Former House Speaker Criticizes Wm. & Mary President

Former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has published an article in National Review Online severely critical of Gene R. Nichol, the president of the College of William and Mary who decided that the state school's chapel would only display a cross on Sundays and during Christian services. (See prior posting.) Gingrich said that the President's "reasoning bears the unmistakable influence of former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whose major contribution to church-state thinking centers on her concept of endorsement.... Unfortunately, the "endorsement test”"has proven itself a decidedly unhelpful legal criterion. It is indeterminate, bordering on arbitrary, because it focuses primarily on subjective perceptions; its first consideration is not how the law actually treats people, but rather how people feel they are treated by the law. Taken to its logical conclusion, the endorsement test leads to the rule of the perpetually aggrieved, a tyranny of the easily offended."