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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Readers split evenly on reciting pledge in court
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
To some, it’s just a piece of cloth.
To others, it’s the fabric of America, symbolic of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and our legal system. In Sunday’s column, I asked for your thoughts on the pledge challenge. Atlanta attorney Donald A. Weissman filed an ethics complaint against Judge Mark A. Lewis for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in his courtroom.
Readers were almost evenly split on whether a Gwinnett County magistrate judge should commence court proceedings with the recitation. Lewis didn’t require participation, but he’d invite people to join in if they wanted to. He’d started the practice after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That mere fact raised a red flag with some readers.
One reader called Lewis a “new patriot.”
“If he was truly patriotic, he would’ve said it before that,” he wrote in the Badie blog, identifying himself as “LG.”
The writer lost a friend in the World Trade Center, and had an uncle and several friends barely escape the attack. “I’d rather see bin Laden caught than have someone saying the pledge.”
Nikole Howard doesn’t recite the pledge. Didn’t even say it at her husband’s graduation from Navy boot camp.
“It’s idolatrous to me,” she wrote.
And can be cultish, warned Michael Wilcox, a 24-year Navy veteran. ” … the judge may deny it, but his actions can be interpreted as worship,” he wrote via e-mail.
Weissman has said he filed a complaint with the state Judicial Qualifications Commission out of concern for fairness and the perception of impartiality. The commission hasn’t ruled yet. And the judge has recused himself from the civil complaint in which Weissman was defense attorney.
Lewis, wrote Arva Williams in an e-mail, shouldn’t have to step down. “We should have the Pledge of Allegiance in every courtroom, and I am grateful to Judge Lewis for following his beliefs. I am a little frustrated that certain customs in our nation are being banned because certain groups label them as discrimination. These people are the ones practicing discrimination. If someone doesn’t want to participate, that’s fine. If I do, that’s none of their business.”
Other readers viewed the complaint as another form of social engineering.
“All this politically correct stuff is crap,” Nancy J. Clark wrote. “The Christmas tree is a Christmas tree. The Easter Bunny is the Easter Bunny, and Halloween is Halloween. Anyone objecting to those shouldn’t be here, either. If they do object, they should keep it to themselves.”
