Why is a high school putting graduation prayers up for a vote?
It’s illegal, it’s unconstitutional, it’s… Indiana. That explains it.
Greenwood High School in Indianapolis seems to think this is ok.
Yet somehow, in the midst of an education system that can’t even understand the Constitution, they have produced at least one student who knows better:
The top-ranked senior at Greenwood High School is asking a federal judge to stop a graduation prayer that the class voted to approve.
The lawsuit by 18-year-old Eric Workman said the prayer and the vote unconstitutionally subject religious practice to majority rule.
How awesome is that.
The valedictorian is suing the school because he knows more about our legal system then the educators who allowed this bullshit to happen in the first place. Brilliant.
And you have to laugh at this passage:
The Rev. Shan Rutherford, pastor of Greenwood Christian Church for more than three decades, said he disagrees with the proposition that such a prayer would violate a student’s rights.
“If I lived in a Muslim nation, a Hindu nation or anything else, I would expect to go along with the majority,” Rutherford said. “He’s trying to go with minority rule. To me, that’s wrong in a democracy, one that was founded on Christian principles.”
“If you don’t agree, I don’t think you should try to stop other people from exercising their rights.”
So many problems here…
1) Who cares what a pastor has to say about a public school’s graduation?
2) Does anyone really believe he’d start praising Allah at a graduation ceremony if he lived in a Muslim nation?
3) We are not, and never have been, a Christian nation
4) No one is stopping individual students from “exercising their right” to pray. If they want to pray, let them pray. There’s just no need to give them a platform to explicitly practice their faith at a public ceremony.
5) If the pastor believes in going along with whatever the majority wants, does that mean he accepts evolution like just about all real scientists do?
If administrators and parents really wanted to hear Christian prayers during graduation, they should have gotten a job or enrolled their children in a private Christian school.
Public school is not the place to see anyone’s faith glorified.
There are ways to find loopholes in the system, of course, and some school have done that in the past. Instead of voting to hold a prayer, schools have allowed students to vote for a graduation speaker — and the individual speaker could deliver a prayer. Somehow, Greenwood High School didn’t get the memo on that.
Here’s hoping they lose the case. And I really hope some local paper publishes a transcript of Workman’s valedictorian speech.
Sounds like the young man knows what he’s doing and could educate his own community on standing up for what’s right.
If you’re interested, here’s a copy of the lawsuit he filed with the help of the ACLU.
(Thanks to Andrew for the link!)
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