Cite as: 505 U. S. 577 (1992)
Souter, J., concurring
and from recognition of the fact that the political interest in forestalling intolerance extends beyond intolerance among Christian sects—or even intolerance among 'religions'—to encompass intolerance of the disbeliever and the uncertain." Id., at 53-54 (footnotes omitted).
Likewise, in Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U. S. 1 (1989), we struck down a state tax exemption benefiting only religious periodicals; even though the statute in question worked no discrimination among sects, a majority of the Court found that its preference for religious publications over all other kinds "effectively endorses religious belief." Id., at 17 (plurality opinion); see id., at 28 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment) ("A statutory preference for the dissemination of religious ideas offends our most basic understanding of what the Establishment Clause is all about and hence is constitutionally intolerable"). And in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488 (1961), we struck down a provision of the Maryland Constitution requiring public officials to declare a " 'belief in the existence of God,' " id., at 489, reasoning that, under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, "neither a State nor the Federal Government . . . can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers . . . ," id., at 495. See also Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 104 (1968) ("The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion"); School Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 216 (1963) ("this Court has rejected unequivocally the contention that the Establishment Clause forbids only governmental preference of one religion over another"); id., at 319- 320 (Stewart, J., dissenting) (the Clause applies "to each of us, be he Jew or Agnostic, Christian or Atheist, Buddhist or Freethinker").
Such is the settled law. Here, as elsewhere, we should stick to it absent some compelling reason to discard it. See
611
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