IL state Rep Monique Davis can kiss my heathen balls.

The BBQ Pit
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[QUOTE=John Mace]
Well, yeah. That’s basically what it means to fail the Lemon test. My question was whether the Court ruled as broadly as **appleciders **said they did-- they usually rule pretty narrowly, and I didn’t say any indication that this was otherwise.
[/QUOTE]

In Wallace, the court ruled that since Alabama already had a “moment of silence” law, the law in question, which allowed for “a moment of silence or private prayer” failed the Lemon test and was unconstitutional. They didn’t say that a moment of silence rule in itself was unconstitutional.

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I wrote an email to my state rep about this.

Not that it’ll do any good, but it had to be said.

As far as Chicago and Cook County, I love the city but there are so many times I wish both administrations would be picked up by a passing tornado and sent to Oz. Especially Todd “Urkel” Stroger.

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[QUOTE=photopat]
Not that it’ll do any good, but it had to be said.
[/QUOTE]

You’d be surprised. I imagine it will be the first lucid correspondence her interns/legislative aides have had to read in months. Maybe years.

If you’ve ever worked for an elected official (I have), you know exactly what sort of people write to them. Lunatics and old people, mostly, and the old people are almost invariably complaining about any one of about three issues. The lunatics could be complaining about anything at all.

ETA: I’m told that the lower down the power scale you go, the greater the proportion of lunatics.

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[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
The state has no right to determine when kids should pray, and let’s be honest – all they’re trying to do is weasel a formal prayer ritual into the school day (as evidenced by the fact that Rep. Davis flat out called it a “prayer”). It serves no educational purpose and it’s subtly coercive to those who don’t want to pray. What if a kid doesn’t want to either pray or “contemplate the day?” Who is the government to tell kids what they have to think about while they’re being quiet? There really is no opportunity for kids to opt out of this. Basically the law says they have to stand there and shut up while the other kids pray.

If I was still a teacher, I would refuse to enforce or participate with this and I wouldn’t be the only one.
[/QUOTE]

While I agree with this sentiment generally and am far from religious personally, I find the outrage on both the sides of the argument to be a little nitpicky. OK, should there be gubmint ordered prayer in schools? No. Nor should there be zero tolerance policies, sports where nobody scores points or wins, (or worse yet, sports that reduce or eliminate the educational process) or summers off to name a but a few.Yet, there they are. Many things that schools do serve no educational purpose, but we do them to create a sense of community and diversity. While I agree that taking the back door to school prayer is a bit smarmy, I think that tolerance is and should be the message that we take away from this, as opposed to all of this hand wringing and fist shaking that serves to further divide us.

The intent of this law and those like it seem not to target one specific religion though there seems to be little doubt about the religion of those advocating such laws. If we posit that say, in a class of fifty (for numbers sake) that 15 kids will fold their hands in prayer, 15 kids will sit silently in their seats, 10 kids will ready themselves for the day doing little organizational tasks and 10 might use the time to goof off, text (or pass) notes, or whatever, how can this be a bad thing? How can learning to be tolerant of someone elses practices be a negative?

What if a kid doesn’t ‘want’ to pray or contemplate? So what? Kids are forced to do a lot of things they don’t want to do. In life you’re forced to do things you don’t want to do. That’s how it goes now, and that is how it has always gone, and frankly, how we manage to stay civilized. If you don’t want to pray or contemplate, that’s your business, but please be quiet while your classmates do. Learning patience and tolerance is necessary in this right-now, me first world we’re in. .

Now, this would all go down a little easier if the loudest and most vehement supporters of both the laws and of Christianity weren’t always coming off as vitriolic nutbars with as much hate in their hearts as there are lies in their mouths. These people make us uncomfortable with each other when we shouldn’t be. People, like the Monique Davis’s of the world ought to be on the outside looking in, instead of the other way around.

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[QUOTE=buttonjockey308]
How can learning to be tolerant of someone elses practices be a negative?
[/QUOTE]

Fuck 'em. Let them waste a minute of their lunch hours if it means so much to them.

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The best “burn” I ever heard regarding school prayer was a local Methodist minister who was (like a surprising number of religious people) very much against proscribed prayer in school and at the same time though silent prayer a bit silly (i.e. he was mature enough to know that students aren’t going to use it to pray). He asked his congregation one Sunday (note: I’ve no idea if this was original to him and wouldn’t be at all surprised to find it wasn’t):

“How many of you are in favor of prayer in schools?”

Most of the hands of his congregation went up.

“Now, of those hands that are raised, please give me an honest answer- how many of you pray with your kids in the morning or in the evening other than saying grace at dinner?”

A good many of the hands went down.

“Those of you who do pray with your kids, why do they need a teacher to pray with them in schools? And for the rest of you, if your child’s spiritual life is so important to you then why trust it to the schools when you could easily pray with them at home?”

He wasn’t very popular after that.

My own parents, both teachers, were of widely varying degrees of religious at various points in time, but even at their most devout they didn’t believe in school prayer. Both felt that praying to God would become just like the Pledge of Allegiance or the school’s alma mater- something kids did by rote without feeling or paying any special attention to the words or sentiment, and that ultimately it would become white-noise and damage rather than aide their spirituality.

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[QUOTE=buttonjockey308]
Nor should there be …[snip]… summers off to name but a few.
[/QUOTE]

You can have my summer vacation when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

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[QUOTE=Sampiro]
My own parents, both teachers, were of widely varying degrees of religious at various points in time, but even at their most devout they didn’t believe in school prayer. Both felt that praying to God would become just like the Pledge of Allegiance or the school’s alma mater- something kids did by rote without feeling or paying any special attention to the words or sentiment, and that ultimately it would become white-noise and damage rather than aide their spirituality.
[/QUOTE]

I would venture that, for most children under a certain age, religious instruction of any kind is of negligible benefit to their spirituality.

When I was young, I prayed in the morning and at night with my mother because she told me to. Nobody bothered to explain why. If I chose not to do something bad, it was because g/God might punish me if I did it, not because I recognised that it was wrong.