Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Religious angle critical in court story

A story on page A1 of the New York Times today focuses on an interesting case being brought before the Supreme Court about whether a Utah town is required to afford a new religious movement the same right to display scriptures in a public park as it does Christianity.

This case is interesting because of the uncertainty of which part of the First Amendment is relevant - freedom of speech or establishment of religion. It was also an interesting challenge for the writer to, in a short news article, adequately summarize enough of the new religious movement's beliefs and behaviors to enable readers to understand the matters relevant to the case.

I read the web version linked to here, and this would have been a nice chance to have used the multimedia capabilities of the web to at least list all the aphorisms referenced in the article, or, better, to link to the group's web site.

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