21 thoughts on “Paging The Establishment Clause

  1. A little bit misleading, you have to admit, Mitch. Schools aren’t banned from providing space for students to pray. They’re banned from leading the prayer. Are school officials leading the prayers?

  2. I wonder if the militant Atheists from Madison Wisconsin have their emergency response van warmed up and are flying up I-94 right now.

    Fun fact. So how did the establishment clause come to mean that religion in America needs to be surpressed? KKK member and vicious anti-Catholic bigot Hugo Black. While on the supreme court, he wrote the rulings as a way to attack Catholics. As we always say, there is very little difference between the far right and far left.

  3. “Minnesota district restores prayer to public school — but only for Muslim students”
    Click bait.

    Although I must say, the comments in that link are hilarious.

  4. Schools aren’t banned from providing space for students to pray.

    I might check that, Bob. I don’t believe a school will provide space for Christian groups; “taxpayer-paid resources violating the First Amendment” and all.

    Anyone?

  5. Wow, Bob Collins posted. I wonder if he knows the Bob Collins who writes for MPR? Because he might be interested in this article from last Fall in which Supreme Court precedent was discussed that held schools are not banned from leading prayer, they are banned from providing a space to pray because it would look like an endorsement of a particular religion over others.

    http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2015/10/football-coach-put-on-leave-for-on-field-praying/

  6. Wrongo Mitch; lots of public schools have Christian groups which include prayer.

    The ONLY requisite is, as Bob Collins noted, that they do not have staff of any kind who represent the school leading the prayers (and then only during school hours and school-wide activities). The reason is to avoid school employees in positions of authority promoting or appearing to promote one religion over another to students.

    Bob Collins has it right.

    This is well publicized and well documented. Why are you trying to promote unfounded bigotry by playing the conservative and evangelical victim cards without any justification? One more example of the right wing war on public education, trying to dumb down America.

    Conservatives are such whiners – and so often wrong. Shame on you.

  7. Not sure I would rely on the extract for factual reporting Mitch; don’t you remember the premise of multi-sourcing and original sources for credible reporting or commentary? You know – where you confirm something is true, not just bullshit, before claiming a problem exists.

    Here is a challenge – why don’t you call a random number of school districts and ask them what their policies are on religious accommodation, including prayer space for Christians. Then please, do ask if there have been any requests for such use and space, and what resulted — for example did a group start up and then fizzle out, for lack of interest, etc.

    And before you leap to call on the establishment clause…………I saw nowhere that any school employees were leading the Muslim religious activities in prayer or anything else. So, it would appear that the same rules are being applied as to Christian prayer led by employees representing the school authority.

    As to meals? Really? Is this a problem? I know of kids who have allergies who get special meal consideration, and I grew up with fish on Fridays in the cafeteria, because of the Catholic custom of the time of not eating meat on Fridays. Seems to me we have always had schools adapt to their students. I would expect schools to do so based on the students they have, not one size fits all. Schools are supposed to serve their students; what advantage is there in not serving a significant group of students? Would you rather they not eat the cafeteria provided lunch? Who does that benefit other than making bigots feel better about sticking it to a group they deem outsiders?

  8. Not sure I would rely on the extract for factual reporting Mitch; don’t you remember the premise of multi-sourcing and original sources for credible reporting or commentary?

    DG,

    Given your history in this comment section, you’re the absolute, geometric last person in the universe to jabber about that.

    Seriously.

  9. I wonder which Bob Collins is the “has it right” Bob Collins? That’s my punishment, I suppose, for trying to make sense of the overinflated ego and word count that is Dog Gone, Queen of the Vapid.

  10. Perhaps a moot point, as Christians do not require prayer rugs and an indication of the direction of Mecca (OK, Jerusalem) to pray, but I would dare suggest that if a school district were to devote space to Christian prayer, the ACLU would indeed be all over it. You would have headline after headline decrying the fact that public funds are being used for a chapel.

    And that is exactly what is, in effect, happening in St. Cloud, according to the NPR article. More or less, we’ve got a Constitution and religious freedom that works very well with most sects of Christianity and Judiasm, and arguably pretty well with Buddhism, Hinduism, and most native American religions.

    Islam, not so much. Maybe we should do some thinking before accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the wars that the various kinds of Islamists are waging on each other and the world.

  11. My Google-Fu must be weak today. Dog Gone confidently assured Mitch there are lots of public schools have Christian groups which include prayer. She’s making an equivalence argument so presumably, those Christian groups also enjoy special school-provided rooms for this purpose, since Muslim prayer rooms are under discussion.

    Except, oddly, I can’t find any mention of them on the internet. I found articles about schools wanting to ban student-led prayer on school grounds in the Meet At The Flagpole mess. I found Matthew Stark’s ACLE leading the charge to kick Student Life out of Anoka County schools. I can’t find a single instance of a Minnesota public school giving Christian (or Jewish) students the equivalent accommodations they are giving Muslim students.

    Can somebody help me out? Link me to the websites or news articles that show Dog Gone is correct?

  12. Wow. Listen to those moonbats bark. I think you found a sensitive area here Mitch. The idea, after all these reprobates have done to purge religion from the public square, schools most especially, they would have the unmitigated gall to suggest otherwise is beyond comprehension.

    Here, you slogs;
    http://houston.cbslocal.com/2014/02/05/high-school-teacher-forced-to-remove-religious-poster-from-classroom/

    And here;
    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/09/11/football-team-forced-to-remove-christian-crosses-from-helmets.html

    And here;
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2356375/Student-working-college-orientation-told-remove-cross-necklace-offend-incoming-freshmen.html

    And here;

    http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/university-of-michigan-kicks-christian-club-off-campus.html

    And hundreds more like that. You people can dip one another in bullshit, but don’t expect common sense adults to stand for it. Take your offensive lies and be gone.

  13. And speaking of reprobates, it’s nice to see Emery sticking with single sentence, simple minded comments of his own. Perhaps he has been cured of his penchant for claiming the thoughts of his betters as his own.

  14. If you read the original PBS article, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-one-minnesota-school-district-handles-a-rising-immigrant-population/,
    it is clear that the school district is devoting more resources on Muslim students than they are on non-Muslim students. Sure looks like religious discrimination to me.
    Since the extra accommodations are the result of lawsuits by Muslim activists, I don’t expect that if Father Flanagan showed up at the district office and asked for a separate prayer space for his students, the request would be granted.

  15. So Doggone’s mother Thetis dipped her as a baby in the manure lagoon Styx and thus her heel might be suspect to telling the truth, Swiftee?

    We can only hope!

    As far as I can tell, many schools are allowing Christian student clubs to operate for now, but increasingly they’re trying to implement requirements that they allow just anyone to be in membership and/or leadership, as in Swiftee’s U. of Michigan example demonstrates.

    I would hazard a guess that diversity offices are not telling Muslim groups that they need to admit members/leaders who come in with a flask of Jim Beam and a BLT, to put it mildly.

  16. we should alert these folks to see how the discussion turns
    the freedom from religion foundation
    http://ffrf.org/faq/state-church/item/14028-release-time-for-religious-activities

    “Public schools may release students during school hours to participate in private religious activities with parental consent. In McCollum v. Board of Education, the Court found a release time program that was supported by public funds, held during school hours, and on school grounds violated the First Amendment”

  17. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 03.29.2016 : The Other McCain

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