Comments inline, beginning with HBO3: ... and ending with ***
-----Original Message----- From: Beth Fleischer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 6:48 PM To: CF-Community Subject: Re: Enron executive commits suicide (Church and State) ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "CF-Community" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 12:59 PM Subject: RE: Enron executive commits suicide (Church and State) > 1) What if there was no church within 10 blocks of the school? The students could meet at a cafe, or a friends house. The school needs to separate itself from religious events. > > 2) The neonazi group should be allowed, so long as they do not engage in > illegal or discriminatory behavior. They would have to allow all students > who wished to attend to attend. If the Satanists wanted a club, and a > teacher was willing to sponsor it, it should be allowed. But again, no > illegal activity, either in practice or advocacy. And along those same > lines, the Boy Scouts should not be allowed to meet on school grounds if > they bar gay students from participating. The purpose of the neonazi group is to be discriminatory. It should not be allowed. But it doesnt' apply here because its not religious. HBO3: So you miss the point. Any group should be allowed to use a public facility, so long as they engage in legal behavior. Since discrimination, while using a public facility is illegal, then the neonazi group would have a hard time using a public facility, thereby showing the ludicrous nature of the example you entered into the dialogue. But if a neonazi group did want to use a public facility, then they would need to allow blacks and Jews to attend, if any blacks or Jews wanted to. *** And my problem with "a teacher willing to sponsor it" - shouldnt' be up to the students - a school sanctioned group shouldn't have to find their own faculty member, that should be provided by the school. HBO3: Why should the school force a teacher, on his own time -- these clubs are always voluntary participation for the teacher -- to sponsor a group? This would violate labor laws. The teacher must volunteer, which means the students must find the teacher -- this is true whether it's a stamp club or a chess club or a Christian group. *** > 3) In case you haven't forgotten, religious people pay taxes, too. So they > also pay for the schools. Are you saying they are second class citizens and > should not have equal opportunity, equal protection, in using public > facilities? But the purpose of the school is not to teach any religion, nor favor any, thus they need to remove it completely. HBO3: And this idea is openly and unequivocally hostile to religion. You want to abridge the rights of religious people by denying them use of facilities they support through their tax dollars. *** The problem is that your thinking on this is very simplistic - you believe majority rules, too bad for the rest of us. The problem with this thinking is that it excludes the rights of others if the majority wants it to. Our forefathers were smart enough to recognize this and ensure that all of us should be equally able to get an education without the religion of another infringing on us. HBO3: This is insulting in the extreme. My thinking is far from simplistic. The simplistic position is to say all or nothing (in your case, nothing). That's easy. It's much more difficult to craft a public policy that respects the rights of all people. And the last thing I'm saying is majority rules. I'm saying the rights of all need to be respected. It is just as wrong to discriminate against religious people as it is to discriminate against blacks or Jews or gays. As for the forefathers, your statement is not historically supportable. For one thing, there was no such thing at the time of the founding of a public school as we know it today. Secondly, what schools did exist, supported by community efforts, or private, almost always used the Bible as a primary text. So there is no basis for your "original intent" argument. **** > > 4) The place for a religious club is where ever people happen to congregate > on a regular basis. We're talking about public buildings. "Congress shall > make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to > assemble." People have a right to gather in any public place under whatever > banner they choose. A club is not an assembly unfortunate. A club is a group sanctioned by the school. A group of students are welcome to meet and discuss the bible at lunch. But the school is not permitted to have an official "lunch bible study". HBO3: Study some constitutional law. The right to assembly clause means we have a right to associate with whom we want for whatever purpose we choose, so long as it is peaceable. So a club is very much an assembly, in the meaning of my statement. The school is not permitted to have an official "Bible study," as you say. But the school must allow, constitutionally and common sense wise, students access to the facilities for a Bible study, under these conditions: 1) It must not be during school time; 2) If other extra-curricular, non-academic groups are allowed to use school facilities, then all groups, without discrimination on the basis of race, creed or sexual orientation, must be allowed equal access to those facilities. Anything less violates both the 1st and 14th Amendments. *** > > 5) What you are preaching is not government neutrality in respect to > religion, but government hostility to religion. > No, I am attempting to show you how having a teacher preach islam or christianity to my jewish athiest children is an infringement on my rights. HBO3: Nobody is talking about having a teacher preach anything. The issue is, must a school provide equal access, under the 1st and 14th Amendments, to school facilities, within reasonable guidelines, to all groups regardless of race, creed or sexual orientation? Clearly, you are hostile to religion, and you want the government to be hostile to religion, and this is clouding your view of a very common sense approach to these issues. *** ______________________________________________________________________ Your ad could be here. 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