790
Opinion of Souter, J.
not reflect their endorsement of the views of the club's participants").
Similarly, in Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384 (1993), we held that an evangelical church, wanting to use public school property to show a series of films about child rearing with a religious perspective, could not be refused access to the premises under a policy that would open the school to other groups showing similar films from a nonreligious perspective. In reaching this conclusion, we expressly concluded that the policy would "not have the principal or primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion." 508 U. S., at 395. Again we looked to the specific circumstances of the private religious speech and the public forum: the film would not be shown during school hours or be sponsored by the school, it would be open to the public, and the forum had been used "repeatedly" by "a wide variety" of other private speakers. Ibid. "Under these circumstances," we concluded, "there would have been no realistic danger that the community would think that the [school] was endorsing religion." Ibid. We thus expressly looked to the endorsement effects of the private religious speech at issue, notwithstanding the fact that there was no allegation that the Establishment Clause had been violated through active "expression by the government itself" or affirmative "government action . . . discriminat[ing] in favor of private religious expression." Ante, at 764 (emphasis deleted). Indeed, the issue of whether the private religious speech in a government forum had the effect of advancing religion was central, rather than irrelevant, to our Establishment Clause enquiry. This is why I agree with the Court that "[t]he Lamb's Chapel reasoning applies a fortiori here," ante, at 762.
Widmar v. Vincent, supra, is not to the contrary. Although Widmar was decided before our adoption of the endorsement test in Allegheny, its reasoning fits with such a test and not with the per se rule announced today. There, in determining whether it would violate the Establishment
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