I'm inclined to agree with Alito's point that it really comes down to nitpicking about the way in which the town's employees went about selecting the invited religious leaders - it's one thing to criticize them for that and try to improve the practice, quite another to sue and drag it all the way to the Supreme Court. And they did show good faith by allowing two Jewish prayers, a Baha'i one and, last but not least, a Wicca one (albeit only after the Wicca priestess' particular request to be allowed to do so).
Of course, I say that as a citizen of a country in which priests are paid a wage by the government (as are rabbis, imams and a few other groups). Standards of what is acceptable and what is not in terms of separation of church and state vary widely between countries, depending more on historical factors than anything else - some elements in Belgium or Britain may seem like utterly unacceptable violations of the First Amendment by American standards, despite the US being far more religious than either one, while the reverse also holds. The important thing is that religious minorities are not legally discriminated against and are free to practice their faith.
i think the big problem comes from these little towns which believe that everyone shares their religious identity, and so it becomes "no big deal" to begin each government meeting with an invocation to the christian god. for someone like myself, who does not worship at any particular faith, it's a bit offensive to me to force me to participate in a religious service for which i did not sign up to do so. but if the invocation can be kept non-denominational i would have less objection to being forced to participate, even though the government is establishing a religious basis by virtue of performing a religious service before doing the people's work. people are still free to exercise their particular faith outside of the government's operations, but the government itself should not be condoning religious sacraments in the course of its duties.
to me, this case sounds like they did not try to be non-denominational, they purposely skirted the issue except when other faiths asked to be allowed to participate. that is the exact scenario we are supposed to be shielded from, and why the supreme court got this one wrong, yet again. better that they should skip the religious invocations altogether rather than give the appearance of favoring one specific religion -- christianity -- over all other religions.
"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman
