ACLU To Sue Jonesboro High School Over Prayer at Graduation
Posted on November 23, 2005
Update: Now World Net Daily Picking up on the story.
KAIT
In May of this year, a Jonesboro student gave a prayer during a high school graduation ceremony at the Arkansas State University Convocation Center. During the prayer, which lasted four minutes, she gave an “altar call” to the community, asking those in the audience to come forward to accept Jesus Christ.“In the closing moments of this service, if you would like to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, here’s your chance,” said senior Jessica Reed in a May 20, 2005 taped video of JHS graduation ceremonies.
“We were contacted sometime after that by the American Civil Liberties Union that they felt like there had been a violation of the First Amendment, separation of church and state with regard to a prayer,” said Jonesboro Public Schools Attorney Donn Mixon.
And now the ACLU is looking for a plaintiff in a case against Jonesboro High School. In a letter written by the Arkansas ACLU executive director Rita Sklar, the event is described as a “blatant display of contempt for the First Amendment.”
Notice that no one came out and said they were offended? They are looking for someone to come out and say they were offended. They are shopping for a plaintiff, to further their agenda of censorship. This school did not endorse this student’s prayer, they just didn’t censor it. What seems to be the common argument among the left is that if a certain religion, most often Christianity, is not censored at a government sponsored event, then it is automatically endorsed. I guess they expect the school to police the student’s thoughts.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Church And State, News
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11 Responses to “ACLU To Sue Jonesboro High School Over Prayer at Graduation”
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Syndicate Me
In 1945 the public school systems in the United States distributed a songbook called “I Hear America Singing” with a compendium of what was at the time considered as our cultural literacy. It included several hymns, including two for Thanksgiving — Thanksgiving Hymn and Thanksgiving Prayer
At our high school graduation, we were told we weren’t allowed to sing a song that had been sung at every graduation for 23 years because it had “Lord” in it’s verses. Needless to say we all decided to scrap our substitute song and convinced the band to go along with it. Our directors got chewed out, but they couldn’t do anything to us. A full band and a chorus of 50 can’t be muted when they want to be heard.
I hope they can’t find any plantiffs. That would at least make them look worse. I can’t imagine that the Arkansas ACLU has much support in the first place…
Happy Thanksgiving!
Someone really needs to sue the ACLU for being offensive to them and their beliefs. I don’t think
anyone would have a hard time finding someone for that
So the ACLU is fishing for a plantiff? How asinine, laughable and telling is that!
Here’s a plaintiff the ACLU won’t take. Whoever wants to sue the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority for setting aside “prayer spaces” at Giants Stadium and Continental Arena for Muslims…read about it here
corrected the link to above
As much as talk of Jesus Christ and salvation is equivalent to something between science fiction and baby babble, I don’t think the school should be sued. If I were in the audience I would have ignored her or laughed at her, just as I would have an idiot jabbering on about a particular kind of music or how his love of football carried him through to graduation. Hell, you have to expect a certain amount of token proselytizing in a bumpkin town in rural Georgia; at least no blacks, Jews or gays were lynched.
Sometimes the does ACLU does go overboard, but if Christians would quit their tireless agitating and pleading for special rights, it wouldn’t be necessary. But Christians will continue with their wayward hatemongering and the ACLU will remain an extraordinarily powerful and much-needed foil to the machinations of the godly.
Excuse me Sinistere, I appreciate your objectivity, but what special rights are Christians asking for? The Constitution protects our rights to pray publicly no matter what our office. There is no right not to be offended in our Constitution. The establishment clause only prevents the government from making Christianity law. Period. Even a government official has the right to pray in Jesus’ name wherever he/she want, and there is nothing in the Constitution to prohibit that. No one is forced to pray WITH them, only that they TOLERATE it. Funny now libs scream tolerance isn’t it? No one loses their religious freedom simply because of the office or job they take. The rights Christians are pushing for are already written and established, which is why prayer during graduation is being abolished. IT IS ALREADY LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL.
All we hear about today is “what the intent was of the Founding Fathers”…Well, take a look at this and then tell the ACLU to move norht…way north..!
link didn’t take, so here it is again…
http://www.errantskeptics.org/
I don’t see how anything you are accusing us of is bad, seeing as how it was Franklin, Paine, (who was not a Christian) and Jefferson who pushed for education to preach science as a theology, and the “necessity of teaching a public religion, and the excellancy of Christianity above all others.” But being a communist heathen, I don’t expect you to acknowledge this.