Confusing court decisions on religion...

So, yesterday I found a couple of interesting articles related to court decisions on religious issues. One of the main reasons they were interesting is that both were cases related to limiting religious expression in school, and I disagreed with the Supreme Court and the notoriously liberal 9th Circuit Court for entirely different reasons. In the first case, the 9th Circuit Court argued that in Western States, children can continue to say the Pledge of Allegiance. They argued that atheist parents had no grounds in their case that the Pledge violates the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment. You know, the whole "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" thing? Who would have thought that adding "under God" to the Pledge would give anyone the impression that schools were trying to establish the existence of a deity? Here is the article:Pledge of Allegiance

While the Supreme Court has been irritating me lately with a variety of asinine decisions, (most notably the idea that giving massive amounts of money to political campaigns is free speech) I was not expecting to disagree with the court on the issue of restricting religious expression. In this case, the court rejected an appeal by students to overturn their school's ban on playing 'Ave Maria' at graduation. What is most amazing is that it would be an orchestral version with no lyrics. Soooo, unless certain notes now have religious significance, I don't understand the problem. As a singer, this issue is particularly murky for me. I sang plenty of religious music in high school and college and personally enjoyed it as a piece of artistic output rather than a religious expression. Kind of like enjoying the Bible for its story-telling and allegorical significance without believing in all the magic trick parts. While the composers obviously meant their music to be religious in nature, I feel that I can separate the art from the religion in this case. I realize this may seem hypocritical given the first paragraph of this post, but I never said I was 100% consistent. :-) Here is that article: Ave Maria