What exactly was that First Amendment bit about religion?

The third post I put up here at Lotus, the very first "news" one after the necessary introductions, was on November 13, 2003. It included a reference to a case decided that day in which

a federal judge in Richmond, VA ruled that the Chesterfield County board unconstitutionally discriminated against Cyndi Simpson, a Wiccan, when it prohibited her from joining a list of clergy who deliver pre-meeting invocations. County Attorney Steven L. Micas had written to Simpson in September 2002 that "Chesterfield's nonsectarian invocations are traditionally made to a divinity that is consistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition."

But good news, it seems, has a habit of being temporary these days. The ABA Journal E-Report for April 29 has the bring-down, saying that a three judge panel of

[t]he 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled a Virginia county can refuse to let a witch give the invocation at its meetings by limiting the privilege to clergy representing Judeo-Christian monotheism. ...

The 4th Circuit ruled Chesterfield County's Board of Supervisors did not show impermissible motive in refusing to permit a pantheistic invocation by a Wiccan because its list of clergy who registered to conduct invocations covers a wide spectrum of Judeo-Christian denominations. ...

"The Judeo-Christian tradition is, after all, not a single faith but an umbrella covering many faiths," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in the opinion.

"The customer can have any color he wants, so long as it's black." - Henry Ford

"You can pray to any God you want, so long as it's ours." - J. Harvie Wilkinson III

Simpson's lawyers plan to ask for a review by the full court, but

[a] law professor who has been involved in establishment clause litigation says the full 4th Circuit is not likely to change the ruling. And if it does, Douglas Laycock says, the Supreme Court probably would not take up a case with questions about limiting legislative prayer to Judeo-Christian faiths.

"The court has only so many chips to spend on this issue," says Laycock, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who believes there should be greater separation of church and state. "They haven't touched legislative prayer since the Marsh case more than 20 years ago. And it would be immensely unpopular in many parts of the country to let a Wiccan give a prayer. The courts aren't supposed to follow election returns, though they sometimes seem to do so, and they're even getting death threats now."

And so we take another step toward theo-mobocracy.

Thanks, I suppose, go to Pandagon for bringing the bad news.