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"In God We Trust" Any of you find it offensive or maybe just wrong that this "motto" is on U.S. currency and coins? In June the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals found against a satanist who sued over it saying it's just a motto, it doesn't recommend any god and you can still use the money whether you believe or not.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be the nation’s official motto. The law, P.L. 84-140, also mandated that the phrase be printed on all American paper currency.

The First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

Anyone find this law to violate the First Amendment just on it's face? Pretty sure using the word god "respects" religion.

Update: Here is the scary language of a majority Supreme Court opinion in 1952 : "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being... To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe." (yeah, wouldn't that suck? 🙂 )

Here is language from a dissent in that case:
"Colonial history had already shown that...zealous sectarians...with governmental power to further their causes would sometimes torture, maim and kill those they branded... "atheists" or "agnostics." [n5] The First Amendment was therefore to insure that no one powerful sect...could use political or governmental power to punish dissenters whom they could not convert to their faith. Now, as then, it is only by wholly isolating the state from the religious sphere and compelling it to be completely neutral, that the freedom of each and every denomination and of all nonbelievers can be maintained."

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lerlo 8 Oct 7
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3 comments

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it is offensive and it's ridiculously unconstitutional. i would not count on the current supreme court to change it though.

g

No Supreme Court has changed it yet..they always rely on the motto aspect and forget that god=religion

@lerlo they don't forget. they don't care.

g

@genessa well actually they decide that it doesnt espouse any particular religion so its ok..I need to read the opinion to see how they get around god equaling religion.

@lerlo they probably missed a missing article.

g

2

I'd like to know why we moved away from "E Pluribus Unum" as our motto. It seems more fitting than "In God We Trust". I think it's time to do away with the religious overtones.

I agree with you!

0

The "In God We Trust" has been on US coins since the 1860's.

I've seen some currency where it is not on it and the currency is after the 1860s.

@Captain747ex You might be talking about paper currency, not coins. I have some that do from that era.

@TheGreatShadow Ah, yes, it was paper currency.

True, I'm pretty sure it wasn't LAW back then, just something they felt necessary. But I would do further research. It's the LAW that's the violation of the Constitution.

no, that was ike's doing, in the 1950s. it was part of his way of combating the red scare, the scariest, reddest part being the soviet union's official atheism.

g

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