very clear” about giving “no legal authority to have a sectarian prayer” highlighted. Since the purpose of the Constitution was to define and limit the power of the federal government, not articulate the authority of a school board, it’s hard to imagine how it could be “very clear”.

If he’s indirectly referring to the 1st Amendment it would be more technically correct, and intellectually honest, to say something like “courts have interpreted the 1st Amendment to imply a ‘separation of church and state’; though no such words are literally used anywhere in the Constitution. From there activist judges and liberal organizations have extrapolated the meaning to include elimination of any kind of prayer at public gatherings and have had considerable success at implementing this interpretation.”

That would seem a more accurate statement of the current situation. While compelled to respect and work with the courts decisions we do not have to believe they are any more correct, in keeping with our heritage or our founding fathers values than the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred-Scott decision. At the very least let’s stop inventing things that aren’t in the Constitution as justification for what we want. Assuming the framers were reasonably intelligent and articulate people a literal and common sense application of the Constitution would put an end to this and many other current “debates”.

Bob Lambour

Easley