Ohio city council split on opening with prayer

  Members of the Shelby, Ohio, city council have discussed whether to approve an ordinance allowing an invocation at the beginning of each meeting. Council member Steve Schag, a minister, supported the idea.
  “This would be an opportunity to invite clergymen of all faiths, churches of all faiths, to come and have an invocation time or provide a reading or inspirational message from their group,” Schag said. “There were invocations in the past on the agenda around the mid-80s, and as a clergyman I participated in them.”
  Councilman Garland Gates said law director Lee Shepherd deemed the prayer ordinance in violation of the First Amendment.
Schag presented a three-page letter from the Gibbs Law Firm in Seminole, Florida.
  “Fortunately, at this time and hopefully forever, legislative prayer is not either illegal or unconstitutional in Ohio or in the federal Sixth Circuit, which includes the state of Ohio,” the letter read. “Many Ohio city councils regularly have such prayers, as do the Ohio Legislature and the United States Congress.”
  The ordinance is to be voted on at a later meeting.
  www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com, 9/29/09