The criticism that President Barack Obama has been taking from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and conservative Christian commentators for discontinuing the White House National Prayer Day events reminds me of what a courageous Utah public servant once told me.
Doug Bates was the attorney for the State Office of Education in the 1980s when the ACLU was embroiled in a lawsuit with some Utah school districts to block them from allowing public prayer at high school graduation ceremonies.
Bates was in the crosshairs of the governor's office, legislative leaders and school district officials for suggesting the school districts drop the litigation because it could cost millions to defend and they would probably lose on constitutional church-state separation grounds.
He was accused of being anti-prayer and anti-Christian, which was ironic because he was one of the most devoted members of the LDS Church I have known.
After it was deemed prayers would not be allowed, some schools tried to make a spectacle of the issue by having student graduation speakers suddenly blurt out a prayer during their speech, usually inviting cheers and hoots from the audience.
Bates told me such demonstrations offended him because he viewed prayer as a sacred exercise, not to be made into a circus attraction.
He died several years ago, but I was reminded of his passion and the honesty of his own Christianity the past few days as right-wing commentators and some Christian groups attack Obama for discontinuing the public prayer events George W. Bush initiated eight years ago.
Obama still signed the proclamation recognizing National Prayer Day on Thursday, but Limbaugh questioned his "religiosity" and Shirley Dobson, of the National Prayer Day Task Force, expressed her disappointment.
That's ironic because Dobson's task force several years ago declared the LDS Church was not invited to participate in those events because the church didn't practice the right brand of Christianity.
Their idea that only those who think like they do should be honored at the White House proves the wisdom of the separation clause of the First Amendment and the insight of Doug Bates, who counseled against making prayer a political spectacle.
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See No Evil » The Deseret News featured a column Friday by political writer Bob Bernick that detailed problems within the Utah County Republican Party.
The online version of the column noted there were eight comments posted by readers, and at the bottom, you could see the first few words of three of them, like "Thank your for writing this" and "This is why I left the Republican Party."
But perhaps those comments were too critical of our dominant party in Utah. When I clicked on the line that said read all comments, it says, "there are no comments. Be the first to comment."
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Correction » In my column item Friday about Mike Leavitt's former chief of staff being kept on in the Department of Health and Human Services so he could qualify for federal health insurance, I misspelled his first name. It's Charlie, not Charley, Johnson.
