Federal Judge Prohibits Prayer at Texas Graduation Ceremony

FOXNews.com ^ | June 2, 2011 | By Todd Starnes

[metmom]

A federal judge has ordered a Texas school district to prohibit public prayer at a high school graduation ceremony.

Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery’s order against the Medina Valley Independent School District also forbids students from using specific religious words including “prayer” and “amen.”

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the school district is in the process of appealing the ruling, and his office has agreed to file a brief in their support.

[angryoldfatman]

“The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony.”

That prayer thing must be some powerful stuff! ;-)

[metmom]

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

This ping list is for the “other” articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)

The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.

This is far more than just another reason to homeschool article.

This is trampling out our basics rights granted by the Constitution.

Has the judge never read the part about *not prohibiting the free exercise thereof*?

[napscoordinator]

This is getting ridiculous....Homeschool. If both parents HAVE to work than start classes at 6 when you get home and go until 11 at night. Have classes all day Saturday and 1/2 day Sunday. There is going to have to be sacrifices and if money is not able to be the sacrifice than time is going to have to be what needs to be sacrificed. It can be done. Some will ask what to do with the children during the day.....well there are perfect christian families that babysit and perhaps you could find someone to do that and ensure that wholesome activities are done during the day.

[smokingfrog]

The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony.

Fine. Just stay home then, and we'll put your diploma in the mail, you pathetic little whiner.

[silverleaf]

time for massive civil disobedience - do the kids have the guts?

[gusopol3]

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.

What if they just quote from George Washington's first inaugural address?

[NWFLConservative]

"The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony."

That has got to be just about the biggest crock of crap I have ever heard. So the entire graduating class has to abide by the wishes of some little atheistic twirp and his whining family?

I expect this kind of crap in a blue state but not in TX. They think prayer would inflict irreparable harm on them? Wait until their Judgment Day. Now THAT will be irreparable harm.

[pepsionice]

I believe the last time that “control” was attempted at a high school graduation...the crowd launched into a “The Lord is my Shepard.....” routine. Folks sat there in shock and all went along with it. Law enforcement aren’t about to arrest you for such a “statement”.

All in all....a Federal judge can order all he wants...but it doesn’t mean much in real life.

[metmom]

I wonder is in the name of consistency, that the boy and his family never swear, using God’s name in vain.

What do they do if they hear about God on the street or in a restaurant? Sue them as well/

Maybe they’d be better off moving to some atheistic paradise, like NK, or Cuba. Surely things were better under Stalin or Pol Pot. They eradicated God from their societies.

[acapesket]

Hopefully the crowd will stand up and pray and screw the family, judge too.

[martian622]

Like the man said - How did we get from “Congress shall pass no law concerning the establishment of religion.” to “The words prayer and amen are forbidden by law.” ?

[silverleaf]

I heard about a school under a similar injunction

The valedictorian, after her closing remarks- “sneezed”

and the entire student body shouted “GOD BLESS YOU!”

[newheart]

“It caused him a great deal of anxiety,”

So this was about making one kid feel a little less anxious. Here is what Antonin Scalia would say about that, from the book How to Write a Sentence by Stanley Fish.

"I found another of my favorite sentences while teaching the last big school-prayer case, Lee v. Weisman (1992). Mr. Weisman brought a cause of action against Nathan Bishop Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island ... because a thoroughly secular prayer had been read at his daughter's graduation. Weisman regarded the prayer as a breach of the First Amendment's prohibition against the state's establishing of a religion. A majority of the Supreme Court justices agreed with him and reasoned that even though the prayer had no sectarian content and made no demands on the students, who were free to ignore it, its very rehearsal was an act of "psychological coercion." This was too much for Justice Scalia, who, after citing a fellow jurist's complaint that establishment clause jurisprudence was becoming so byzantine that it was in danger of becoming a form of interior decorating, got off this zinger:

"Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs." "

[relictele]

Atheists, ironically, are especially susceptible to the result of prayer.

[annelizly]

Have people actually forgotten what “suffer irreparable harm” actually means??

This ruling is a slap in the face to people who have actually been harmed irreparably in this world.

[SpaceBar]

Defy the judge’s order. Let him send Federal Marshals to arrest people in prayer.

[rwfromkansas]

I teach in W. Texas and there was an invocation in Jesus name led by a student to start the graduation last week.

As long as it is student-led, it is constitutional.

This ruling is ridiculous.

[Norm Lenhart]

Be a damn shame if they all showed up with bullhorns and recited the Lord’s Prayer. Damn shame.

Good luck with that court case...er a couple hundred of’em all demanding jury trials for the ‘crime’ ... Your ‘Honor’.

Then have the parents and kids all give interviews across the region to inform the taxpayers just how much that the feds just cost them and ask that they vote accordingly to prevent this from happening again. I really don’t see any other option to wake people up. If they want to pay for thousands of court trials every graduation, every year all across the country, then we are over as a Republic anyway.

[muawiyah]

There can be no doubt the judge has a red arm band with a swastika on it hidden under his bench; and the Schulz's ~ time for them to give up that WWII stuff and join the future.

I have suspicions they've got some dead Jews buried in their lawn.