Do you even know which human being put this mural up? Do you have any reason to believe they were acting as a representative of the US government?
Really. You interviewed him? You know the origin of the painting & prayer?
It was the school officials that made the banner, endorsed it as the official school prayer, and hung it up. School officials in public schools count as representatives of the US government while they are doing their job.
AlexBP said:
Public schools are generally run by local governments, and the First Amendment of the Constitution acts to restrict only Congress, not local governments.
And the 14th amendment brings those protections down to the state and local level. It's why state governments can't make you a slave, restrict your right to free speech, or endorse a religion anymore than the federal government can.
My, my. Touched a nerve, did we?
No, sometimes I use expletives a lot when I talk. Doesn't mean anything more than I have a dirty mouth.
It'll be all right, honest. Nobody ever dropped dead from being exposed to Christianity---it's not like high doses of radiation, or the Maralinga strain of Ebola Zaire.
Tell that to the victims of the Crusades and Inquisition, or the "witches" that are still being killed to this day.
So if they added more murals in RI?
Like I said before, if they had a examples of prayers from various different religions in relations to a social studies class that would be perfectly fine. There's a huge difference between that and endorsing a Christian prayer as the official school prayer. This isn't a private religious school; it's a public school.
Fine. There's a mural including Moses inside chambers, and a relief on the doors.
As an example of early lawgivers. He is not endorsed as the official prophet of the US in anyway.
All people do. The Constitution does not prohibit the free exercise of religion. The SC has curtailed that free exercise, but it's written into the Constitution.
Yes people, not the government. It's why the government can't label you a heretic for following the wrong flavor of Christianity.
The absence of religious speech is equally a statement about religious speech.
Before now, I said absolutely nothing about stamps, quarks, Charlie Brown, chocolate, kitties etc in this thread. Pray tell, what statement does that make about all those things plus all the other stuff I did not mention? Be as specific as you can for each and every item I haven't mentioned in this thread.
Its absence in school is the problem. In fact to me it constitutes a conscience problem as to why I'm funding the state suppression of religious speech......
Secularization is suppression, just as surely as dictation of a religion.
Your religion not being pandered to and given special treatment in no way suppresses it.
Since lots of people here seem to think this is a matter of freedom of speech, I wonder if anybody would defend the banner if it was satanic.
Exactly. I'd be willing to bet that the vocal defendants of this school officially endorsing Christianity would be either silent, or on our side if they were endorsing Satanism or Islam or any other religion besides their own.
Apparently it has been acceptable for 99.9% of our Nation's history. You know, all that time we were a great Nation, instead of a pitiful pool of red ink?
Slavery, genocide, and open racial and sexual discrimination were also acceptable for a good chunk of our history. Should we bring those back as well?
And all those crosses in Arlington National Cemetary.....simply disgraceful. Have to replace them all with hammers and sickles, I guess.
United States Department of Veterans Affairs emblems for headstones and markers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That isn't forced on everyone buried there. It's by the choice of the person who is being buried as relayed by their will or close family that would know what they wanted. You can have a cross, or a Muslim moon and star, or an Atheist symbol, or a humanist symbol etc.
Read the banner again. Do you see any reference---any at all, to Christ or Christianity?
Yes, "Our Heavenly Father" and "Amen". At worst it's Christian exclusively, at best it's inclusive of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But considering the majority of American's are Christian, including presumably the people who decided to endorse this as the official school prayer, it's pretty foolish to think they meant anything besides the Christian god.
What it does have is an address to "Our Heavenly Father", but for all you know, the heavenly father in question might be Zeus, or Odin, or Anubis; the banner istself does not specify which deity it's addressing.
No if it meant me it would be All-Father. Google "heavenly father", it's not a coincidence that all the links are Christian in nature.
