Talking to God Requires Permit
at Some D.C. sites
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 20, 1997
Can Americans pray in the Capitol Rotunda - or at the Lincoln Memorial or the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, for that matter? Some of those who try to do so are told by police to either stop, leave the area or risk arrest. Particularly at issue is the Capitol, where a year ago this month a group of nine Christians on a "prayer tour" of the Rotunda briefly stopped to pray for their nation. Suddenly, the group - led by the Rev. Pierre Bynum of Waldorf, Md.—was being threatened with arrest on the grounds that public prayer constitutes a demonstration. D.C. statute forbids any demonstrations inside the Capitol building and all congressional office buildings, Capitol Police spokesman Dan Nichols says. "What this case presents the courts with is, what constitutes a demonstration activity and what doesn't constitute one. It's an interesting First Amendment issue.
Mr. Bynum sued the Capitol Police over the incident. A hearing was held Sept. 16 and U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman is expected to rule soon. The lawsuit aroused the curiosity of a Virginia activist, the Rev. Patrick Mahoney. Appearing at the Rotunda on Oct. 5, a Sunday, preaching in the streets? No gospel afternoon, Mr. Mahoney was accompanied by his wife, Katie and three daughters, ages 17,12 and 9. The family was prepared to be jailed. The parents carried photo IDs and $50 in bail money and the liberty," girls wore backpacks stocked with dolls and Nutri-Grain bars.
The quintet spent 50 minutes praying aloud at seven different locations in the Rotunda. Followed by three TV crews and one news paper photographer, they joined hands, bowed their heads and closed their eyes.
"I told them we would kneel down, but not raise our hands nor impede progress," the minister said. "The Park Police said, 'Well, then you're allowed to pray.'"
"We then prayed the same way Bynum did. They told me,'Reverend Mahoney, if you pray this way, you will not be arrested.' So why did they say it was wrong in their court documents? If you can't pray in the Capitol, what's next? No preaching in the streets? No gospel distribution in homes?
"[A monument in front of] the National Archives says "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," he said "You have to stand up for those freedoms, and that's what our family did."
Prayer has long been linked with demonstrations in America including the civil rights protesters who knelt in the streets during Martin Luther King's march on Birmingham during Easter week of 1963.
After the Supreme Court struck down state abortion laws in 1973 protesters began praying in front of abortion clinics. Four activists including Mr. Mahoney, were arrested while praying in front of a Houston clinic during the l992 Republican National Convention after a judge issued an injunction forbidding demonstrations within 100 feet of a Planned Parenthood facility.
"It was our contention that prayer is not a demonstration," Mr. Mahoney said. "I felt no judge has a right right to tell an American citizen they could not pray on a public sidewalk as long as they did not impede traffic ." No one is going to arrest a lone citizen
The demonstrators were in jail for 21 days and the Texas Supreme Court later ruled the injunction prohibiting prayer was unconstitutional.
Mr. Mahoney was also arrested for praying in front of the White House on Sunday, Oct. 26, to protest the visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin. "Our contention is that prayer is not demonstrating," he says. "It's communicating to God, and no government has a right to tell an American citizen they cannot pray quietly in a public arena."
They also can't pray while standing still. A federal statute mandates that demonstrators on themselves but it did not fit into the sidewalk in front of the White House must constantly keep moving. In this case, demonstrators were kneeling in one spot in the pouring rain.
U.S. Park Police rules on prayer in public places can seem incomprehensible to some visitors to the nation's capital, such as Maryanne Arp, 14, of Silver Creek, Ga.
When Miss Arp visited Washington in September with an Atlanta-based group called Teen Pact, her group was confronted by police when it tried to pray or sing at several sites. The first encounter, she said, was when she and eight other students were praying on the U.S. Supreme Court plaza.
"A security officer came up and said we were engaging in an act of protest" Miss Arp said. If they tried it again, they were told, he would tell them to leave.
That night, the students visited the Korean War Veterans Memorial, where they sang Christian songs without any hindrance. Then 76 of them walked over to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and started singing "Amazing Grace."
"This security officer came shining his flashlight and yelling at the top of his lungs for us to stop," Miss Arp said. When the teenagers asked him why, "He cited some kind of ordinance and said we'd have to leave or he'd force us to do so."
The group left and walked over to the Lincoln Memorial, where they began singing "The StarSpangled Banner" as they climbed the steps. Although other tourists inside the memorial applauded Miss Arp said, yet another security officer told them to cease.
The problem, said Park Police Sgt. Joseph Cox, is that the group numbered more than 25 persons. A larger group requires a permit to pray, sing or do any corporate activity. Plus the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial are restricted areas.
"We issue hundreds of permits a year for people to do such activities", he saaid. No one is going to arrest a lone person praying at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Sgt. Cox said but added'"More than 25 people doing an organized activity, you need a permit. Prayer or demonstration, you'd need a permit
Most tourists don't understand that, said Tim Echols, president of Teen Pact Leadership School, who was with the students when they nwere confronted by police.
"Their singing 'Amazing Grace' at the memorial was an emotional thing," he said. "They were just moved and they were expressing themselves, but it did not fit into the regulations. Next time we'll get a permit. I just didn't know you needed a permit to sing the national anthem."