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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 12649
[Schools/Ed]
Date Posted:
4/11/2005
7:35:19 am EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 16,418
RSS: 7,877
Comments: 12
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Suit Against Prayer Spurs Backlash
Author: Sean O'Sullivan Source: The News Journal (DE)
Title: SUIT AGAINST PRAYER SPURS BACKLASH
  At the corner of Church and West Church streets, Oliver Hitchens, 72, paused as he considered what place prayer has in public schools.
"I'm for religion in schools," he said with thoughtful conviction. "That is the way I was raised. Keep it in."
Many people in Hitchens' community appear to agree, rallying behind the local school district accused in a federal lawsuit of violating a Jewish family's right to be free from state-sponsored religion, in this case, Christianity.
Hitchens, like others in the Indian River School District, believes the central issue is not the Jewish family's right to be free from Christian prayers. They believe it is about the right of Christian students to pray where and when they want.
"I just don't think they should be so narrow-minded," Hitchens said.
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Community Thoughts: There are 12 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Local Values | Apr 11th. at 7:22:14 pm EDT
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me - Web
This area of the Eastern Shores of VA, MD, and DE is heavily populated by farmers, who collectively by overly dense land use and feeding antibiotics to stock have invaded the larger regional multistate watershed with Piscicida physteria and other serious microbiological problems. There are also a lot of "watermen", from a dying fishing industry.
That infestation apparently doesn't lead to very high awareness of core Constitutional principles, any more than respect for the environment, or neighbors and their rights.
It was only as recently as 1868 the 14th Amendment was ratified. Perhaps it's too soon to think such law should be enforced yet in 2005, as after all, some people need more than a century or two to adapt. Who cares about that old saw, "justice delayed is justice denied"?
While the 1st Amendment always banned Federal establishment of or burden on free exercise of religion, that used to be restricted to Congress alone. After all, most early states were theocracies, and the Anglicans and Congregationalists would never have joined the country had one been allowed to force religion on the other. It took a Civil War for the Bill of Rights to be Federalized inside states, and to make state established or sponsored religion illegal.
Apparently the locals in Southern Delaware just don't get a couple of things.
They're party to a legal agreement called the US Constitution. As amended in 1868, it says they agree not to use public schools or local government to impose a thousand people's arrogant and obnoxious hate cult dogma on one person, any more than that one person can require them to dance naked around bonfires from dusk to dawn.
They might try instead to focus on cleaning up fecal effluent and their own drug tampering aggravating it, that's damaged a major ecosystem. After all, acting like responsible and aware adults has far broader consequences in role models kids see than just avoiding hate cult abuses of nasty bible thumpers.
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| Backwards Logic Again . . . | Apr 11th. at 2:48:00 pm EDT
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Tim Grimalkin (Sandy, Utah) - Email Me
What we see here is again the tryanny of a minority who can abuse the rights of the majority. Similar to the disgusting attitude of Rachel Bauchman (sic) , a Jewish West High School student in Salt Lake City, who in the 1990s cast a pall over the graduation ceremony of an entire class which she wasn't even a member of simply because she and her vitriolic, attorney father decided they wanted to slam the local folks.
These people care nothing for the law except for when it benefits them in their continued assault on values they don't appreciate and are militantly hostile towards.
The First Ammendment WAS NOT written to keep religion out of the government, nor to keep people of a certain faith from influencing the government, but rather to keep religion safe from potential TYRANNY of the government by instituting a state sponsored religion. This is a truth continuously glossed over by the anti-religion left. They expect tolerance and grant none of it themselves. One individual DOES NOT have the right to ruin a way of life that the rest find comfort in.
In these attempts to fire up hostility by the left is the underlying force of repucussion which will only produce more hostility to the opposite. Middle America will not tolerate such actions without a fight. Who can blame them?!
I applaud they who oppose this assault on their lifestyle.
Blessed Be,
Tim G.
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| Nothing New. | Apr 11th. at 1:00:03 pm EDT
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Alpha Kilo (St Petersburg, Florida) - Email Me
Well, part of the problem stems from the fact that christians feel it is their duty to bring all those 'lost' souls back to where they belong-which is christianity. Those of us who are not convertable are eventually looked at as demon posessed and going to hell. They feel subjecting us to their prayers will give some of us a chance to see the light. We know they are wrong, but it is how they believe and if you're not with them, then you have to be against them. Sad, but reality. The only hope we have is to keep our judicial system as non biased as possible.
