The Daily Caller Is Wrong: Atheists Aren’t Trying to Ban “All Religious Expression” at High School Football Games

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the public high school football teams in Florida’s Orange and Seminole Counties. After discovering that coaches were leading team prayers and there were “team chaplains,” the Freedom From Religion Foundation called for a full stop on the church/state violations.

We already know students and parents on the team have no idea what this issue is really about since they were praying on the field after last Friday’s game in protest. Even though no one was ever stopping them from doing that.

But The Daily Caller, despite being a right-wing publication, should know better. Instead, this was their headline yesterday:

That’s absolutely untrue. “Religious expression” is fine at public high school football games. No one’s trying to stop that, including atheist groups, even if many of us find the displays frivolous and silly.

The only thing groups like FFRF are trying to stop is school-sponsored religious expression. That’s it. No coach-led prayers. No team chaplain. No Bible verses on workout sheets. No prayers over the public address system. It’s not that hard of a concept.

I’m sure The Daily Caller knows that, too. But it’s much easier to draw web traffic if you lie to Christians and play right into their misconceptions. Hell, Todd Starnes has made a career out of creating fake controversies out of nothing.

Yesterday, I asked reporter Tristyn Bloom to change the headline (or to have it changed if she didn’t write it), but that hasn’t happened yet.