{"id":22811,"date":"2015-04-15T21:03:26","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T01:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=22811"},"modified":"2015-04-15T21:38:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T01:38:40","slug":"canadian-supreme-court-rules-against-prayer-at-city-council-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/canadian-supreme-court-rules-against-prayer-at-city-council-meetings\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Supreme Court rules against prayer at city council meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The atheist who made the complaint against prayer was awarded <em>\u201c$33,200 in\u00a0compensatory damages,\u00a0punitive damages\u00a0and\u00a0costs\u201d. <\/em>Leaving aside the devil and his minions, being <em>damaged<\/em> by prayer must surely be a unique experience. What trauma could this hyper-sensitive disbeliever possibly have experienced to be worth $33k in compensation? Did he burst into flames like a vampire in sunlight? If only atheists could be dispatched that easily.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court ruled that <em>\u201cthe state neither favour nor hinder any particular belief\u201d<\/em> and, by reciting a prayer, it favoured Christianity &#8211; a right and proper thing for a civilisation founded upon Judeo-Christian morality to do; right and proper for a civilisation that is not bent on its own annihilation, that is. By the time we have finished driving God out of Christendom we will have nothing left but a howling wilderness, as Peter Hitchens puts it. Let\u2019s hope no atheists are offended by <em>that<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/montreal\/supreme-court-rules-against-prayer-at-city-council-meetings-1.3033595\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled the municipal council in the Quebec town of Saguenay cannot open its meetings with a prayer.<\/p>\n<p>In a unanimous decision today, the country&#8217;s top court said reciting a Catholic prayer at council meetings infringes on freedom of conscience and religion.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling puts an end to an eight-year legal battle that began with a complaint filed by atheist Alain Simoneau and a secular-rights organization against Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay.<\/p>\n<p>The court ordered the City of Saguenay and the mayor\u00a0to stop the prayers. It also ordered the city\u00a0and Tremblay to pay\u00a0Simoneau\u00a0a total of $33,200 in\u00a0compensatory damages,\u00a0punitive damages\u00a0and\u00a0costs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The atheist who made the complaint against prayer was awarded \u201c$33,200 in\u00a0compensatory damages,\u00a0punitive damages\u00a0and\u00a0costs\u201d. Leaving aside the devil and his minions, being damaged by prayer must surely be a unique experience. What trauma could this hyper-sensitive disbeliever possibly have experienced &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/canadian-supreme-court-rules-against-prayer-at-city-council-meetings\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[1986,2049,1247,1985],"class_list":["post-22811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","tag-alain-simoneau","tag-atheism","tag-prayer","tag-supreme-court-of-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}