Source: https://secularhumanism.org/2018/09/end-of-a-golden-era/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 00:14:59+00:00

Document:
My euphoria at learning that my public grade school in Erie, Pennsylvania, quit striving to damn me to hell vividly demonstrated what progressive church-state jurisprudence could offer a member of a worldview minority, launching my enduring interest in church-state matters. As it happens, I had great timing: Abington v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett (along with their immediate predecessor, the 1962 Engel v. Vitale, which forbade public schools from composing an official prayer and compelling its recitation) marked the beginning of a “golden era” in church-state jurisprudence. For decades to come, the High Court chipped away at Protestantism’s entrenched preference in American life. From these decisions emerged new freedoms for those who believed differently or (sometimes) not at all.
Like many in my generation, I grew up hoping that America was bound toward a bright secular future in which religion would be treated as a purely private affair. I longed to see religious symbols and expression barred from public spaces. Only that, I thought, could make them optimally welcoming to citizens of every shade of religious opinion.Only that would prevent the Protestant majority from oppressing me using the mechanisms of the state.
A continuing series of High Court victories emboldened us secularists: Epperson v. Arkansas(1968), Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), Lee v. Weisman (1992), and a trio of Ten Commandments cases (2005). Of late, such victories come less frequently. Instead a steady drumbeat of verdicts has reinforced the retrograde notion that “religious freedom” is something conservative Christians, not members of worldview minorities, need more of from the courts.
With Justice Anthony Kennedy’s resignation—and his almost inevitable replacement by a jurist far more conservative on church-state matters—I think it’s fair to say that the golden era of Supreme Court church-state jurisprudence has ended. For decades to come, secularists can expect that when church-state cases reach America’s highest court the resulting verdicts will turn back the clock, reversing secularizing reforms we had grown to depend on over the past half-century and more.
In this new environment, secularists will need to seek positive change in state and local courts, in the legislatures, and in the court of public opinion.
Fortunately we have two advantages that mid-twentieth–century secularists did not: everyone knows there are a lot of us, and unbelief is less intensely stigmatized than before.
It’s often said that atheists, secular humanists, and secularists walk the same path LGBTQ activists trod decades before. The difference is we can no longer look forward to High Court rulings such as Lawrence v. Texas (2003) or Obergefell v Hodges (2015) to cement our accomplishments. The federal judiciary won’t be on our side, from the district court level right to the top, for a very long time.
We’re going to be on the losing side of 6–3 Supreme Court decisions for a long, long time.

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