Maitland opens invocation to community presenters

Maitland City Council members invoked a new invocation policy on Monday, opening the ceremonial duties of starting city meetings to religious and non-religious community members.

Last month, Maitland switched from having members of the City Council offer prayers to open Council meetings to starting with a moment of silence after a local free-thought activist group threatened legal action against the city. On Monday, Council members redrafted their policy voting unanimously to start a sign-up sheet for local religious and non-religious organizations to offer opening statements at city meetings.

“We’re trying to put together something here that accommodates everybody and doesn’t exclude anybody,” said Mayor Dale McDonald. “…I think the intent is we’re all in this together and we’ll find a way to worship as we chose to.”

Working with the support of a Supreme Court case ruling on their side, the Central Florida Freethought Community has spent the past year slowly pushing Central Florida cities to either open up their meetings’ opening moments to the input of anyone in their community, or to do away with their prayer-based invocations altogether.

In May 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway upholding the town’s right to hold an invocation to open meetings. But, the ruling stated that the town of Greece’s policy wasn’t unconstitutional because it was “nondiscriminatory” and allowed members of the community of all religious and non-religious views to offer the invocation.

City Attorney Cliff Shepard said that in order for Maitland to stay within the legal parameters set by that case, the city needed to either do away with the invocation, replace it with a moment of silence, or redo its policy to open the invocation to the community as was done in Greece, N.Y.

David Williamson, founder of the Central Florida Freethought Community, said he’s pleased with Maitland’s new policy of opening the invocation to the Maitland public.

“This was a victory for equality,” Williamson said. “… Our organization’s goal has been to make sure these government bodies follow the law and allow anyone to open the invocation, not just city leaders or leaders of one particular religion.”

Councilman Ivan Valdes found the most fault in the city’s new policy, bothered that the proposed change would prohibit him from offering the invocation.

“I don’t want to give up my right to satisfy somebody else’s… just for the sake of appeasing somebody,” Valdes said.

But he and Maitland’s four other Council members would eventually vote unanimously to approve the resolution.

“I don’t see this policy as restricting anybody from doing anything,” said Councilman John Lowndes. “…I think…what you don’t want to do is have someone who’s really representing the government giving a faith-based invocation.”

The Maitland City Clerk will vet members of the Maitland community who sign up to give the invocation, verifying that they have a local connection and assigning them a date to speak. In the event that no one signs up for a particular meeting, the mayor will offer a moment of silence.

The new policy will go into effect at the next City Council meeting, which will be held Nov. 9.