As a matter of fact, I’m a Catholic. TO non-Christians, that may SEEM like the same thing as “a Christian,” but that’s NOT the way Southern fundamentalists see it. Indeed, the most recent major ruling against prayers at high school football games came about after a CATHOLIC and a MORMON family complained about the nature of the prayers.
So, I’m not automatically predisposed to support school prayers, especially in the South, where I know, from experience, that school prayer is liable to have a deeply fundamentalist and not-so-subtly anti-Catholic tone.
In short, you’re utterly wrong if you assume that I couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to hear prayers that offend me!
Having said that, it’s all too clear that MOST of those who complain about organized prayers are vehemently anti-religion. They’re NOT content to let CHristians pray aloud, so long as the prayers aren’t sponsored by official government bodies. That’s only too clear, from the complaints being made against “No Pray, No Play.”
In Santa Fe, Texas (not to be confused with NM), Protestants outraged by the Supreme Court are taking matters into their own hands. They’re sponsoring massive prayer rallies before games, but NOT rallies officially endorsed by the school district.
SInce these rallies are NOT sponsored by the school district, and are purely voluntary in nature, they’re perfectly legal. So, is the ACLU going to leave these people alone? Hardly. They’re calling such ventures “an end-run around the COnstitution” and are fighting to shut them down.
The “logic” is that, even if these prayers are not endorsed by the school district or any other government body, people who are NOT Christians might be made to feel uncomfortable by these vocal prayers, and might feel subtly pressured to join in.
That isn’t MY claim, David B- that’s the claim of the ACLU and of virtually every activist who seeks to shut down school prayers. I live in TExas, and know the issues and institutions involved- you clearly don’t. I don’t mind so much that you’re ignorant… and I don’t mind that you’re arrogant… I don’t even mind that you’re biased. But the combination of the three makes you a hopelessly unqualified moderator.
In short, we’re being told that the COnstituion forbids Christians to do anything that might make outsiders “uncomfortable.”
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.
When the phrasing is IDENTICAL, that can only mean that government bodies must be as neutral with regarded to political statements as it is to religion. In short, if it’s improper for a school to hang a cross on the wall or to have children sing Christmas carols, it’s EQUALLY improper to put a picture of George Washington on the wall, or to make children sing “The Star-spangled Banner.”
MIGHT my (imaginary) children and I be “uncomfortable” if we lived in, say, a predominatly Moslem area around Detroit, and every other kid in the school got out prayer mats in class several times a day, faced MEcca, and said Arabic prayers to Allah? Sure, we might well be uncomfortable. But whose problem is that? It ‘s NOT the job of those Moslem kids to respect or reinforce my kids’ Catholic faith. Their obligation is to the tenets of Islam. If that makes me feel outnumbered, that’s MY problem, not theirs. And if I complain about it, and try to use the power of the law to shut them up, I’m not a courageous crusader- I’m a cowardly whiner.
