Greece Supervisor Blows Up at Citizen After Her Comments on New Prayer Policy

For full disclosure, the author of this article, Susan Galloway, was one of the litigants against the Town of Greece in the SCOTUS case, Town of Greece vs Galloway and Stephens.

On Sept. 16, 2014, at the Greece Town Board meeting citizens spoke out about the new written prayer policy.  Some of the criticisms of the policy were lack of transparency, the infuence an outside organization had on authoring legislation and policies, the lack of notification that the policy was being voted on at the town board meeting and lack of community involvement in creating the prayer policy.

After the citizen, Susan Galloway, addresses the Town Board during the public forum part of the meeting, the Greece Supervisor, Bill Relich, makes the comments, " The hypocrisy,  we won the lawsuit.  We are allowing Atheists to come and pray because they want us to be tolerant, but they're not tolerant of Christians, their not tolerant of others, the hypocrisy".

Here is some back ground on the issues  addressed in this video.  On  August 18, 2014,  at the Greece Town Board meeting, the board passed a written prayer policy,  which had no citizen input and was almost word for word from an outside organization, Alliance Defending Freedom.  Here is the link to a line by line break down of ADF model pprayer policy compared to the Town of Greece's new prayer policy. http://rochester.indymedia.org/node/104024  This organization is a fundamental Christian Organization that's website states, "We must continue the fight for religious liberty,  so that the life-changing message of Jesus Christ can be proclaimed and transform our culture.  Each win for the Body of Christ is a loss for the opposition.  It’s that black and white."  The written prayer policy adopted by the town of Greece, NY is almost word for word the ADF's model prayer policy minus a couple of lines.  ADF represented the Town of Greece in the SCOTUS case Town of Greece vs Galloway and Stephens.  They have also filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs national and internationally against equal marriage for gays and lesbians, and women's reproductive freedom including abortion and birth control, and separation of church and state, Also, for school prayer, public education funds going to private schools and religious schools, and the ability to discriminate against LGBTQ people.  This is only a sampling of the type of lawsuits they have filed.

In the SCOTUS lawsuit, Town of Greece vs Galloway and Stephens, the litigants argued that the town of Greece violated the establishment clause of the constitution and aligned itself with Christianity with regard to their opening town board meetings with overwhelmingly Christian sectarian prayers for over 10 years.  During those 10 years, only 3 token non-Christians ever gave the prayers , which coincidentally occurred at the time the lawsuit against the town was being filed. This new prayer policy will effectively make two of the three token prayer givers ineligible, despite the town holding up these tokens as examples of how open and inclusive they are during the lawsuit.  The town of Greece did win the lawsuit in a 5 to 4 decision.  Which Supervisor Relich states during his comments after Susan Galloway spoke. 

Comments made by Linda Stephens at the Oct. 18, 2014