Our Constitution guarantees Americans the right to practice any faith they choose, or no faith. It also guarantees the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
But what it does not guarantee to any group of private citizens is an audience with top administration officials. Yet high-ranking officials in the Obama administration recently met with representatives of a particularly aggressive group of atheists in offices on the White House grounds to hear their complaints about the supposed misdeeds of religious Americans — especially evangelical Christians. The meeting was closed to the media, and the administration and the atheist organization, the Secular Coalition for America, agreed to keep the details of the talks secret.
The coalition is an umbrella group of 10 organizations, such as American Atheists and the Council for Secular Humanism. Its board includes Dr. Michael Newdow, the California man who went to the Supreme Court in an unsuccessful crusade to have the words “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. Dr. Newdow also tried and failed to have a court forbid Mr. Obama to use the words “so help me God” at his inauguration. In addition, he wanted “In God We Trust” removed from U.S. currency. Those stunts generated widespread public outrage.
Dr. Newdow and his organization are entitled to their views. But the administration had no obligation to dignify their activities with a high-level secret meeting and should not have done so.