Senate [South Carolina] Atheist student sues high school over graduation prayer

The first amendment does not grant a right--the first amendment prevents the government from infringing on said right(s).

You seem to read it as if it is somehow affirmative--that without the amendment, the right would not exist.

Aside from that....I'm not sure where to begin.

Your comment about "mass," for instance...

We've gone from permiting prayer to regulations requiring someone attend mass...because you clearly can't distinguish between those two things.

I asked some questions at the end of my last post....they were not rhetorical.

What's your point on this affirmative versus negative issue? If the government is not barred from doing the things I listed in my post, then there's no reason they can't do them. How are the two outcomes different?

You asked questions, but they were based on your bizarre understanding of the First Amendment. What I gave you were some other consequences of the way you said it should be defined. There's no point in answering the questions you asked until I know that you actually believe their underlying assumptions are correct.

EDIT: But you know what? Fine.

1. Your first question is the heart of the last two posts. How narrowly does the First Amendment have effect?

2. More fundamentally, it's the same thing for a public school or any other part of government to regularly feature religious exercises as part of their official activities. Varieties of illegality are less important than the fact both are impermissible.

3. No it would not. No one has a right to rope government functions into participating in religion. They have a right to worship freely for themselves. That's it. People's demand has nothing to do with anything. In the South, people "demanded" a reversal of Brown v Board, but that didn't suddenly make Jim Crow okay.

Granted, we can distinguish between permiting a public prayer and theocracy or lawmaking?

Asterix, there's quite a bit of difference between permitting pubic prayer and having a public school do an official prayer during an official event. No one wants to stop people from praying on their own in public. But to use "permitting public prayer" as a means of forcing a prayer on students during graduation is preposterous.

Not really? Part of that is instilling the culture of the secular nature of the government at all levels, including when people are most impressionable.

Would you be okay with a school board, on advisement from the local PTA, that the majority are in favor of teaching creationism (either alongside or instead of evolution), voting to have the curriculum changed?

That's almost identical to your okay scenario of public prayer, is it not?

No, we can't. Not if the only thing the First Amendment bans is a law that explicitly makes an official religion for the country, while allowing for dozens of loop holes for government to achieve the exact same thing through other means. That's why everyone is criticizing your position.

Except that's a complete misreading of my opinion.

I just don't know how to respond because you seem to have invented so much...

For instance:" if the only thing the First Amendment bans is a law that explicitly makes an official religion for the country"

You swing wildly from one possibility to another without considering anything in the middle. "Permission" is too broad an interpretation for me, so you assume I'm supporting the polar opposite.

Like I said....I don't know where to start.
So I won't.

But it wasn't forced on anyone--no one was required to participate and technically, they weren't even required to attend the ceremony.

The argument is that a public school cannot permit the prayer as a part of the ceremony. However, the school's involvement didn't go much beyond approval. It in no way resembled any form of promotion on behalf of the school.

Edit: well whatever, I give up. I don't personally support it anyways....and I'm tired

All you need to do is tell us what you think the First Amendment says. In your previous quotes, you kept using the standard:

1. Is it a law passed by Congress?

2. Does it declare an official religion?

If you think there's something more to it than that, you should say so. Otherwise, people pretty reasonably think that the only thing you believe is in the First Amendment is the part you keep saying over and over.

That's not completely accurate, though. You need to look at the reasons why they said both those things, and not just what the outcome of the ruling was.

In Santa Fe v. Doe, the ruling was based in large part on the fact that the "optional" event was actually mandatory for some students to attend (such as members of the football team and cheerleading squad). As a result, it was not a completely optional event, which played a large role in the decision. (From the ruling: "For some students, such as cheerleaders, members of the band, and the team members themselves, attendance at football games is mandated, sometimes for class credit.")

In Lee v. Weisman, they did prohibit a religious invocation at a public-school graduation, but it was because the person giving the invocation (in that case, a Rabbi) was selected and invited by the school administration. By choosing the person giving the invocation, the school "directed and controlled the content of the prayers".

This case avoids both of those issues that determined the outcome in the cases you cited, and so neither ruling directly applies in this case.

Playing extra-curricular football is already an optional choice to begin with (wait, you mean it's NOT optional in Texas? ) so that argument doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. If you choose to participate in something and then have a mandatory attendance -- it's still predicated on an optional decision tree at the root.

Now, I agree with you that in many cases this would fail the coercion test; but so does the SC graduation example (which, I believe, was the basis of Lee?).

The problem is that you are mixing the two cases.

Santa Fe was decided because of the coercion aspect, while Lee was decided because the administration was exerting direct control of the content of the prayer. As a result, this case doesn't directly fall under either precedent.

I'm with Asterix on this one.

Saying a prayer in public has suddenly become offensive should someone who doesn't believe the same beliefs happen to hear it. Just put your hands over your ears if it bothers you that much.

No, no... I mean Lee established the "coercion test" (it did, right?) -- so that was the root of the decision in Santa Fe, wasn't it? Although there was also "administration oversight" of the public prayer in the Santa Fe case, as a portion of the judgment. Which I think would likely follow if the USSC decided on the SC case for the 4th circuit.

I think it is silly that the student sued. Frankly, I'm getting tired of atheist cry babies suing the entire world at the drop of a hat. It makes us all look like a bunch of infantile whiners and media whores. The more appropriate response would have been to write a letter to the school administration setting out the student's issues with having a prayer recited at a graduation ceremony and gently reminding the school that including a prayer in the graduation ceremony may not pass constitutional muster. That would give the school an opportunity to respond and discuss the issue like grownups. Instead, he has commenced legal action, wasting the school's precious time and resources. "I didn't feel like I was part of the ceremony" - Oh, boo hoo you spineless cretin. Live in a country where you face public stoning for denying religious rites and then come and cry about a prayer being recited by a studfent at a graduation ceremony. Some of these people really need some perspective.

I think he did write a letter, and received a response.