Barbarian observes:
If he was preaching that God says homosexuality is OK, he should be. It would be just as wrong as preaching that God says it's wrong, to minors in government custody. Unless their parents give consent.
Pretty much. Adult prisoners, if they have the option of going to a meeting or not, aren't being abused if they hear things that some might object to.
Religious doctrines.
If you mean "there really isn't a god, or at least we can't know if there is one", yeah, that would be objectionable. Unless parents explicitly approved.
Barbarian observes:
If he puts it so. Otherwise not. If I tell you that drinking to excess is bad for you, that's quite different than telling you that drunkeness is a sin.
Yep. And therein lies the difference. It's religion that can't be established, not promotion of ethical behavior.
It doesn't matter if the minister was a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, or whatever. The Constitution forbids government from giving any of them that power. It certainly doesn't allow the religious indoctrination of incarcerated minors.
Still not a problem if the prisoner freely consents. Children cannot give consent.
Barbarian asks:
Do you suppose that minister would be O.K. with a Muslim going in and preaching his faith to those kids? Do you suppose he'd be O.K. with another minister going in and preaching that homosexuality is a good thing?
If he's anything like the people supporting him here, he wouldn't be. They don't want a place at the table; they want the only place at the table.
No problem, then. However, it appears that the facility just rounded up kids and brought them to the minister for indoctrination. Then ( :shocked: ) they discovered he was preaching something they weren't comfortable with. And out he goes. That's not the way it should have been.
It's well-established that prisoners have a right to exercise their religious beliefs. But no one has a right to a captive audience to promote their own religious beliefs. So ministers preaching to consenting prisoners is not a problem.
So suppose a specific minister, say a fundamentalist who wants to promote hatred of homosexuals, or a Muslim who wants to preach death to Christians, would like to minister to some people who consent to hearing him. Do they have a right to be there?
The courts say that absent a compelling interest in security or safety, they do.
lain: Only with more people.