Indiana School Not Canceling Graduation Prayer Without Judge Order

AP via FoxNews ^ | 42/2010 | AP

[GregNH]

GREENWOOD, Ind. -- A central Indiana district isn't calling off a planned high school graduation prayer unless a federal judge orders it.

Greenwood School Board president Joe Farley says the district wants the judge to decide the merits of a lawsuit filed by the school's top-ranked senior.

Greenwood High School student Eric Workman is asking a federal judge to stop a student-led prayer that the senior class voted to approve.

The lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on the 18-year-old's behalf claims that the prayer and class vote unconstitutionally subject students to religious practice.

[GregNH]

At least AP didn't cite the "separation of church and state" clause.

[pnh102]

I had posted in a previous thread that the parents should have a private graduation ceremony. But you know what? Screw this! The whims of a single student shouldn't ruin the graduation ceremony for everyone else.

And how hard is it for a person to sit through a 2 minute (at most?) long prayer? Even my infant can do that.

We all know there is something wrong with the student who brought this challenge. Perhaps it is time for us to mock these people for being the insecure weaklings that they are.

[HighWheeler]

Oh, but senior student Eric Workman won’t have a problem when the whole school “idol”izes their quarterback or basketball center during commencement.

[Sacajaweau]

We have to be tolerant of every fag around but folks have trouble being tolerant with any Christian act.

[Arthur McGowan]

When is someone going to have the cojones to defy a judge and just go ahead and say a prayer?

[Tax-chick]

They should hold the prayer anyway. What’s a judge going to do, shut the school down? FReep ‘em.

[tal hajus]

I”m a gay agnostic, and I say let them pray.

[Alberta's Child]

It's been done before -- but it sure didn't get a lot of media attention because it would have exposed much of the Federal judiciary as powerless jack@sses.

The case I'm thinking about was from Alabama or Mississippi some years ago -- and involved a Protestant pastor who had a long-standing tradition of saying a prayer over the stadium's PA system before every home football game.

A student -- backed by the ACLU, of course -- sued to stop the practice, and won. The school filed one appeal and lost, and then the pastor and school district officials decided they couldn't pay the costs of further appeals.

So the pastor announced that he was going to keep saying his prayer before every game, and that the Federal courts could send U.S. marshals down to that stadium on any given Saturday morning to arrest him if they wanted to.

As far as I know, he's still doing it.

[GregNH]

The problem with defying the order is that the A**holeC*****kingLiberalUnderbellies will file a suit demamnding millions for the violation of the student's cilvil rights.

[Tax-chick]

People have to overcome fear at some point, or accept that they’re slaves. Citizens have to rise up and tell their school systems not to be craven ... or they have to get their kids out of the government’s maw. If total privatization of education is what it takes, then so be it.

[bjorn14]

Yeah, I think that’s a valid point...the minute people hear ACLU lawsuit they back down...if we made the ACLU fight every lawsuit tooth and nail they would have scarcer resouces to do this in every friggin’ town in Amerika.

[wintertime]

Of course the solution to all of these endless citizen fights over government school policies is to have complete separation of school and state. Close down the government schools!
Let's examine the two possible decisions that a government school worker can make, and hopefully conservatives will see that a religiously neutral position is impossible:

1) The government school could allow school prayer. Well...Any government powerful enough to allow Christian prayer at a government graduation is also powerful enough to allow Muslim or Wiccan prayer. It might even allow equal amount of time for the atheist to expound on the nonexistence of God. Would any thinking conservative be surprised if this happens?

2) It can forbid school prayer. This isn't religiously neutral either because it teaches the students that religion is so controversial ( or shameful) that it must be hidden away from polite society as if it were a bathroom activity. This is hardly religiously neutral either.

Fundamentally, prayer at graduation is merely one example among thousands in which government schools must make a binary decision. One group of citizens has their First Amendment Rights trashed and the other has government using tax dollars to establish their religiously non-neutral worldview.

Axiom: It is impossible to have a religiously neutral education. It is impossible to have a religiously neutral government education. ALL government schools promote and establish the religious worldviews of some citizens and trash those of others.

[Nuc1]

A Federal Judge doesn’t the Constitutional authority to stop a school prayer.

[Tax-chick]

if we made the ACLU fight every lawsuit tooth and nail they would have scarcer resouces to do this in every friggin’ town in Amerika.

Yes, and if more citizens became aware that it's costing them personally, at the municipal/school system level, public opinion would turn against the ACLU in a major way.

Then there's the tack mentioned in a post above - don't bother to fight the lawsuit, just ignore them and dare the government to stop you with guns. A few headlines of "Football coaches jailed for leading prayer before state championship game" would get the sports-fans' attention.

[Arthur McGowan]

Oh, I know.

If people want their freedom, they are going to have to get used to doing two things:

Defying unjust laws and unjust judges.

Going to JAIL rather than respond to ACLU lawsuits.

[Arthur McGowan]

Exactly.

And that’s how abortion COULD have been ended after Roe v. Wade, except that not one of the fifty governors has had the cojones to exercise his duty to protect babies from murder.