Illinois’ Moment of Silence is Back

I may be wrong on this, but I am pretty sure that any mandatory moment of silence is unconstitutional. It may be the teacher’s choice, but once the teacher follows, the student has to follow. If this law gets passed, then I am sure it will be ruled unconstitutional as well.

Seriously, there has to be better things to do.

Too bad that religionists can’t be required to pay for the costly litigation that will be needed to get this one declared unconstitutional, as it surely will be. Otherwise tax payers have to waste more public funds on such craziness. It costs a lot in attorneys’ fees to take a case all the way through the appeals process.

Is there a name for laws that serve no other purpose than to provide cover for unconstitutional activity?

Yup.

cl, students already have ample opportunity to pray themselves silly if they want to. Why should a school put aside time for such a thing? Why not a mandatory moment of calisthenics? This would actually serve a purpose and is not sneaking prayer in under the radar. And that is all this is, a way for the religious to get their foot in the door and slowly increment their way up to a mandatory moment of speaking in tongues.

Why is this unconstitutional in Illinois, but not in Texas where we have to endure a wasteful moment of silence in school every morning?

I don’t know, I think this is great. If there is one reason Illinois and their politics has been in the news lately, its this particular issue. Right? This is what we were on The View and David Letterman and all that? I know I can’t think of any other issues that Illinois politicians should be focusing on…

WTF!?

Regardless of constitutionality, this is a waste of time. Humans are limited to a short life span, and time for us is finite. Let’s prioritize.

They had a “moment of silence” when I was in high school in Indiana (Class of 2008). I would refuse to stand up for it out of protest and was threatened many times with detention or suspension for it.

Hi CL.

I think he was saying that the previous law was forced prayer, because it forced the kids to all be silent while the teacher told them about prayer and then led them… silently… in a moment of (wink-wink) prayer or if you want to get beat up after school, you could conversely just be quiet.

While I won’t call it forced prayer, because I don’t believe anyone can actually force someone to pray… even with a hot poker or the rack. While one can torture someone into speaking the words of a prayer, I don’t think that would fit my description of a prayer.

So, I won’t be saying this is forced prayer. Forcing children to be silent while others pray silently while led by their teacher isn’t forced prayer. It’s completely ridonculous, and i’d have my child scream at the top of her lungs during each daily ritual, but I think the post is about this being a nose under the camel’s tent. Wait. I think I got that wrong. Anyway.

However, I do think it is non-neutral toward religion. I think it *encourages* prayer. The fact that it could also be used for silent atheist meditation does not negate that it sends the message that this is “PRAYER TIME… or whatever else you want to mumble mumble mumble do.”

I think it encourages prayer in the same way that a chapel on campus would encourage prayer… and even though it could also be used for silent reflection, I think the purpose is the constitutional issue at hand.

A court previously held that the previous version of the law called the “Silent Prayer and Meditation Act” was unconstitutional.

The statute is a subtle effort to force students at impressionable ages to contemplate religion,” U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman said in his ruling Wednesday.

So my question would be, what is it about changing the title causes the law to change the intent? Is setting aside a moment of silence (wink-wink) similar or different from setting aside a “supplication, worship or silent meditation chapel?”

For the record, anon, Hemant is a public school teacher in Illinois.

So your question to him might be “Why do you get upset about things you’re ordered to do in your job that go counter to your beliefs and are unconstitutional?”

But really, why are you so all-fired up about this yourself. You don’t have to spend so much of your time reading and responding about how much time we all waste responding to this.

Not incidentally, what’s the panic about merely exposing kids to religion if we’re not forcing it upon them?

There’s that whole first amendment thing. You have to show a secular purpose and it can’t promote or discourage religion.

I don’t have panic about exposing my kid to religion. My kid’s been to church far more than most religious people ever watch Richard Dawkins specials.

It’s just not the role of government to expose kids to religion any more than it would be the role of government to stand at the front of a classroom and tell kids that they shouldn’t attend church. Or that they should attend church x but not church y.

Do we want to shelter kids from religion?

Certainly not. My child will grow to learn more about varied religious beliefs around the planet than any of her “religious” peers. If she follows me around the planet for a few more years, she may have the same richness and diversity of experience that I have enjoyed. I’ve visited the most holy city in Shinto, I’ve walked the halls of the Sanjusangendo temple in Kyoto. I’ve attended mass at St. Pauls in London. I’ve chanted the sutra at a buddhist funeral, attended Catholic baptisms, Wiccan weddings and watched while Pentacostalists shouted in tounges. I’ve attended seances, met with trance-channelers who claimed to be voicing the thoughts of aliens from another dimension. I even attended the last open service of a doomsday cult about to pack themselves off into their nuclear war-proof underground bunker. Ask Sean Prophet about that one!

