Sunday, March 14, 2010

Valedictorian Sues School Over Graduation Prayer


March 14, 2010 on FOX News with Fr. Jonathan Morris

26 comments:

  1. 1) A majority voted for prayer? Isn't that "cramming it down their throats"? I'm informed by the GOP that 3/5 is neccessary to get shit done.
    2) Greenwood is only 20% Roman Catholic. Perhaps Fr. Hiding-Something-Don't-You-Think will reconsider when they get a save us from the Whore of Rome / y'all ain't saved prayer?

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  2. <span>1) A majority voted for prayer? Isn't that "cramming it down their throats"? I'm informed by the GOP that 3/5 is neccessary to get shit done. 
    2) Greenwood is only 20% Roman Catholic. Perhaps Fr. Hiding-Something-Don't-You-Think will reconsider when they get a "deliver us from the Whore of Rome" / "Y'all ain't saved 'til you're saved like me" prayer?</span>

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  3. Let´s vote for a Muslams Prayers on our schools, lets see if the believers like that democracy too.

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  4. This is a bit strange to me, because the neo-atheist line to the Muslim is "you dont have the right not to be offended." I'm not sure that a ceremony can be considered the same as sanctioning religious teachings in the classroom. An invited speaker might say any sort of strange thing he believes, people sit through it and they survive. I thought that was a secular society. 

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  5. Again, Morris is putting his foot in his mouth.

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  6. were a republic anyway...

    democracy is majority rule...the constitution promotes a republic...

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  7. Notice that it was the smartest kid in the school that didn't want an expression of religion at her graduation?

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  8. Yeah, I've heard of a similar situation where a school allowed its students to vote on whether a religious speaker should deliver the speech for some graduation thing. Of course, putting it to student vote and saying "see, they wanted it!" doesn't make it permissable.

    Oh yeah, and that Father Morris needs a noogie to the head.

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  9. @Ivan

    The kids can sit and pray all through their graduation if they want, as long as they don't force others to do it.

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  10. It's an issue of where and when it's said.  No one has a right not not be offended, but the prayer issue in this case is at a public graduation.  If someone wants to say, "Mohammed is a pedophile", that's okay with me.  If they want to say that at a high-school graduation, particularly if there's a minority Muslim population in the school, then that's definitely stepping over the line.  They should keep the "Mohammed is a pedophile" talk out of high school graduations.

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  11. 'I did all that student government stuff too in school'

    I like how the father likes to think that makes him as knowledgeable or professional as the attorney. 

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  12. what a dirtbag lawyer

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  13. Maybe. I'm not so clear on this. Are ceremonies to be stripped of all political consideration? Isn't an apolitical or amoral ceremony a validation of something else? I'm thinking of Chris Hedges' 2003 speech at Rockford College (which subsequently got him fired from the New York Times). Perhaps of all places, a graduation (which signifies a moment of transition to a new way of life) is afforded a statement on politics or morality.

    A prayer seems a lot less threatening than a religious speech, which proclaims, for example, that the student body feels abortion is murder. At the president's inauguration there was a prayer, secularism means not shouting "it's all bullshit you know!" at its conclusion.  


    http://www.youtube.com/v/SAWMgYyAtHU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="170" height="140

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  14. No one is being forced to pray. There is no rational reason that peaceful prayer is oppressive to the hearer. What's worse with regards to this is that as far as I imagine, most prayers at a high school graduation might as well be a neutral boilerplate of some vague allusion for guidance and protection blah blah blah. I cant imagine there is any truly controversial speech act within such a prayer. People have to sit through trite nonsense on 'guidance' wether or not its prefaced by "Please father..." 

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  15. By the way, the Hedges speech uses both religious and political speech, so I suspect that for consistency's sake we damn (atheistically) Chris Hedges.   

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  16. Secularism is meant to be about the freedom to worship and freedom of speech- funny how it works only one way for some atheists...if you are in the graduation you don't have to pray if you do not want to- the constitutional interpretation takes it way too far- how is it that when ppl worship others get offended? when atheists continuously attack religion in their face and say they shouldn't get offended? danish cartoons anyone??? I think they should be allowed to pray if they want to...i've been to many graduation ceremonies where i jst sat down and they prayed for 30 seconds not a big deal...

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  17. So many dumb trolls here today. Ever heard of the term CAPTIVE AUDIENCE?? You can't mandate, coerce or organize prayer at<span></span> a public institution like schools in the US. If you want to pray individually, knock yourself out.

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  18. It's not up for popular vote. It's the 1st Amendment.

    No one's freedom of speech or religion is being denied, obviously.  They can talk to their imaginary friends all they want.  But a publicly supported institution cannot establish a religion. Period.

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  19. I wish this father have a little talk with Hitchens.

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  20. dumb trolls? that's what you call someone who disagrees? I am an atheist and a practicing secular catholic. I dont consider myself of the 'neo-atheist' movement not because it is agressive, but because I dont think it has an intellectual basis. This sort of fodder is a great example. What is the principle at work here other than being undifferentiatedly offended by religious practice? This is simply not an oppressive act for anyone not simply bigoted against (so-called) 'belief'. What of the belief in democracy and its edicts? If one seeks strict rationality, the authority of founding documents is hollow. So, don't present liberalism as the position freed of 'primitive' belief, to cite the US constitution includes a moral claim. 

