Not sure if you’re aware of this, but private schools already exists. You want your kid to get prayed at, you can pay for it yourself. Don’t use the public dime.
The lawsuit was filed by students, not the ACLU – students who were subjected to rape and death threats for doing so. The ACLU represents clients.
Any jail time will be a result of a violation of a courtt order, not the ACLU. The ACLU cannot send people to jail and does not write the law. Your beef is with the First Amendment.
I’m really starting to wonder about the quality of civics instruction in U.S. schools. Civics was a part of my 9th grade proficiency exams when I was in high school, and a not insignificant number of my classmates did not pass it. I remember thinking how stupid they were for not knowing basic aspects of America’s government and laws, but I’m starting to believe that quite a few Americans are perfectly fine with their own ignorance.
IRT Champion: Are you arguing against the incorporation of the Bill of Rights? That is, there is a long-standing (yet not uncontroversial and in some areas unsettled) area of law focused on which (and to what extent) Constitutional protections extend to State actions. Are you arguing whether those protections should extend to state action, or whether they do extend to state action?
Link?
It’s in Larry Borgia’s link in post #4 above. Here’s the quote:
Problem is that I’m already contributing to the public schools whether I want to use them or not, so that’s an incentive to keep using them. If you give me back my contributions in the form of a voucher, then I’ll be glad not to use the “public dime”.
How generous. And your suggestion for Tomas, the kid in my class who desperately looks forward to the food bag we send home every week, is what, exactly? Let him eat cake? If we give you back your “contributions,” how will he get an education?
No kidding. I’m already contributing to roads I don’t use, hospitals I don’t use, military bases I don’t use, and incredibly stupid wars I don’t want. If you give me my contributions back in the form of a voucher, I’ll be glad not to use them.
This makes no sense. Contributing to public schools does not give you the right to proselytize in them. The Constitution forbids using the public dime to promote religion. Period.
But according to a relatively small but loud minority of Christians, their freedom of religion includes the right to force everyone else to practice their faith. I fail to find that idea anywhere in the Constitution, the writings of the Founding Fathers, or statute or case law. But it must be there – they’re so firmly convinced they have that right!
Well, its for our own good, isn’t it? Spiritually speaking, they’re just making sure we eat our spinach. Of course, I say its spinach, and I say to hell with it!
Right. So if you don’t have such a thing as public schools and give people tax credits to attend a private school of their choice, then there is no constitutional issue about religion. That was my only point; I didn’t intend to debate prayer in public schools.
I actually can see that. I hope you don’t think my rant was directed at you (in point of fact, it was a group of people with the attitude I bitched about on another board who triggered it). I have philosophical issues with vouchers, but bigger ones with one-size-fits-all government-issue standards.
That’s still using tax money to fund religion, and basically offers no option to people can’t afford private schools.
I’m guessing you were one of those hired by Monica Goodling to be part of the Bush Justice Dept.
So, if the mayor of a town were to shut down a newspaper for printing bad things about him, (with a law passed permitting it) this would be fine with you because Congress didn’t do it?
When I began teaching in 1969, my high school principal insisted on Bible readings every morning. I think he also had prayer from time to time. He brought in a well known televangelist to preach to us in an assembly program. My blood used to boil.
Finally, in a faculty meeting one day, one of the teachers questioned him on the legality of what he was doing. He slammed down his fist and said that he would continue to read the Bible every morning and have devotionals until he was given a court order to stop.
It may have taken another month or two, but he stopped. The teacher who complained was married to an ACLU attorney and the Supremes had already ruled that the kind of things he was doing were out of line.
For the twenty years that I taught, however, I continued to run into problems at other schools with teachers and principals who ignored the law while I was a captive audience. They were very aware of my objections. All of them were very hostile fundamentalists. Some harrassed me in the faculty lounge about my beliefs (supporting the SCOTUS ruling). There were many times that I could have filed a suit. (But the administrators would just have made it harder on me.)
I was an Episcopalian and if I wanted to take Ash Wednesday or All Saints’ Day off for special services, I had to go to the rector and get a statement about these days and so forth. Another year, the principal told the vice principal to “run interference” on my request. They were all members of fundamentalist churches.
I wonder what it is they are so anxious to pray for.
Those of you who keep pushing for the concept of prayer in the classroom again probably have no real notion of what most classrooms across the country look like now. There wouldn’t be any time at all before someone will claim to be a Satanist and would want equal time. Then the vampires and who knows?
Yes, you can still pray. Isn’t that what matters?
No, Zoe. It isn’t. What matters is that somewhere, someone else is not praying to their God.
But everyone would get a refundable tax credit, therefore everyone could afford a private school.
As for using tax money to fund religion, I guess in a way you are correct, but what if someone uses their Earned Income Tax Credit check and donates it to their church? That’s pretty much the same thing.