Nice theory, but 9/11 and George W. Bush and the Evangelists have changed everything.
Think we can freely exercise our religious beliefs? Think we can say or refuse to say anything according to our consciences? Think we don’t have an official religious view? Not in Florida. The Florida constitution requires a “so help me God” oath of office – the Federal constitution forbids it. Florida’s constitution gives gratitude to Almighty God for constitutional liberty rather than to the consent of the governed. If you must be a monotheist, if you must say so in public, then where is our freedom?
Florida law and Palm Beach County laws require students to stand up for the pledge and recite the new Credo of our State Religion; that we are a Nation under God. They may not refuse and so our liberty ebbs silently away like the tide.
65% of respondents to a Palm Beach Post poll agree that students should be forced to stand and recite. Floridians like a God who agrees with their smug self-righteousness and they like a God who doesn’t much care for freedom.
Cameron Frazier, a young man who considers himself a patriot and who believes in supporting our troops and helping victims of disasters, was threatened, publicly humiliated and forced to leave his classroom when he exercised his constitutional rights and obeyed his conscience by refusing to stand up and parrot President Dwight Eisenhower’s religious maxim at the insistence of his teacher last December 8th.
"Oh you wanna bet? See your desk? Now look at mine. Big desk, little desk. You obviously don't know your place in this classroom." Said the irate petty tyrant with patent disregard for everything America was supposed to stand for. Frazier said the teacher cursed at him and accused him of being unpatriotic before ordering him to leave the classroom.
I would have left with him. In my day everyone would have got up and left But this is not my day, it is the day of Christian wrath and this a country where no one cares and no one will stand up for freedom and justice and the constitution but the ACLU, who is representing him in a Federal suit against the School District and Boynton Beach High School teacher/preacher Cynthia Alexandre.
James K. Green, an ACLU attorney in West Palm Beach involved in the lawsuit said:
“If you're being forced to stand while the Pledge of Allegiance is being spoken, the school board is in effect forcing a certain orthodoxy that the First Amendment doesn't allow."Frazier may well win his case, but the Evangelist States of America under God will roll on and roll over us all unless we start to care about what is happening.
6 comments:
If this keeps up, I will homeschool my future children.
A lot of people around here do that and a lot of them send their kids to private schools, but of course the fact that Florida ranks something like 48th in educational standards may just be a factor.
Might as well put Intelligent Design in the textbooks if the kids can't read anyway.
That is why my son goes to a public school in Virginia (which is 13th) much to my mother's dismay. She is always telling me how good (coughwhitecough) the schools in Clay County Florida are. There are no jobs for college graduates in Northern Florida unless you are a doctor, nurse or lawyer. Why should work at a job that only pays $15/hour when I can make $38/hour in Virginia?
May well win his case? Will win the case. Florida, I guess all that freedom on march marched right by Florida.
I agree, but I wonder if soon enough, we'll see children home schooled because parents don't want them getting Sunday School stories in public school!
Many here really only credit the Book of Revelation, which probably would have given Jesus conniption fits. That book was added to the Roman canon rather late and really has no connection that I'm aware of, with Jesus or his disciples.
I don't think God comes off very well in it.
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