Comments | lihan161051: "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian.."

lihan161051

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian.."

Dec 10, 2011 13:56

"..but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when.."..a governor in Texas can put on an "outdoorsy" looking jacket and pretend to open up to "regular folks" just to hitch his wagon to the "Christian persecution" meme that's so much the fashion in right-wing politics these days ( Read more... )

Comments 4

Clarification nyyki December 10 2011, 20:57:16 UTC

Look at www.dallasnews.com or the Star Telegram site for this past week. The Ft. Worth school district did actually hand down a ruling that no religiously themed celebrations are to be held during the holiday season and that students are not to pass out religiously themed cards to their classmates during school hours. They can pass them out before or after school, but no class time may be taken up with these activities. And no holiday parties or other celebrations are to be held unless there is a specific educational orientation to the party. I know this is just one example, but it has actually happened, and the theists affected by this are up in arms about it.

Re: Clarification lihan161051 December 11 2011, 14:58:27 UTC

I suppose that *would* get them wound up, wouldn't it?

Even so, IMHO, it's their own fault for encouraging the kind of aggressive "prayer" and "celebration" that I mentioned above, and polarizing the dialogue to the extent that the school district feels that it needs to have a policy in place to combat the kind of in-your-face "individual religious expression" acting-out behavior that leads to disruption and conflict in the school to the extent that such a policy appears to be necessary. Christian-themed holiday activities in public schools have always been an Establishment Clause issue, but I remember schools being perfectly tolerant of them before these people started pushing boundaries. So they only have themselves to blame, and I have zero sympathy.

(I might object to the ban on holiday themed parties *outside* of school after school hours, but I suspect you meant parties that occur in class during school hours, which is reasonable, given the circumstances ..)

Re: Clarification nyyki December 11 2011, 15:48:55 UTC

Well, some of the responsibility also has to fall on the shoulders of the Radical Atheist folks, who with their constant harassment of folks who just want to get their job done have resulted in said folks responding with whatever they can to shut these people up and get them off their backs ( ... )

Re: Clarification lihan161051 December 12 2011, 02:31:10 UTC

That did stir up some memories for me. I was actually witness once to Madalyn Murray O'Hair protesting a prayer/invocation at a public school PTA meeting (as I was in the band that was performing in a concert for that meeting, and i couldn't quite *see* what was going on but could definitely *hear* angry raised voices) and that sort of set the tone for my overall perception of militant atheism for quite some time. (And possibly other people's perception as well .. I remember a rather startling amount of schadenfreude at her disappearance, whether it was publicly expressed or not. She was quite a notorious figure around Austin in particular.) And the anti-Abrahamic tone of the protests resonates -- it's arguable that the majority Abrahamic religions in the USA make particularly attractive targets, but you're right that there does seem to be a bit of a bias ( ... )