A Very Large Can of Worms

 

The Conservative wing of the GOP is chortling about a recent SCOTUS decision (no, not that one!) about a Washington high school coach who was fired for leading prayer meetings on the 50-yard line after his school's football games.  According to Fox News:  "in a 6–3 ruling, the conservative majority high court backed a former Washington high school football coach Joe Kennedy, who lost his job for saying a quick, silent prayer on the 50-yard line after football games.    As a junior varsity coach and varsity assistant coach for the Bremerton School District, Kennedy would say the quick prayer after the game by himself, but the practice quickly became popular with many students, who also began taking part in the prayer.

"Eventually, the prayer time turned into a sort of religious-themed motivational speech for the players, and it didn’t take long for an opposing coach to report the harmless and positive gathering to the school district. The district ordered Kennedy to cease the prayer time, and he did for a short time.  He then made the decision to resume the prayers, and that’s when the situation eventually entered messy legal territory, as the school believed that holding a prayer on the field violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which protects the separation of church and state.

"After enduring years of litigation, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court sided with the coach on Monday, writing, in part, 'Both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect expressions like Mr. Kennedy’s. Nor does a proper understanding of the Amendment’s Establishment Clause require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor.'”.

I'll bet that he reason the court decided in Kennedy's favor is that he led his prayer meetings after the games;  he wasn't imploring the Almighty to let his team win -- at the expense of presumably good Christians on the opposing team.  

In any case, the Conservatives who are cheering for this "triumph of religious liberty" don't realize what a mess they've gotten themselves into.  The very first clause of the very first sentence of the very first amendment to the Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".  That means the government shall not play favorites among religions.  That, in turn, means that whatever the government allows or forbids to any one religion it must equally allow or forbid to all of them -- every last one of them -- and that is opening a large can of worms indeed.  

Consider: if the homeroom teacher allows your Protestant kid (Baptists are Protestants, remember) to stand up and recite a Protestant prayer, then she must also allow the Catholic kid beside him to stand up and recite a Catholic prayer (and even one Decade of the Rosary takes a bit of time), and also the Russian Orthodox kid at his other side to stand up and recite an Orthodox prayer, and the Jewish kid ahead of him can stand up and recite a Jewish prayer (the Shema at least is mercifully brief), and the Muslim kid behind him can recite a Muslim prayer, and the Buddhist kid (Do you have a Chinese restaurant in your town, with real Chinese people working in it?  Then you have Buddhists.) can recite The Eight-Fold Path of the Buddha, and the Hindu kid (Does your town have a clinic with people from India working there?) can recite an invocation of any of the dozen major Hindu gods, and the Pagan kid (We're everywhere!) can recite The Charge of the Goddess at least, and the town atheist's kid can recite The Twelve Points of Atheism, and the rebellious kid can recite an invocation to Satan, just to mess with everybody's heads.  Never mind how confusing this will get;  think of the time it will take.  Homeroom will take an hour every day, and never mind Assembly!

There are two ways out of this mess, and until now the schools have opted for the easiest: 1) Forbid all prayers in school, or 2) Provide a class in "Religions of the World", that will cover all of them over the course of the school year, giving all of them equal time and equal respect.  To date, a few schools -- all of them high schools -- have taken this second course. 

I have not heard a peep out of the Conservatives concerning this tactic.  Nonetheless, they're going to have to consider it -- either that or give up their hope to "bring prayer back to the schools".  The Supreme Court might not be so tolerant of the next case they bring up.

--Leslie <;)))><