Keeping church and state separate should be easy. It's simply a matter of each institution knowing their place. For instance, public schools are a state matter. It's not in a state's interest to promote a religion, but in public schools across America, particularly in one part of America, we are seeing religious forces slip their way in. Here's an example:
GALLATIN, Tenn. (AP) — Three Sumner County families claim the local public schools illegally promote Christianity.
A complaint to the school board made by American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee on the families' behalf claims the schools have shown a pattern of endorsing Christianity since at least 2006. Examples include the distribution of Bibles, a teacher who displayed a cross on a classroom wall and Christian prayers over school loudspeakers.
School board attorney Wesley Southerland told The Tennessean the board has been advised to "take all precautions necessary to make sure they are operating in a constitutional way."
The complaint to the board asks for the religious activities to cease, but it is not a lawsuit.
The ACLU of Tennessee successfully sued the Wilson County school system over similar issues in 2008.
Clearly, there's been a breach. But that ain't all, there's not one, not two but three high profile lawsuits this graduation season over the refusal of certain parties to remove prayers from their public school graduation ceremonies. Two of the students involved spoke on the non-prophets podcast.
The most frustrating aspect of this, of course, is that while praising the Constitution and pretending to be originalists, people like Governor fuckstick...I mean, Rick Perry, of Texas (the same great thinker who asked governors from around the country to come to his house and do a rain dance or something) spit on the Constitution and appoint judges more interested in promoting their theocratic views than justice to rule over cases like this. Then, he praises their decision.
I can't wait, and I seriously want to encourage any Muslim, Atheist, or Orthodox Jew to take advantage of the platform that the government is passively allowing to become a state sponsored church. I want someone to lead their class in a prayer to a non-Christian god. Some valedictorian should perform a Flying Spaghetti Monster prayer, a Muslim should make the whole room bow to Allah, an Orthodox Jew should make everyone listen to him sing in Hebrew for a while. Let's see how easily that sits with Rick Perry.
By the way, how do you feel about Fox declaring the forced prayer as a "victory?"
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Your last paragraph reminded me that I'm strongly tempted to buy and wear a birka the next time I'm at airport security/getting a bureaucratic photo taken/ pulled over by a cop. I can't wait till I start crying, "I have the freedom to wear this!"
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though: is it that the prayer in the graduation ceremony happens at all, or that all are "encouraged" to participate? What would be the consequences if prayer were optional and people could sit in a non-praying section?
Ha, good luck with that! I think that if you're required by the state to attend an institution like school and then, at a graduation ceremony, you are sitting in front of a speaker who is praying, you are, at that point, a captive audience member. There is no escape, there is no running away until the prayer is over and no, there's no non-praying section.
ReplyDeleteWhat there is, in society, is a designated praying section. They're called churches and people should go there to share in whatever their faith is. But prayer can't be optional when it's lead by someone with a microphone and you have to sit there and endure. It's a societal pressure and it's an unconstitutional endorsement, by the government, of a particular religious view.
It's not just non-Christians that would be offended by this. Jehovah's Witnesses, Quakers, and many Christian denominations would be appalled by a public prayer.