I do not shelter anything from religion, I enjoy it in all its forms as any student of humanity might. I just don’t believe any of the supernatural claims the various religions make.

How is that any different from religions that want to shelter kids from science or sex-education?

Because our constitution doesn’t outline a separation of sex and state.

But really, as I’ve said before here many many times… I really SHOULD be for this. Nothing in my opinion could be more harmful for religion than to have government start pushing it. Really…. let’s make Jesus really really uncool with the kids… make TEACHER push Him! Then all the pta’s would start an internal war over which version of Jesus or God gets to be prayed. Then the Wicca moms will start speaking up. And believe me, you don’t want to mess with a Wicca mom. You ain’t never seen self-righteous and self-posessed and unafraid like you see in the eyes of a Wiccan (this is sexist, but I’m going to say wiccan woman. Wiccan men to my experience are pretty mellow). At this point, our schools and community groups start imploding, churches start fighting against each other, and school-board meetings are constant screamfests, and everyone remembers it’s because someone put Jesus in the schools.

Being intellectually honest, I can’t really get behind that, because I think it’s dreadfully unconstitutional. But I do honestly think it would end organized religion’s grip on power in America within a generation.

Why promote ignorance anywhere?

I didn’t say you couldn’t teach ABOUT religion in the school. I just don’t think you should be leading kids in prayer, or setting up “prayer time” on a daily basis. I also think you should teach students about sex, but not leading them IN sex. However I do think (and this is totally constitutional) that kids CAN organize their own prayer meetings or Christian Club on campus at lunchtime.

Allow things to compete in the open marketplace of ideas, and let the chips fall where they may.

Are we still talking about the same thing? I’m sorry but I think you’ve made some kind of segue from a legally mandated “prayer and silent reflection moment” to something else where you can’t discuss or teach about religion in school.

Are we still talking about the bill? The bill wasn’t to “teach about religion”. It was to make a silent prayer moment.

The silent prayer moment isn’t required for religion to be included in the marketplace of ideas at school, anymore than a state mandated vision quest “time” is required before students could learn about the history of the native americans, or a few times a day to turn toward mecca and bow, or remain in silent contemplation moment would be required to teach kids about Islam in social studies.

Again, I’m going to say, I’m totally totally for ramming this down kids throats at school if you are. I would like to see the size of the bonfires when people start arguing over whose god they get to use the government’s power to start pushing.

Although I fear for the poor wiccan’s kids lives at that point. They’re going to have it worse than atheists.

As soon as I meet a conservative atheist I’ll listen. Until then there is no way any liberal should be saying the words, “Why do we need those who waste their time (and my taxpayer dollars) on shit like this?” Liberals are all about spending tax dollars on useless shit. What you need to do is back down the government from your lives. Less subsidization and less money given to you, to me, and to everyone. Liberals always want help from the government in whatever they’re doing i.e. saving whales, going to college, anything. I, by no means, have a lot of money but what I do have is a little common sense and that tells me that all the liberals out there don’t believe in what is good for the whole, they believe in what is going to help each individual out. Selfish politics. Rephrase your sentences for the future please, thank you.

I think we are talking past each other a little bit.

The disconnect upon you reading my post I think is due to an internal inconsistency within my post on what the word “exposed” means. It’s really my fault, because I was kind of writing in response to you post as I went along… and there was a little bit of definition creep.

If I may more directly state what I perceive as our differences in opinion, I see a state mandated moment of silence as crossing the line between educational exposure and promotion. And I think what you’re saying is that it doesn’t.

In that case, I would ask you if a state-constructed chapel on the school campus (which also allows for nonbelievers to “silently reflect” therein) would legally pass muster on the first amendment basis. If not, can you then explain to me why state structured time in the classroom passes muster, but a state-structured building would not.

I was a bit surprised to hear a sweeping generalization about a particular group.

Well, I did couch it with “in my experience”. I don’t think it’s too sweeping a generalization, in fact I admire it a bit. My rationale is that it takes a strong, self-posessed person in this culture to have the courage to openly declare themselves a Wiccan. And to a person, the Wiccan women I’ve met are strong and self-assured to the point of self-righteousness. These are strong people. Now perhaps that’s just anecdotal, but I think culturally these are the people who have bumper-stickers that read “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.”

Now that sounds like an interesting read. Where’s your blog?

Ha! Sorry, I don’t have a blog currently. I used to blog over on ebay atheist.

But Sean Prophet, who was much (much!) closer to the cult tells the story much better than I ever could.

Here’s my favorite post on the subject.

By virtue of my seeker nature, I attended the last hurrah of that cult before they hunkered down. They were talking end of the world stuff, and it was really scary. I made an unceremonious exit and snuck out the back.