While speaking at a Catholic high school in Louisiana on Saturday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said there is no constitutional basis for the idea that a government must be religiously neutral.

The Associated Press is reporting on the speech made at Archbishop Rummel High School, located in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, where Justice Scalia told the audience that there is “no place” in the constitution for the idea that the state must be neutral in regards to religion.

“To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?” he said. “To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?”

He also defended the actions of presidents and other state officials who invoke God in speeches, reminding the audience that God has been good to America because Americans have always honored him.

He also said there is “nothing wrong” with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.

“God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways,” Scalia said.

“There is nothing wrong with that and do not let anybody tell you that there is anything wrong with that,” he added.

If Americans want their government to be non-religious, Scalia told his audience, let them vote on it instead of allowing the courts to decide.

“Don’t cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it,” he said, according to the Times-Picayune.

During the speech, Scalia said the court’s habit of formulating abstract rules such as the so-called “religious neutrality doctrine” reminded him of the words of the late Robert F. Kennedy who once said: “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

The sentiment sounds good on its surface, Scalia said, but its implications are dark, particularly because of the context of the original quote, which comes from a play by George Bernard Shaw.

In it, Scalia said, the line was spoken by a serpent and addressed to a woman named Eve.

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