Now that explains it... a member of the ACLU. You guys make me
sick. Trying to take a way my rights of religous freedom. I'm not
going to waste any more of my time on this subject, but suffice it
to say you guys are wolves in sheeps clothing.
Dave
The ONLY thing that the ALCU fights for is when some someone's
rights have been threatened by someone else. They don't fight to
take away ANYBODY's rights.
You say that before the ACLU, your kids could pray in school. Who
exactly is stopping them now? There isn't a single law to be found
that actually disallows an individual to pray in school if they
want to. If little Johnny wants to say a prayer before his math
test, he can still do that.
The only thing that's changed is that now, the teacher doesn't lead
the whole class in that prayer.
The fact that this used to happen once upon a time doesn't mean it
was right. Even slavery was perfectly legal at one point, but that
didn't mean it was right.
The 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution starts off: "Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
This is very clearly intended to prevent the government from
favoring ANY particular form of religion over any other. You're
right that it doesn't actually say "separation of church and
state". But you're ignoring the fact that such separation is the
only way to actually accomplish what it does say.
There was a time when we DID have teachers leading the kids in
prayer in public school. And it wasn't as simple as "Prayer Time,
kids!" either. The teachers actually read the prayer out loud for
the kids to repeat.
Insofar as these prayer's were always essentially Christian in
nature, tell me how that doesn't amount to the government endorsing
the Christian faith?
Tell me how it doesn't violate the religious freedom of the Jewish
& Muslim kids in the class to be led in a Christian prayer by their
teacher? Or the Hindu kids. Or the Buddists?
You can bet your sweet bippy that if a teacher had tried to lead
the kids in a Muslim prayer back in those days, the parents of the
rest of those kids would have raised bloody h*ll.
Instead, the reverse actually happened. Someone who didn't like
that daily Christian prayer in their kid's school decided it
interfered with THEIR Constitutionally-granted freedom of religion.
But you see, this person wasn't rich. They couldn't afford to wage
a big legal battle on their own. FORTUNATELY, the ACLU was around
to help. Their mission is simply to make sure that such people
don't have to simply accept having their rights trampled.
Clearly, the only way that the government can avoid endorsing any
particular religion, regardless of how informal or how non-absolute
such endorsement might be, is if the goverment avoids sponsoring
ANY religous activity at all. There is no other logical conclusion.
Mike
