If students don’t want to hear prayers over PA system, they can “put their fingers in their ears.”
With the testing pressures and economic woes battering public education today, why do so many school leaders wander into First Amendment minefields and take on the explosive issue of the church/state divide?
Administrators of yet another high school – Soddy-Daisy High School in suburban Chattanooga – have been permitting Christian prayers over the loudspeaker at football games and graduation ceremonies. Contacted by some frustrated students from the school, the Freedom from Religion Foundation has taken up their cause and warned the Hamilton County superintendent about the “unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.”
Under the law, students are free to bow their heads and pray in school. As the U.S. Department of Education states, students may “read their Bibles or other scriptures, say grace before meals, pray or study religious materials with fellow students during recess, the lunch hour or other non-instructional time.” But a public school can’t compel students to participate in prayer or other religious activities and it can’t lead the entire school in prayer over the PA system.
According to the news story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press:
Hamilton County Board of Education member Rhonda Thurman, who represents Soddy-Daisy, said the prayers were part of the school’s tradition, and that anyone who didn’t want to hear could “put their fingers in their ears.”
“Everybody is offended by something,” she said. “I’m offended by a lot of those little girls running around with their thong panties showing, but I can’t make that go away.”
Annie Laurie Gaylor, director and co-president of the foundation, called Thurman’s remarks “irresponsible.” She cited several U.S. Supreme Court cases in which prayer before football games and graduation ceremonies were found to be unconstitutional.
The school system, she said, “has no leg to stand on” and the practice should be stopped immediately.
“Students are a captive audience, they’re required to go to school. When there is a violation like a prayer at a school, they’re really vulnerable; it’s a violation of their civil rights,” she said.
“This is the harm of religion in government, that the people who are religious believe they are the true citizens and the other people have no rights,” she said. “It’s very dangerous to go down this path of government and religion; someone will always be on the outs.”
Gaylor mentioned another area case from 2006 in which students from Bryan College, a Christian school in Dayton, Tenn., were coming to give “hour-long Bible instruction” to students in Rhea County’s public school system. The foundation eventually took that case to federal court and won, Gaylor said.
Many First Amendment violations crop up during sporting events, she said.
“It’s a lack of understanding where their personal rights stop and other people’s civil liberties begin,” she said. “It’s perfectly ridiculous to have prayer at football games. Is their deity going to help them win the game? Whoever prays the hardest wins the game? I don’t think so.”
In Hamilton County, religion in public schools is far from uncommon. From prayer before sporting events and privately funded Bible-history classes to student-led group prayers and Bible verse classroom posters, Christianity is widely accepted.
But the times may be changing, says David Eichenthal, president of the local Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies. As more people move into the area, he said, there is likely to be a greater population of people who push against the status quo, including the tradition of pre-game prayer.
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165 comments Add your comment
Maureen Downey
October 23rd, 2010
11:06 am
@bootney, My issue with David Sims wasn’t that I disagreed with him. I disagree with you, too. But he was off topic. A lot.
He forced the same response onto multiple topics. And he was frustrating other readers who would come to the blog and see screenloads of his stuff and depart. PBM is on topic; he posts pungent rebuttals, but his comments are related to what we are discussing.
The AJC has received many e-mails asking me to limit David’s responses because they were so repetitive and so single-focused. I probably ban fewer posters than most of my colleagues because I want open debate. But his comments were not adding to the debate. For most people, his comments were narrowing debate to a topic in which they had little interest. For his unique audience, David would be better off with his own blog.
Maureen
Proud Black Man
October 23rd, 2010
12:40 pm
@ Bootlick Fartsworth
Calm down before you have a stroke! But before you do could you answer this question?
David, by his own admission, is a racist and anti-Semitic are you okay with that?
Ole Guy
October 23rd, 2010
2:10 pm
Maureen, I am having difficulty in understanding your comment regarding PBM’s statements of relevancy. One just may as well state that we do the dirty deed in the name of chastity. I certainly do not wish to appear to be casting stones, but in my honest opinion, PBM’s words are those of one whose mental capacities never quite got past the 3rd grade. Remember how, as children, we might stick our tongue out at one with whom we are in disagreement? This is precisely the mindset which seems to reside behind PBM’s words; to see your analysis of his words as relevant casts your where-with-all as highly questionable.
The topic, religous expression, has received a number of responses…all relevant to one degree or another. PBM’s remarks, however, couldn’t be any further from the issues. Historically, his comments have appeared to be those of one who is extremely insecure with self.
I, and I am quite certain, your readers, would appreciate it if you could differentiate between relevancy and the mindless ramblings of one who has never grown up to become an adult.
