# We had our first high school football game last night and guess what?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-our-first-high-school-football-game-last-night-and-guess-what/31825>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 3, 2000, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-our-first-high-school-football-game-last-night-and-guess-what/31825 "2000-09-03T01:34:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2000, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-our-first-high-school-football-game-last-night-and-guess-what/31825/61 "2000-09-06T22:17:06Z")

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astorian said:

> [@](#):
>
> Now then, the First AMendment’s language with regard to speech and its language with regard to religion are INDENTICAL. Not similar, mind you, but IDENTICAL. “Congress shall make no law” regarding speech OR religion.

To build on DavidB’s brief rebuttal, I don’t know where you buy your copies of the Constitution, but whoever printed yours must have made some serious error. My copy says: “_Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . ._” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, but it shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. Not only is the language clearly not “IDENTICAL,” but, seeing as “abridging” and “respecting” could never be considered even vaguely synonomous (sp?), the language regarding religion and the language regarding speech could not even be considered similar. Hope this helps.

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**Author:** ![David\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/51bf81/32.png) [@David\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_B)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-our-first-high-school-football-game-last-night-and-guess-what/31825/62 "2000-09-07T02:27:50Z")

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Thank you, Varlos. I thought of that after I had posted and left the SDMB (a little spark in the back of my mind said, “Wait a minute…”), but I didn’t come back and post 'cus he still hadn’t responded. Still, it needed to be said.

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