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| Fundies Are The Christian Taliban | Apr 11th. at 12:53:04 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
They're in the majority and whining about the fact that ONE single family spoke up, rather politely, I might add, not to be included in their prayers? Talk about insecurity and churlishness! I'm glad they were able to move, although I am sorry they had to for the sake of their children. I know from private experience in grade and high school, that the moment they find anything different to zero in on someone either physical or ideological, that person's life becomes a living hell worthy of a concentration camp. So I can imagine what they made of a Jewish person in their midst. Worse, they had the official sanction of the adults in this which only gave sanction to that evil. What we are seeing, is what is likely to happen to EVERYONE that doesn't hold to the correct Religipolitical line. And you can bet that this behavior is reinforced by the ridiculous myth that because "we are poor little christians and its our rights that are being threatened".
In their own way, they have become a Christian Taliban.
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| They Don't Get It | Apr 11th. at 10:43:15 am EDT
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Sphinxring (Olympia, Washington) - Email Me
The statement about how they would have done a Jewish prayer if they knew they felt that way is key to understanding the situation.
Maybe they'd have done an generic prayer, or something like that. The question for me is would they allowed an pagan invocation?
Probably not!
Sometimes it's tempting to consider feeding people like these some of their own medicine dissing their religion! See if they like being told they worship evil, drink blood and eat human flesh in secret ceremonies etc. The problem of course is you'd have to belive that. Not to mention getting death threats!
The typical pattern with these types is public shunning and anonymous and deniable death threats. Complaining to police usually will find a bunch of Christian cops who don't see why you want to upset people. So of course you have to either hide, move, or call in the big guns and make it so public that they have to change.
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| This Is Why I Choose To Homeschool In Delaware | Apr 11th. at 8:45:39 am EDT
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Wendy Hawksley (Osan AB, Delaware) - Email Me - Web
I grew up in Massachusetts. We are old New Englanders and one of the things you find plenty of up there is tolerance. Yes, there are fundamentalists and evangelicals everywhere. But I have always felt that New England - even the "backwater", tiny, rural parts of it - is a good place for Witches and other Pagans to live.
As a child, I never had trouble because of my Pagan beliefs. Probably because I grew up believing them so strongly.
As a teenager, it set me apart because teenagers are naturally exclusive; but still I have other friends who shared in the study of Paganism and Magick with me. Never did I waiver from the beliefs my father helped me to develop.
When I married a Christian man, I went to his church to see what it was like and learned about what their beliefs meant; but I still was me and nothing in society has ever caused me to feel the need to change that.
When we moved in Delaware in '99, there was a definite void for me. Pagans here tend to be much more quiet, and I can see why.
Though we made great strides by holding the first Pagan Pride Day in 2002 in Dover, I still don't trust the schools not to treat my child badly because he comes from an interfaith background; I don't trust the teachers to NOT try to teach him about Christianity.
Prayer and religious teaching is the responsibiltiy of the family. When the schools and people working in the schools try to press prayer and religion upon the children, they overstep their limits.
This is only one of the reasons we have chosen to homeschool, although the one of greatest importance to us is the opportunity to teach our son, not what to think, but HOW to think for himself.
For someone to say that a family should move if they don't like the way a school is run is vindictive. No one is trying to tell the Christian community that they should not believe what they believe. Rather, they are trying to make sure that public gatherings are secular and non-offensive.
This issue has been going on in Indian River for quite some time now, and I am curious to see how it ends. The statement by the book store owner about Christians "making a stand" is quite telling. Christians seem to feel like THEY are the ones being persecuted and punished.
Can't they see that they made other people feel the same way? It really is time to stop this and just keep religion where it belongs - in churches, temples, and homes, and get it OUT of the schools, government, and other public arenas.
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| Public Sector | Apr 11th. at 8:12:52 am EDT
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Ahr-Ohn (Bridgeport, Connecticut) - Email Me
"Because she spoke up, Dobrich said, her family was persecuted and sometimes threatened. "Everything changed, " she said. Friends were suddenly cold to her and her family, sometimes refusing to make eye contact in public. "
The Public Sector should not be involved in whichever Gods or Prophets you heed; neither should it be involved in whose pleasure you satisfy.
"People who live here feel safe, far away from the dangers of the world. When Hitchens stopped to talk at the post office, he left his pickup truck windows down and the engine running.
The environment exists, many residents said, because of the presence of God in the schools. "These kids need it, " said Lori Catalon, 42, of Selbyville. "
If a village raises a child, does this authority come of The State, or The Parents?
Arawn
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