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Marcusisit favorited a video
(2 months ago)
Christopher Eric Hitchens was an English author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was ...
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Christopher Eric Hitchens was an English author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He was a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll. He was a champion for atheism, skepticism, science, history and common sense. He will be sorely missed.
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Marcusisit favorited a video
(8 months ago)
Even Jesus thinks you're idiots.
Spread this video or make your own so that Bastrop High School, and other such schools, cannot easily get away with...
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Even Jesus thinks you're idiots.
Spread this video or make your own so that Bastrop High School, and other such schools, cannot easily get away with this deplorable behavior without being seen by thousands of atheists, secularists, moderates, etc.
Link to Bastrop High School:
http://mpsb.us/education/components/s...
GrapplingIgnorance's excellent video on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm89ef...
Facebook group for Damon Fowler:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Suppor...
Damon Fowler explains his story here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comme...
Why is it unconstitutional?
First, nobody is stopping prayer, but it is public funding of the prayer that's the problem. If I owned a home near Bastrop High School, then the real estate taxes I must pay by LAW would be used for an organized prayer using facilities, equipment, and employees I paid for - AN ATHEIST BEING FORCED BY LAW TO PAY FOR PRAYER. It is obvious that is unconstitutional. If Gabriel Broadway wanted to privately fund a separate meeting for a prayer, she's perfectly within her rights to do so. Bottom line: pray on your own time and your own dime.
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If you need further elaboration, here is a PM I wrote on the matter:
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Endorsement is different than accommodation.
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If a Muslim's religion requires him to pray during school hours (a public school), then by law, the school is not allowed to prevent him from doing so (accommodation). I believe that I have proven beyond the shadow of any doubt, that Christianity doesn't REQUIRE a large public prayer at a graduation ceremony, and that, in fact, the religion actually discourages it. Therefore, it is not unconstitutional to prevent her from doing something like that. A case can be made, however, for her to be stopped from doing something like that if she is using the public's resources in the process (endorsement).
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I know you don't think this is a big deal, and I can understand why you think so. It can seem petty. As someone who owns a lot of real estate, however, I can look at my tax bills and see exactly how much of my money is going to the schools, and it's a significant amount of money. I do not want kids being preached to there. I do not want to pay for that any more than I would want to drop a dime in a collection plate at a church. People of many religions and non-religion pay for the schools, so the schools should remain neutral.
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Free speech is limited - however minutely - when public funding is involved. God is off-limits, no matter the speech-giver. In my college speech class, many students chose to give speeches about their religions: specifically some Muslims, Catholics, and a Jehovah's Witness. I was totally cool with that. At the college, they were personally paying for their educations - not me. I was the last speaker, and I chose to give a speech about how all their religions are bullshit. And that's how I handled that.
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They're like little rays of sunshine, .................without the goddamn ozone layer.