Atheist student harassed for asking school obey state laws.

Just thought I'd let you guys know... the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower courts' decision.

Note, the lower courts' decision involved forbidding students from asking people to join together in prayer. And that's the part that was reversed...

Odd...they don't give their reasoning on the ruling.

Hard to make a judgement if there isn't one.

How would you go about enforcing that...and what's the punishment?

Separation of church and state aside, a kid spending time in a juvenile detention facility because they asked other students to pray with them has GOT to look silly on paper.

Well, that's disappointing.

Not that I wanted students to get jailed for praying, but it would have been nice to have something agree that public prayer at a non-religious event is inappropriate.

And I love how Judge Biery's statement kind of almost hilariously misses the point, hard.

I believe you have parsed that wrong.

The problem is with an official prayer at a government event.

In regards to the decision in Texas, the key difference is the student doing it, not the school official.

The entire situation regarded students. The problem was the school knew the students were planning it(because it's tradition) and the agnostic(or athiest) student and family objected.

The District Court said "no, because the school knows you are planning on doing this, you can't." The Appeals court says "As long as a teacher/school employee isn't saying the prayer, it's all good."

Ahem, the original situation in Louisiana involved a speaker selected by the school.

Exactly. Sounds like a technicality that misses the spirit of the family's protest with the letter of it that still allows the problem.

Especially with that last comment. Uh, hello, judge, sir? The entire point of agnostic beliefs is that you don't pray at all, because there's nothing to pray to. Moron.

edited 3rd Jun '11 5:38:48 PM by Jeysie

Eh, no. It was a student who went up and said the prayer. The actual speaker then took over after the student was done.

edited 3rd Jun '11 5:39:47 PM by Usht

...I have things to pray to even though I'm agnostic. Then again I am a weird agnostic theist who likes Guanyin and praying to dead guys so hmm.

You're misinterpreting events. The original schedule at the Louisiana school DID have a prayer scheduled, with a person selected by school officials. That was what was the atheist student objected to the superintendent about, and lead to it being removed from the event.

The actions of the student speakers at the graduation in reaction to that are a whole different business on their own.

edited 3rd Jun '11 5:49:05 PM by blueharp

Yeah, so a student did the prayer (in addition to the pledge of allegiance) but was not selected by the school to do the prayer. Pretty sure that's what I said.

Except for missing the part about the original speaker being selected by a school official, and not even a student.

Awesome, so you stated what was originally supposed to happen and I mentioned what did happen. Happy?

Well, I certainly hope you understand what I was saying now.

In the Texas case, it seems the school did remove from the official schedule bits about an Invocation and Benediction, so perhaps they had something of the same problem, but there was an issue with a judge telling a student what they could say, which the appeals court overruled.

Looks that way to me anyway.

Umm... This says otherwise. It says the original speaker of the prayer(in the Louisiana school) was supposed to be a student, and after being told she couldn't, she did it anyway.

edited 3rd Jun '11 6:00:23 PM by Swish

Well, I saw it elsewhere that they had a minister selected for a prayer.

I'll see if I can dig up the link.

There we go:

On May 17, a graduating senior sent an e-mail to school officials stating, as an atheist, that he objected to prayer being included in the ceremony. Morehouse Parish School System attorney Steve Katz told school officials that case law supported the student’s objection, and the prayer - to be delivered by a local pastor - was removed from the program. It was replaced by what was to have been a moment of silence.

What the student speaker was originally scheduled to say or do, I can't say, but that was what I was talking about, a non-student speaker with a religious agenda.

edited 3rd Jun '11 6:19:35 PM by blueharp

Thread Hop: I think both parties are at fault here. The people harassing the kid, and the kid himself for pulling what I view to be a dick move. Sure, he may have been offended by a prayer at the ceremony, but a lot of people there would have appreciated the prayer, and to be honest it isn't that hard to bow your head and think of tits for the duration of it.

Sure, maybe the school was in the wrong to begin with by adding it, but truth be told a simple damn prayer at a graduation ceremony isn't anything to get all offended over. And the people harassing the kids, well they are just assholes.

Way I see it, all parties involved are to blame in some form. The school for ignoring the law, the people for harassing him, and the kid for making a fuss over something irrelevant.

It's not just a single prayer at a single graduation ceremony.

It's one at hundreds, if not thousands.

But I think we went over all this already.

Oh, well my bad. Like I said, thread hop, I was just saying my piece.