By Michael Thompson
With news of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare and striking down three of the four provisions of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 dominating the news, the 50th anniversary of a Supreme Court case passed by without recognition.
Engel v. Vitale, decided on June 25, 1962, determined it wasn’t constitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer or encourage its recitation in public schools.
An amicus curiae was filed by the attorney generals of Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, District of Colombia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia urging that the Supreme Court reconfirm the decision of the New York Court of Appeals that declared prayer constitutional.
This decision paved the way for the Supreme Court to rule on June 13, 1965, (Abington School District v. Schempp) that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional.
Consolidated into this case was Murray v. Curlett, which was a suit filed by the founder of the American Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who argued that her young son shouldn’t have to be exposed to Bible readings in Baltimore public schools.
O’Hair’s son, the plaintiff in Murray v. Curlett, was William J. Murray, who now serves as the chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that works to aid Christians living in Muslim and communist-controlled nations.
In an interview with WND, Murray spoke of the Engel v. Vitale case as one of the key Supreme Court decisions that inevitably led to the federal government getting involved in health care.
“Though it wasn’t as far-reaching and it didn’t affect the lives of everyday Americans as much as this case did today, the case [Engel v. Vitale] was a precursor to the case that removed Bible verses and prayer from school,” said Murray, whose book, “My Life Without God,” documents what his young life was like growing up with a committed communist like O’Hair as his mother.
“The 1963 case was one of the troika of cases that worked to destroy the basic family unit,” Murray explained. “One of the striking things about Obamacare is that it was pushed and promoted out of its necessity because of the breakup of the family. There is no one to take care of the family, because of this.
“Medical care since the time of Genesis was always a family responsibility,” Murray said. “But because government has interfered in the family, and because it has eliminated the three-generation household and eliminated the ability for families to take care of their own, the individual mandate becomes mandated.
“That necessitated intervention, in the eyes of the state,” he concluded.
The two other cases that Murray spoke of include Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, and Griswold v. Connecticut, which ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. This case revolved around a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives, which the Supreme Court invalidated on the grounds it violated the “right of marital privacy.”
“This was the case that permitted the sale of birth control pills, which led to making the organism more important than having children, which in combination with Roe v. Wade and what my mother did worked to destroy the family in America,” Murray said. “It basically mandated the government health-care mandate. ”
William Murray appeared on Gov. Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show, “Huckabee,” on June 9 to discuss his mother’s Marxist war on Christianity in America in his book.
“She was the most hated woman in America – a title she took great pleasure in, and I’m talking about Madalyn Murray O’Hare,” said Huckabee, introducing his audience to the legacy of Murray’s late mother.
“O’Hair sued the city of Baltimore demanding the city collect taxes on the tax-exempt Catholic Church and NASA – arguing private prayer should be banned by government employees in space; she challenged the words ‘Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance and the words ‘In God We Trust’ on the currency,” said Huckabee.
The appearance drove Murray’s book, “My Life Without God,” into the top 500 books sold for both the print edition and Kindle version at Amazon.com, no small feat for a book that was originally published 30 years ago and is now re-released by WND Books.
“I was raised in an atheist and Marxist existence, and then I became successful in business and became an atheist libertarian believing that anyone who couldn’t make should starve to death and that I was the center of the universe, which led to near self-destruction in my life,” Murray said. “Luckily I got out of this because of God, the person that my mother hated so much.”
