"'We did what we normally do in the South before we eat,' he said."
-- Pace High School Principal Frank Lay
"Michelle Winkler violated the order by having her husband, who is not a School Board employee, offer prayer at the non-instructional employee of the year banquet" on Feb. 20, said Benjamin Stevenson, an ACLU of Florida staff attorney. "We filed a motion for the federal court to issue an order for her to show cause or explain herself."It bears emphasis that this was no inadvertent slip on Ms. Winkler's part. It was planned in advance every bit as deliberately as your run-of-the-mine bank heist.
* * *
The suit said school officials regularly promoted their personal religious beliefs and led prayers at school events.
- She first declared her intentions weeks ahead of time:
In a Jan. 23 e-mail prior to the banquet, Winkler asked Jud Crane, director of purchasing, for "off the record" permission to have prayer at the event.
- She admitted in writing her purpose was personal to her needs, not those of the public school or its students:
We totally agree with Ms. Winkler. She should "suffer whatever consequences."
"I would like to use the prayer I had prayed about and received from God and will suffer whatever consequences for," she wrote in the e-mail.
- She was warned in advance her plan was inappropriate:
Crane said he was told there would be no invocation or devotion, but that she could give a nonreligious "thought of the day."
- But she went ahead, anyway, and even enlisted her husband as a confederate:
At the banquet... she told the audience she was not permitted to pray, but called her husband to the microphone to do so.
How about probation -- conditioned on Ms. Winkler, at her own expense, completing a fact-finding report after living six months in a nation where there is no separation between church and state institutions? Say, Somalia, Pakistan, or Sri Lanka?
It would be god's will. She told us so herself.
Sept. 18: Late Editorial Update ("Homo Neanderthalensis")
Sept. 17: Lay, Freeman Beat the Rap with the 'I'm Stupid' Defense
Sept. 17: Pictures of a Pep Rally
Aug. 22: Stupid, Not Contemptuous
Aug. 5: The One and Only Faith
Aug. 4: Frank Lay's Criminal Contempt Order
May 31: Principal Lay Has a 'Come to Jesus' Moment
May 27: Laying Down the Puritan Law
3 comments:
The ACLU and people like you piss all over the constitution by using activist federal court justices to further your own atheist agenda. The "constitutional seperation of church and state" does not exist as it has been interpreted. Reading the actual document is all that is neccasary to see that it is a liberal invention.
The actual part of the constitution that the seperation of church and state is based on reads:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
That's it. That's all it says.
It's important to note that the "congress" referred to here is the federal congress, not the legislatures of the states. In fact, for fifty years after the ratification of the constitution several states maintained official state-government funded religions, that were not in violation of this provision because this provision was only intended to apply to the establishment of a national religion.
This nation was founded on Christian beliefs and principles. It is from these principles of tolerance and acceptance that your right to be an atheist, or worship whatever god you choose, spring from. Here's a basic jist of what the framers intended: If you want to be atheist, no one will try you in court and imprison you for it.
They, however, did not intend for you to be able to impose your belief in nothing on the rest of us.
References to God on money, in the pledge of alligence, and in the declaration of independence do not violate the ban on establishing a national religion. They only confirm that we are a nation founded on Christian principles. Prayer at a noneducational school function that no one is forced to participate in doesn't either.
If anything the federal courts' intervention on this issue violates the clause about the government not prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
You don't have to be a lawyer or a judge. You only need basic reading comprehension skills and the common sense required to consider context clues, such as events that were taking place at the time the constitution was written, to interpret it's intent. If we don't consider the constitution through the lense of what was intended when it was written, then the amount of twisting that can be done to its words to make it fit one's own agenda are limitless.
Perhaps you should live in a country not founded on Christian beliefs fo six months, like Iraq or Sudan. I bet your intolerance for the very belief system that allows you a voice to be so intolerant, would change.
So the commentator is in favor of slavery and women being the property of their husbands with no right to vote?
Jesus said to pray in your closet, not on street corners. How did you miss that?
The genius of our constitution is that it allows the people of the United States the ability to amend away anything that is unfair to any group of people like slavery or the unequal treatment of women. My problem is with just leaving the "Highest Law of The Land" the way it reads and not going by it. Thats liberal nonsense. If enough of the people in this country think that the absense of all religion is in order we should amend the constitution to read that way, not just twist what it says to indulge the opinion of a few.
My original comment was spurred because the blogger was taking a scathing stance about something he or she was not educated enough to speak about. Read up, then reference, or don't reference at all.
Save the condescending reference to Jesus, I would feel the same if it was a Muslim prayer. There is no constitutional reference to prayer, so don't go quoting the constitution without reading it.
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