Very early soon after my decision, I became aware that the matter of personal conviction was not a simple thing. One day after school, when we were both in the first grade, I casually remarked to my friend Amy that there was no Santa Claus and no God. Amy told her parents in distress, and they called my parents in outrage. Somehow my genius of a mother smoothed things over so that Amy was still allowed to play with me, but it was apparently a close call. My mother had a talk with me about respecting the beliefs of others, and it made a deep impression.

The next time we played together, Amy told me that while I had a point about Santa, I was mistaken about God. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was on the order of, "I'm sure you're right. Let's go play in the tree fort."

At the Massachusetts school I went to, we didn't say the pledge, but when we moved to California, it was a daily ritual. When we recited the pledge, I didn't say "under God," because I didn't believe it. I was a conscientious child, and I didn't want to lie. But I was afraid that people wouldn't like it if I didn't say it, or would tease me if they noticed that I didn't say it, so I moved my lips during that phrase, but did not speak it. This was not my parents' idea. I don't think I told them about it, and in any case they were always urging me not to be so timid about things.

I have been told that my fear was not a rational one, and that other kids in other places either conspicuously did not say "under God," or substituted all kinds of hilarious phrases, and that nothing bad happened to them. No one forced me to cower before a hypothetical threat.

But it so happens that between first and second grades I entered what it would be tactful to call an awkward phase, and I think I was correct that in my status as a spindly bespectacled dwarf who talked funny, any new deviation from the norm could have directed additional teasing my way. Moving from one school to another didn't help. I was teased for the way I looked, the way I dressed, the way my parents looked, the fact that we ate dinner late, even -- this was in a California suburb -- for having dark hair. What I already underwent was bad enough without being exposed as a person whose morality was so questionable that other children might need to be sequestered from my company.

If my fears were indeed unreasonable at the time, perhaps they are becoming less so. Perhaps the danger of being exposed as a pledge heathen has been heightened. In the main part of their decision, the appeals court judges wrote that the insertion of the words "under God" sends the message that atheists are outsiders. And Sandra Banning's desire that everyone know that her child is not an atheist after all would seem to confirm that.

I'd like to ask Banning: If it is so terrible for her daughter to be reputed to be an atheist, and if she must protect her child against that charge, what protection would she like to see for children who really are?

Atheist children aren't the only ones who may confront this issue. When the pledge decision came down, the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed the Rev. Masao Kodani of the Sensai Buddhist Temple, who said that Buddhists don't believe in God, and that he tells children in the temple's dharma classes that they should say the pledge in school but be silent for the "under God" part. Brave children, if they do.

One of my children is a practicing Jew who nevertheless doesn't believe that those words belong in the pledge. The other one, also an atheist, but not as fearful a child as I was, has never been bothered by the religious phrase in the pledge, but asks "What good is it?"

Indeed, what is the point? What do those two words accomplish? They certainly didn't convert me, but they taught me an inimical lesson about pretending to go along.

When I heard about the court's decision, I felt more worried than vindicated. I believe the decision is correct and I believe it will be overturned. I also think that because a majority of Americans believe those words should stay in the pledge, a rationale will be found. In the meantime, there will be a lot of hand-waving and posturing about God and country and about how you can't have the latter without the former, and a lot of people will say things that indicate just how incomprehensible, alien, amoral and untrustworthy they think people like me are.

I fear that some reasoning will be found to reaffirm the edict that all children in our public schools must daily link God and country aloud -- and a lot more people will be watching children's lips.

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