Vote: What's your view on school prayer in Rhode Island school? (Jessica Ahlquist)

[Major Nikon]

50. It's never just a banner

It's a coach who orders everyone to bow their heads while someone recites a prayer before a game and how he doesn't want to hear from all the pussies who don't want to participate.

or...

It's a teacher who makes it a point to single out certain students while the rest engage in a prayer.

or...

It's the parent who does all the sewing for the kids in the school play, except for the ones who are 'different'.

or...

It's the kids who are told by their parents to proselytize to all the non-Christians.

or...

It's the hundreds of other ways that some Christians manage to make non-Christians feel as outsiders, as somehow less human because they seem to thing their assumed majority status entitles them to something.

And please don't tell me that this shit doesn't happen, because unless you've walked a mile in the shoes of a non-Christian in public schools you are going to have a very hard time realizing just how much this shit permeates our schools. Certainly it's not all Christians that do this and I'll be the first to tell you it's a very small minority, but I don't see the rest of the majority saying too much when it does happen.

Is it really too much to ask that everyone comply with the Constitution? How hard is it really to decide that schools are the place of learning things like reading, writing, and arithmetic rather than learning about talking snakes, talking donkeys, talking bushes, or whatever other hocus-pocus tales the so-called 'majority' happens to believe? And no, I don't think that if someone want to wear a cross, or pray in their own groups, or express their own faith that they should be prohibited so long as they are not interfering with the education of anyone else. The problem is that there will always be people who want to push whatever limits they are given. The very fact that the school decided to leave this banner up for how ever many decades in obvious defiance to the law of the land is testament to that fact.

If you think the banner was OK, imagine if the banner said that there was no god, and that anyone who prays to a god was wasting their time and energy that should be spent on more practical endeavors. Would you still be OK with it? I wouldn't. It's not the school's place to be telling people what they should or shouldn't believe in. Period. That job is up to the parents and clergy. Personally I don't tell my own kids what to believe in or not to believe in. I tell them they are going to have to figure that one out on their own. I don't even force my own beliefs or lack thereof on my kids and I certainly don't think anyone else should be forcing their beliefs on them either, or anyone else. This isn't rocket surgery.