pan6467

How the fuck is saying this "I have no issue with prayer, PROVIDED you do not tell me what God to pray to." hypocritical to anything?

If the team wants to organize prayer, let them just don't tell my kid which God he has to pray to or that he has to pray at all.

I am however stating that when you include school prayer, in most cases students are led in a Judeo-Christian prayer. THAT is dictating which God. That's why the Religious Right has such issues with "moment of silence or meditation", they believe that everyone must pray to the same God and out loud and that is wrong. Now, you show me a school that on Monday the school prayer is led by Hindus, Tues. led by Christians, Wed. led by Jews, Thurs. led by Muslims, and Friday led by Buddhists and the whole cycle of ALL religions is recognized, then I won't have a problem. But, no it's always the same religion, therefore showing support to it, while disregarding others, and that is against my rights.

I get the feeling you are arguing just to argue. But if you want to explain your argument please do.

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Derwood

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Fire

I live about 30 miles from Fulton- albiet in a university town with come claim to sense and culture- this shit annoys the hell out of me, and once again makes me ashamed to live in such a closed minded, bible thumping area- my only defense of this place is that it was not anywhere near this bad a few years ago............

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meembo

It's interesting how this morphed to school prayer!

As far as the quote above, I think religion has NO place in school from the top down. Kids and teachers can pray themselves on their own initiative, but any congregation of religious expression at school functions isn't appropriate for government-sponsored (public) school. Religious practice is most appropriately sponsored by a family and a community of faith, not by the administration of a public school. Prayer over the PA at a school sporting event is a deliberate administrative inclusion of every spectator who can hear it, a designated time and place for religious expression. I say it's not the time or the place.

I added what is in the parentheses in the above quote, which is the reference directly copied from the post it came from.

I don't equate constitutional protections with moral codes. "Legal" does not equate or even imply "moral", and that is a good and essential thing in a democracy. We've talked about PA prayer at football games and the cancellation of two plays by a superintendent. One was decided by appellate and Supreme Courts, and the other was decided unilaterally by a single government worker who admits people compare him to Joe McCarthy.

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alansmithee

No, in other words I don't have time to do a thesis paper to debate some random person online.

Stopping prayer is imposing one's moral code on otherb because it's forcing others, everyone who would like to participate in or listen to the prayer, to abide by your code.

There's nothing stopping from them putting on those plays privately. Your views aren't consistant, but you would never admit that. A liberal wrong? No, never!

alansmithee

I think that drama is appropriately sponsored by a family and a community of artists, not by the administration of a public school. People should be happy that any plays are allowed to be done on school grounds. It isn't some right to be able to perform whatever you feel on schol grounds.



Oh, I guess I forgot that the Supreme Court is infalliable. They never make mistakes, right?

What I am talking about is the hypocrisy of supporting banning one form of personal expression, but getting angered over another. It seems the people who really make the biggest deal about religion are liberals. Religion is just another form of thought and expression, no different from others.

roachboy

i have neither the time nor the interest to engage with sophistries concerning prayer in public--that is secular--schools.

on the matter of smalltown censorship of this play, two quick points:

1. grease is an awful awful play.
2. it seems to me that the censoring of a production of this innocuous, badly written piece of crap play derives mostly from fear--which seems to me to rest on problematic assumptions:

the children who are brought up in little towns did not choose to be there. they did not choose the benighted frame of reference, the small mindedness, the isolation--the advantages, the trees, the closeness.
their parents chose it.
but this basic fact seems all too often to go out the window--it is almost like folk who choose to live in these places only understand their choices as being legitimate if they see them repeated by their kids--as if they are afraid to confront the reality of their own choices, and would instread prefer to erase them as choices--they would prefer to control information about the world, eliminate what they do not like, in order to impose continuously the limtations entailed by their chocie to live in a small town as if these limitations were natural...

i grew up in a little town in new hampshire, btw--there were scandals involving both my high school class plays in that ridiculous little place--but no attempt to censor the plays--and so the whole thing--play and controversy, vanished quite fast into oblivion--they hover about in 2006 only as memories and faint ones at that.

my brother often talks about wanting to "protect" his kids by controlling information sources, monitoring what they see, etc. i think that what he wants to "protect" his kids from is the possibility that they will become other people, who want things he does not recognize necessarily, who live in places he does not like--he wants his kids to be like him--even though he arrived at his own sense of himself by going outside our parents' efforts to do the same thing to us. the net result of that is not that he sees the folly of the whole project, but rather that my brother imagines that he is more efficient at censoring his kids' sense of the world because he moved outside of my parents' model. all i think that he is accomplishing is a delaying of the revolt. you cant stop your kids from becoming their own people. if you try, all you manage to do, really, is set things up so that the rejection of that way of life, if it comes, when it comes, is total. that would would try to shape your kids' sense of the world in order to produce a repetition of your choices in relation to it seems nothing more than vanity. a vanity motivated by fear. it seems wholly self-defeating to me.

the irony-like factor in all this is that he, too, lives in a small town--and like many it is no longer self-sustaining economically. so his kids will more likely than not have to leave, will have to go somewhere else, become something Other. if that turns out to be the case, all he will have managed to do is unecessarily limit his kids sense of their own options. i assume---pollyanna boy that i am-that they'll work things out for themselves--but it will take longer than it might otherwise have, will cause them more pain than it otherwise might have.

this is more or less how see this idiotic attempt to censor the innocuous in the name of "community standards"---it is about fear, about the sense of a loss of control that plays out across really stupid matters like "grease" that only function as flashpoints because--unlike economic transformations in a context where captialism functions ideologically as an unqualified good--they are tangible.