Proud Black Man
October 23rd, 2010
3:13 pm
@ ole guy
Heres some relevance for you; an avowed racist started posting here on get schooled and you, along with Mr. Bootlick, SEEM to see nothing wrong with that. In MY OPINION that makes you a sympathizer if not an outright racist. Btw my original comment on this thread was:
“”they cling to their guns and religion” true words then, true words now.”
I’m very secure in my self. Based of off YOUR postings I think you are NOTHING MORE than a virtual racist. After all its impolite, and possible job termination event, to say the n-word in public now isn’t it? So you and YOUR ilk choose the net to trash talk minorities. And I LOVE to point that out. Enough of that though, I would like to ask the same question of you that I posed to Mr. Bootlicker who for whatever reasons has not yet replied:
“David, by his own admission, is a racist and anti-Semitic are you okay with that?” I took Bootlicker’s silence as a yes; what say you?
L
October 23rd, 2010
6:04 pm
@Mark At my school the graduation ceremony WAS a requirement. If you didn’t go, you weren’t allowed to have your diploma. I know because I did not want to go to my graduation ceremony because in my personal opinion it was a waste of time to sit around for two hours just so you could be handed a piece of paper in a cardboard holder.
It is all well and good to say if you don’t want to hear it don’t listen and just keep chatting or whatever but it is considered extremely rude to chit chat while someone is leading a prayer. It is disruptive to the people who want to hear the prayer and would create yet more arguments. The only real option is to sit there quietly and wait for it to be over, which of course is unfair to the people who don’t share those beliefs. I’m fine with the idea of a moment of silence because a moment of silence can be used for anything. They can sit and think over their math test if they don’t want to pray but I don’t think anyone should lead a prayer over the loudspeaker at a school sporting even if it is a public school.
sloboffthestreet
October 23rd, 2010
9:26 pm
Scarecrow)
I could wile away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain
And my head I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had a brain
I’d unravel any riddle
For any individ’le
In trouble or in pain
(Dorothy)
With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’
You could be another Lincoln
If you only had a brain
(Scarecrow)
Oh, I would tell you why
The ocean’s near the shore
I could think of things I never thunk before
And then I’d sit and think some more
I would not be just a nuffin’
My head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain
sloboffthestreet
October 23rd, 2010
9:28 pm
jesus was a heretic
sloboffthestreet
October 23rd, 2010
9:31 pm
You must excuse our Rhonda Thurman. Bless her little heart. She has issues!!!
Stormport
October 24th, 2010
1:12 am
teacher too:
Change Gwinnett to Dusseldorf, change christian to Nazi, and I suspect your feeling of suppressed outrage but lack of power to do anything was endemic upon the German people during the 1930s and early 40s. The people who responded most positively to Hitler were the same crowd that elected the bushcabal here. And you were right to keep silent from a self-preservation perspective. Christians can be more ardent in punishment and cruelty than any Nazi ever was.
Proud Black Guy:
Please forgive my intrusion. As a white exMarine raised on the north side of Chicago who at 12 knew as many Yiddish swearwords as Anglo, maybe I missed some obvious racial slur from David Sims because, I too, am a self-unacknowledged racist (?). So, I have to ask what specifically Mr. Sims said that allows you to label him a ‘racist’ whatever that term actually means anymore having been blathered about to the extent that it has. As a Celt, am I a racist if I tell a Polish joke? As a Pole, am I a racist if I tell a Celtish joke? Race is a figment of humanzee imagination. There are geographically localized higher occurences of some alleles in some populations (sickle cell, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, for instance) but allelic variation is stronger across local populations than across all Humanzee groups in the entire gene pool. “Race” as Humanzee norms use it would hardly even qualify as ’strain’ in any other genetic discussion. Do you, yourself, see large differences in red and white roses save the tint?
You are a self-unacknowledged racist yourself, Sir. At least from your tone and the things you have said. If I were to say n****r, you would pounce like a waiting spider but you can bandy “r*dn**k or imply incest (Who’s YOUR daddy, PMB?) or suggest he get some gold put in a front tooth without even a thought to your own racism. It’s easy, isn’t it. And when someone says something that you are able to couple, however thinly, to your narrow agenda, you’re on them like slime on a slug. Interesting, dontcha think, how easily we all fall into the same traps. In fact, your ‘race-consciousness’ far outshines Mr Sims’. Taking up the issue of anti-semitism as well, because that’s always good to batter someone with, we must ask your opinion of Islamic Arabs. Today’s Jews are only fractionally ’semitic’ in any case. And we must also ask you, what of Israel’s refusal to recognize Ethiopian Jews despite a demonstrable Hebraic history way longer than the Khazars who make up most of what was the original Irgun. Israel is a “Jewish” state. Would that be different from a “White” state? Jews differ amongst their various sects to the same extent as any other identity group and zionism is the KKK/Jihadi branch. There is no prejudice in identifying Arab evil, or white people evil, why then any extra ripples when Jewish evil is described?
