Hey Dana, are you praying for the right to smell feet and be toilet paper?
How does that kind of prayer go? Dear lord, please let me be toilet paper
"Dana" <yourname@example.com> wrote in message
news:vkvrffg56j1lde@corp.supernews.com...
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/8/282003b.asp
Watchdog Group Warns Schools: Don't Interfere With Students' Right to Pray
By Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
August 28, 2003
(AgapePress) - A Christian legal group is working to ensure that public
school students are not impeded in their prayer activities in connection
with this year's "See You at the Pole--National Day of Student Prayer"
event.
On Wednesday, September 17th, students across America will be united in
spirit for the 14th annual SYATP event. Participants in the grassroots
movement will gather around campus flagpoles before school to pray for
their
schools, friends, teachers, government and country.
Ben Bull, an attorney with the Phoenix, Arizona-based Alliance Defense
Fund,
says his group has mailed a legal analysis to 50 state departments of
education and to several of the nation's largest school districts,
informing
them of the constitutionality of the annual event.
Bull says the right of students to pray and engage in religious expression
has already been settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. The group sent out the
legal analysis to make it clear to administrators that schools will be
held
accountable for abridging students' rights to religious freedom.
"Each year we get dozens of phone calls from students who are told by
school
administrators around the country that students cannot pray as a group
around the flagpole.
Phone calls? Phone calls? Phone calls?
Not letters? I guess not. If they were letters we could ask to produce
them.
Frankly, it's gotten so crazy that we felt this unusual
measure was necessary in order to make sure that schools cannot claim
ignorance, or [claim] that they don't know students have a constitutional
right to pray whenever and wherever they want on school campuses," Bull
says.
According to the attorney, the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly ruled that
students can engage in silent or audible prayer wherever they are allowed
to
be on campus, whether in a cafeteria, a restroom, or standing in front of
a
school flagpole.
Yeah, no one is going to stop them, absolutely.
Now the restroom bit is particularly interesting. "Oh, lord, let me *****
and I will never . . ."
Bull says schools that try to censor SYATP events will face potential
federal litigation, which he says "will result in attorneys' fees,
possible
damages, other sanctions that can be imposed by federal courts." He adds
that those schools' officials "will be embarrassed and shown to be
religious
bigots."
SYATP began more than a decade ago when a group of teenagers from
Burleston,
Texas, decided during a discipleship retreat to go to three schools and
pray
at each campus' flagpole for their friends and fellow students. A few
months
later, over 20,000 teenagers at a 1990 youth rally in Dallas, Texas, were
challenged to organize prayer sessions at their schools, following the
Burleston teens' example. About 45,000 students at 1,200 schools in four
states did so, holding the first organized flagpole prayer event on
September 12, 1990 at 7:00 a.m. The movement went national a year later.
In
2002, more than 2.5 million teenagers met for See You at the Pole in all
50
states.
--
"The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our
rights, and the rights of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the United States
(1801-1809)
.
