Actually, I don't need an explanation. The conservative wing of the Court is made of five men, all of whom are economically privileged, all of whom are ROMAN CATHOLIC, and all of whom are white, including Clarence Thomas. It's no wonder that people who have grown up in the bubble of privilege have no idea what it feels like to be treated diffrently because of their faith or their skin color or their wealth or their gender. That lack of experience makes them immune to the idea that laws means different things in different contexts. If you haven't had the experience of being treated unfairly because of your gender or your race or your faith, you will be utterly tone deaf to the complaints of people who have been.
Paraphrasing Justice Elena Kagan (a woman and a Jew) imagine being an atheist at a Town Hall meeting where you wanted to get some issue dealt with. The meeting starts with a Christian prayer, asking all to prayer in the name of Jesus, our God and Savior. Are you going to tell me that, as Justice Kennedy would have it, you would leave the room during the prayer, after which your absence would not be noted by the religious people who did pray? Are we to accept the fact that people of faith are so tolerant that they would take no notice of the fact that someone would not participate in their little ritual? If you do, I have a Crusade to sell you. And do we really think that these good people would then rule completely impartially on the atheists's petition?
That's asking a lot of our fellow citizens -- and more than the Founding Fathers did, who had to TRAVEL TO AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CONTINENT -- never mind to the next room -- to be able to worship as they pleased.
This ruling is pure idiocy, and will be abused, and soon. Just wait for the first Muslim to offer a prayer to Allah, or a Wiccan to insist that everyone thank the Three-Faced Mother. Then you'll see how tolerant our religious siblings really are.
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