Thursday, June 27, 2002 | 8:54 a.m.
Not long after the Supreme Court in 1962 banned prayer in public schools, Red Skelton on his TV show said, "Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance -- under God. Wouldn't it be a pity if someone said that is a prayer and that would be eliminated from schools too?" He used the Pledge of Allegiance in making his point because the notion of banning its recitation in public schools was so utterly unthinkable.
Now comes a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals with an opinion that the Pledge means more than allegiance to country, that it is also an endorsement of religion and violates the First Amendment's establishment clause. This is indeed a pity and we hope the decision gets overturned. Obliterating every public reference to God may please a handful of atheists and purists, but surely what the Founding Fathers were justly guarding against was the imposition of religion into governance and individual lives. Simple references to God do neither. Banning them would lead to extremes, such as reissuing our currency, changing the way we administer oaths of office, and printing school books with passages of the Declaration of Independence deleted.
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