Because your intent is not to educate, but to attack. Whatever your life history, you prefer heat to light, clearly. Your primary identity is not American, or even better, Human. Rather it seems to be angry child (calling names…?). Somehow the boss here likes your style. Bootney is doing the same thing except he’s got his hand up trying to get Authority to do something about that awful PBM…
We take these things seriously only because we have no better reality than these things to think about. That is entirely the choice of the one feeling the emotion. Shall I maintain the same kneejerk personality or should I educate myself a bit more and grow out of the game completely? Free myself of conditioned reactions in favor of perceptually joining humanity in general, a groupless humanity, where, as an equal, you will no longer be burdened with the need to defend against the absurd. You do not feel equal now. Call me a … well, I dunno, redneck? Tall ugly person? No good whitey? Hmmm, I mean call me something equivalent to what you are always hearing from whites. I can insult you, make you angry. Why can you not do that to me? I cannot react emotionally to something that has no meaning to me. Besides, in five or six generations, we should have our own recognizable American blend of gene alleles and no one will recognize our own favorite epithets having no longer any discernable targets.
And Mr. Man, there is no more a defining species characteristic of Homo than such prejudice. It is us, Mr. Man, it is not Hutus and Tutsis, for example, or blacks and whites, or Irish and Irish, it is the Group that we perceive ourselves to be in and automatically opposed to all other perceived groups. It is not racism that we need to address but the disease that puts group identity ahead of species identity.
This group structure that is universal to Homo, like its hierarchical internal structure, is in our genes, not a particular group but the need to be in one and, then, assume the behavior of the group in which we find ourselves. Groups are very particular about their own internal structure, and jealously guard their constituent units from data pollution which might destabilize the group homeostasis. The individual unit itself is well protected from ‘corruption’ by mechanisms like denial, suppression, propaganda, leaders, intragroup pressure as experienced by “teacher too”, et cetera. Your job as a ‘thinking’ being is not to try to injure the opposition unit (here with trivial insults), this is simply war.
Your job is to bring greater light to the world of beings who live only in the dim light of their own group identity and have no idea of the dazzling array of human ideas and ways of being available to them when their perception broadens. Confrontation only enhances differences, draws the group identity into defense mode, and further restricts the individual unit’s ability to grow. You are now an agent in this process, Mr Man. Is that what you want to be?
Stormport
October 24th, 2010
1:52 am
A+A >Stormport: it means “too long, didn’t read” [tl;dr]
Thank you for responding. I understand completely. I had that same feeling when I was nine about adult-sized books…
LOL I apologize, I’m weak. The lure of PBMing you overcame me. Another way this has been said to me is “Thanks for the word wall!” But the compression of complex ideas into soundbite sized expletives is a symptom of America’s current malaise, and a major contributing factor to the success of externally sponsored divisive propaganda in our group identity that is paralyzing our ability to work coherently as a nation. It makes us weak, as we are all seeing. The elite uses us as it will while we fight amongst ourselves over absurdities. I suppose we must always remember that fully 50% of all humanzees on the planet are of below average capacity. This is what allows so many people in America to be swayed to vote consistently against their own best interests. I believe that individual humanzee capacity, like physical strength, can be increased with appropriate exercise. Soundbites ain’t it. This is not a criticism of your comment, A+A, just a rationalization for my lack of Lincolnesque genius in the depth I can produce in any one sentence. Loquacious? Yes, I am guilty. But I am also sincere, if not very bright, when I try to point out our overall 99.99% identicality and the 0.01% that we limit ourselves to perceiving in each other, our miniscule differences. Sorry to be out of step here…
Proud Black Man
October 24th, 2010
5:46 am
@ David Sims aka Stormport
jibba jabba
Marc
October 24th, 2010
3:44 pm
Am i the only person who thinks they chose the wrong quote for the title of this article? I think it would be better titled: “Everybody is offended by something. I’m offended by a lot of those little girls running around with their thong panties showing, but I can’t make that go away.”
This story is full of so many great things to ridicule!!!
SweetRoisinDubh
October 25th, 2010
1:36 pm
@David Sims:
I wish I had as much free time as you do. I have to admit, I’m jealous of that.
Proud Black Man
October 25th, 2010
2:29 pm
@ SweetRoisinDubh
Its known as unemployment, his pizza route was cut.
David Sims
October 25th, 2010
7:14 pm
I am not Stormport. I have never posted on any AJC blog or website under any name except David Sims. Someone at AJC is probably able to check IP numbers. That check will reveal (I think) that Stormport and I are not in the same location.