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Willravel

This is rama lama riduculous.
You know what? Christ never said there was anything wrong with kissing. In fact, Jesus Christ encourages His followers to drink wine once a week. In fact, I'd bet these very people who condemed this play are guilty of kissing and drinking.

Bottom line: high schools are now under the control of the idiot minority. Grease, the least offensive thing John Travolta ever did, is extremly conservative compared to 99% of musicals out there. I have to wonder if these people are also writing "The O.C." or "24" about crap like this.

The_Jazz

I'm currently laughing my ass off at that! If there ever was a reason to cancel a play - that's it!

The sad part is that the superintendent approved the play the first time (although he admits to not reading the script) and then backtracked. That's just stupid, and if anyone deserves to be punished for this, it's him. Instead he's taking the coward's way out and throwing the teacher under the bus. That's part of Leadership 101 IMHO.

The fact that he's cancelled The Crucible is the real travesty here. He's the McCarthy in this scenario.

I think that the point about this yutz making the decision versus the Supreme Court et al is valid. He's already backtracked once on this issue, and given his performance here, I don't think that he's particularly qualified to make these kinds of decisions any more. If I lived in that district, I'd be calling for his head. Jurists don't have any other qualification to make these decisions than, well, that being what they're paid to do. State and Federal judges are supposed to be the ultimate arbiters between the state and individual, so who is better qualified?

By the way, here's a real reason to cancel a play:

filtherton

Actually, conforming to the courts' interpretation of the constitution of the united states is conforming to legal code. Morality has something to do with it only inasmuch as the fact that the constitution can be thought of as a codified set of morals.

I imagine that performing the play privately would cost a lot more money than performing it as part of the school. The school presumably already has all the props and personnel needed. This is different from prayer, because prayer is free.

Ustwo

Parents get an input in any school, thats the way it is. I'm so sorry the poor teacher couldn't put on the play she wanted to, but shit happens.

This would be news if it were a drama club this happened too, but a school is a different matter. When I was in school my CATHOLIC school produced a very raunchy short play (I was the lead heh). In retrospect, it should not have been done.

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Gilda

You made the claim that: "But there are many instances where students wanted to organize their own prayer, but one wackjob complains and the students aren't allowed."

I didn't ask for a thesis, I asked for a cite. Show me where this has happened, where students were prevented from praying or organizing a prayer. Note that in the cases that went to court, the issue wasn't praying, and it wasn't organizing, it was reading the prayer over the PA system at a football game. Requiring participation in a religious ceremony, in this case a prayer, as a prerequisite for viewing or playing in a game is imposing your religious views on others.

Preventing them from reading the prayer over the PA system doesn't, however, prevent them from praying.

There you are again, claiming that they're stopping prayer, while not citing any instances of this happening. Where and when did this happen?

And here's the thing: I agree with you. If school officials are preventing students from praying, that's wrong, and it shouldn't be allowed, and I'd join you in protesting that.

My views are entirely consistent, in that I oppose the imposition of one groups moral/religious views on another group, even if, being a Christian myself, I agree with that religious view. My interpretation of how that applies to these particular situations may be different from yours, but that does not make it inconsistent.

On another board a few months back, there was a discussion of the relationship between a person's view on capital punishment and on abortion rights, with accusations of hypocrisy flying back and forth. The thing is, depending upon the rationale used, any combination of positions on those two issues can be consistent. Pro-pro, anti-anti, anti-pro, and pro-anti can all be consistently rational positions. I agree with only one of those, but a person can have any combination of views there and still be entirely consistent.

Also, keep in mind that at a school play, the play itself is the reason people are in attendance. If they don't want to see the play, they don't have to go. No imposition on those who might object.

However, at a football game, or a graduation, or when read over the intercom during announcements, a prayer is an imposition. It imposes a religious ceremony on people who are in attendance for a separate purpose. People aren't there for the prayer, they're there for the event, and an extra requirement that is irrelevant to the main event is being imposed on them. Many, perhaps most, might agree with the sentiments expressed in the prayer. Being a Christian myself, I probably would. But by adding a religious element to an event which is non-religious in nature, it's imposing one groups religious beliefs on everyone in attendance.

Let them pray, and let them organize a prayer, sure, I have no problem with that. But don't require me to participate as a condition of attending a football game or my own graduation.

Gilda

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