Angels in the Backfield

Here is an interesting story in the Times about a Georgia town in which a post-9/11 practice in which the cheerleading squad at a public high school "painted messages like “Commit to the Lord” on giant paper banners that the [football] players charged through onto the field."  After someone raised concerns about this practice -- and, in one of the many fine twists in the story, that someone was a graduate student at Liberty University, who did not object to the practice but thought it raised legal concerns -- the school stopped it.  The result was not a silencing of religious speech but a profusion of it, as fans in the stands took to bringing placards and banners bearing religious messages.  

I'm one of those folks who thinks that Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe was rightly decided, certainly in the absence of and probably even in the presence of any concerns about the scope of that decision given its posture as a facial challenge.  I am not insensitive to, but not persuaded by, the individual quoted in the story who says, "I understand that the majority doesn’t rule, but it seems unfair that one lady could complain and cause all of this to stop."  But I also think the profusion of private religious messages is fine and dandy.  The story, in any event, is a good one for students of these issues.