    When you say "you can't mandate..." you are actually saying "by the authority of the liberal-democratic state, one ought not..."

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  21. How many lockers do you think this "father" was stuffed into in school?

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  22. <span>What the crap does "practicing secular catholic atheist" mean? You sound like a faithiest to me. No wonder you can't see the problem with this imposition of religion.  
     
    No intellectual basis? It's time a "teach the faithiest" lesson. Everyone please open your dictionaries to the page for "coercion".
     
    Prayer at graduation can be oppressive. Let's suppose a student doesn't want to pray, but goes to a school in a community that is highly religious. There are millions of kids like this in America, btw. This student will stand out like a sore thumb and she will face persecution for it. None of her peers or friends will risk associating with her because she is a now a creepy atheist, aka devil worshipper. The administrators and faculty will be prone to distrust her when they otherwise have no reason to. Other students will harass her, telling her that she is going to hell and she needs to accept Jesus into her heart. Even if some/all of that doesn't happen she has to live in fear that it might happen. So she'll quietly pretend to participate in the prayer. And she'll pretend to convert to Christianity, so that everyone leaves her alone. She'll pretend that it is not only normal and rational, but also virtuous to telepathically communicate to your imaginary friends. How degrading and humiliating!

    Even in communities that are not religious, forcing students to be subjected to public prayer is wrong. It gives the impression that belief in god is a good thing and that believing in god is necessary to be a </span><span>full</span><span> participant in society. It makes atheists feel like cultural outsiders. The government has no business promoting any specific religion, nor religious belief in general, nor in marginalizing atheists.  
     
    No one's religious liberty is harmed by omitting prayers from graduation ceremonies. On the contrary, everyone's liberty is protected, including atheists. If you want to pray, you can pray by yourself. Or if you want to pray in a big group, you can pray in a big group. If you want to organize 90% of the town to say a prayer, no one is gonna stop you. However, you have no right to co-opt a secular, public graduation event to exercise your religion. Organize that on your own time and effort.</span>

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  23. Are you totally sure Ivan, what this video and following discussions are all about ?
    I have the impression that you are commenting on things that are NOT in there.
    Oh, well... Maybe I didn't get it ?

    ave

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  24. In Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe (2000) the Supreme Court decided that prayers before public school football games were unconstitutional, even when voted on by students and student-led.

    This is what the lawyer meant when she said that you can't just vote yourself out of Constitutional protections when you're talking about State-affiliated events like public school graduations. The problem with majorities is that, when unchecked, 51% of students can subject 49% of students to prayer if they feel like it. That's why we need Constitutional protections -- to protect us all from the tyranny of the majority. Might does not make right in the U.S., and I say that's a good thing.

    In Lee v. Weisman (1992) the Supreme Court held that even a nonsectarian prayer at a public school graduation was an impermissible violation of students' right to religious freedom.

    Let me repeat for the Ivans reading: Even a nonsectarian prayer. The fact that you're not promoting any particular religion doesn't change the fact that you're promoting religion, something which we're entitled to not have to deal with in order to get our diplomas. If students wanted to pray together so badly, they could instead have voted on where to meet after the graduation ceremony. Otherwise they could have prayed during the moment of silence that should have been and probably was provided. The fact that these alternatives are not satisfactory to many people is incriminating evidence of their unconstitutional motivations to convince students that our society is, in fact, inherently and rightly religious, and that anyone who isn't religious is somehow missing some crucial element of true citizenry.

    I think the Supreme Court quote that best addresses the concerns of Fox's "religious correspondent" and my fellow commenters is:

    "By the time they are seniors, high school students no doubt have been required to attend classes and assemblies and to complete assignments exposing them to ideas they find distasteful or immoral or absurd or all of these. Against this background, students may consider it an odd measure of justice to be subjected during the course of their educations to ideas deemed offensive and irreligious, but to be denied a brief, formal prayer ceremony that the school offers in return. This argument cannot prevail, however. It overlooks a fundamental dynamic of the Constitution." Lee, 505 U.S. 590-591.

    shep is right. A prayer as part of an official event for which public school student attendance is essentially obligatory amounts to coercion. Again returning to the words of the Supreme Court in Lee:

    "The undeniable fact is that the school district's supervision and control of a high school graduation ceremony places public pressure, as well as peer pressure, on attending students to stand as a group or, at least, maintain respectful silence during the invocation and benediction. This pressure, though subtle and indirect, can be as real as any overt compulsion." 593.

    Please, for the love of freedom, stop trying to smuggle religion into the public arena. We know what you're doing, and why you're doing it, and that's the real offense. Feel free to have conversations with supernatural beings behind closed doors in the privacy of your room, as some of you may have been told, but stop trying to make us sit through your admittedly neutered ceremonies just to indulge yourself in the satisfaction of pretending that we don't live in a secular society.

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  25. that lawyer and that valedictorian are assholes

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  26. That preiest "agrument" made me sick. Pathetic. America needs to eradicat this crossing of the line. Federally funded, no fucking religious activities!! how hard is that to get through these peoples thick heads.

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