What are some reasons why the words "under G-d" should be removed from
the pledge, and what are some reasons why they should not be removed?

Nukethepandas,

The following article describes how the 9th Circuit Court ruled that
the current incarnation of the Pledge fails three different tests
created by the courts to decide if The Pledge was constitutional under
the Establishment Clause. The tests are (a) the Lemon Test, (b) the
Endorsement Test, and (c) the Coersion Test:

[Summary of 9th circuit ruling on The Pledge]
http://www.nassp.org/services/legal_pledgeall.html

Note that the 9th Circuit’s ruling only applies to those states within
the circuit. These states are also specified in the article.

Basically, these tests combine in this case to mean that because
“under God” was added in 1954 as a response to atheist communism,
because public school teachers are required to use these words in a
government-supported public school classroom, and because students may
not realize they have the right to refuse, the recitation of those
words in public schools should not be permitted.

Those who disagree seem to feel that the recitation of the pledge is
simply “ceremonial deism” which is simply a fancy way of saying that
we say it by rote without actually thinking about the meaning. A group
called Keep The Pledge explains its view here:

http://www.keepthepledge.com/editorials.php

Keep the pledge confirms the 1954 origin of the words “under God” in
their page about the history of the pledge:

http://www.keepthepledge.com/history.php

You can read the entire ruling (which includes the judge’s reasoning)
here. Note that this also includes a partial dissent from one of the
judges who heard the case:

http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/FE05EEE79C2A97B688256BE3007FEE32/$file/0016423.pdf?openelement

If you’d like to read more about this, I’d recommend clicking on the
following Google search where you’ll find much more information about
this rather heated topic of debate:

[Google search: court + “pledge of allegiance”]
://www.google.com/search?as_q=court&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=pledge+of+allegiance&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images


I hope this provides the information you’re looking for. Feel free to
ask for clarification if needed.

/ephraim

Thank you, the information you provided me with will help me a lot!