Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98, 27 (2001)

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126

GOOD NEWS CLUB v. MILFORD CENTRAL SCHOOL

Scalia, J., concurring

also involved proselytizing speech, as the above quotations show. See also Rosenberger, supra, at 844 (referring approvingly to the dissent's description of the paper as a "wor[k] characterized by . . . evangelism"). But in addition, it does not distinguish the Club's activities from those of the other groups using respondent's forum—which have not, as Justice Stevens suggests, see post, at 131-132, been restricted to roundtable "discussions" of moral issues. Those groups may seek to inculcate children with their beliefs, and they may furthermore "recruit others to join their respective groups," post, at 131. The Club must therefore have liberty to do the same, even if, as Justice Stevens fears without support in the record, see ibid., its actions may prove (shudder!) divisive. See Lamb's Chapel, 508 U. S., at 395 (re-marking that worries about "public unrest" caused by "proselytizing" are "difficult to defend as a reason to deny the presentation of a religious point of view"); cf. Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 684-685 (1984) (holding that "political divisiveness" could not invalidate inclusion of crèche in municipal Christmas display); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S., at 310-311.

Justice Souter, while agreeing that the Club's religious speech "may be characterized as proselytizing," post, at 139, n. 3, thinks that it is even more clearly excludable from respondent's forum because it is essentially "an evangelical service of worship," post, at 138. But we have previously rejected the attempt to distinguish worship from other religious speech, saying that "the distinction has [no] intelligible content," and further, no "relevance" to the constitutional issue. Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263, 269, n. 6 (1981); see also Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S., at 109 (refusing to distinguish evangelism from worship).3 Those holdings

3 We have drawn a different distinction—between religious speech generally and speech about religion—but only with regard to restrictions the State must place on its own speech, where pervasive state monitoring is unproblematic. See School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp,

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