Valedictorian Rips Up Preapproved Speech, Recites Prayer Instead

by Sam Whiskey 469 Replies latest jw friends

  • Band on the Run
    Band on the Run

    There are oddles of parochial schools in this country. Let us see the proof of your discrimination. Because I read neutral state/church law journals regularly. We come from a Christian tradition originally. Most colonists were mainstream Protestant. The fundies would not be welcome in their culture. Educated clergymen were very respected. Colonists knew their Bibles backwards and forwards. This is not 1789. No one can say Americans are from a Christian tradition anymore. We are much more diverse. Schools are to teach basic skills, such as reading and arithmetic, and also to teach American civic values. They do not exist to raise Christians. No way. Never.

    You want to practice and impose your religion, go to church and pay for parochial school. Other Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, Jews, Sikhs, Confucianists, etc. should not pay taxes for your church. OUr money should go to our faiths. This has never been a Christian country. The Christian Founders went to remarkable lengths to make certain we were not Christian. Jerry Falwell would be rejected in most colonial centers at the time. It was a literate population. Indeed, it was a middle class population for the most part. Many of our Founders said they were a religion but never bothered to ever attend church or pick up a BIble. Sophsiticated people ran Congress and the White House.

    You were dictating to us here what to believe. In fact, someone I shall not name claimed to hear from a Jeshusyaimg directly. There was no proof. Yet if anyone asked for clarification, we hated all people in the world who worship God. I call it publicity wh... or schizoprenia.

    If I ever thought you were even vaguely hurt for being what you term a "believer," I would be the first to intervene despite my own beliefs. Go believe your beliefs. Don't impose them here and when others differ, cry like babies and scream discrimination. Because, unlike you, I know what discrimination is. What needs to be established and what the burdens of proof are.

    No one has ever been discriminated here b/c of their beliefs. People who think so are mentally ill or stupid. But you people love drama. You invent a fantasy that has no relation to reality where you are poor, oppressed people and if we don't bow down and worship one person hearing lunatic voices, we are the personification of evil. Grow up. Don't waste your time here. Preach to the choir. This is not the WT.

  • Comatose
    Comatose

    Dcms - LOL - love that line in the movie.

    (rubs soap in eyes)

  • lisaBObeesa
    lisaBObeesa

    sam said:

    When you're 73% of the population, you have a unique ability to "exert pressure" in ways the minority cannot.

    Wow.

    WOW. If you are a christian you get to push people around? You have some special power or right over other Americans? You get to "excert pressure" while others cannot?

    You are NOT more special or more American or have more rights in this country because of your religion. You DO NOT have the right to "excert your pressure" on others in tax-payer funded public schools that are for EVERYONE, not just YOU.

    You and all Christians have the SAME rights to free speech as everybody else and the SAME rights to go to public school without having someone else's religion forced on you. You get NO special extra rights to push other people around.

  • Marvin Shilmer
    Marvin Shilmer

    -

    It takes a little mind to feel offended, or somehow compromised or put upon, because an individual invited to speak shares whatever is their beliefs.

    Speaking purely for myself, when the smartest person in the room is asked to speak I generally listen respectfully. And, why not? There is no boogieman.

    Marvin Shilmer

  • mrsjones5
    mrsjones5

    When you're 73% of the population, you have a unique ability to "exert pressure" in ways the minority cannot.

    In another context that above could be taken as...

  • Simon
    Simon

    I don't think someone who believes in invisible creatures and a whole raft of things that defy science and logic can ever be described as "the smartest person in the room". Unless it's a room full of believers ...

  • rebel8
    rebel8

    self indulged Godless people with no moral character

    Wow.

  • mrsjones5
    mrsjones5

    Hateful is what it is.

  • Marvin Shilmer
    Marvin Shilmer

    -

    Simon,

    The boy who gave the speech at issue worked hard to earn his grades. He earned an invitation to share with everyone what makes him tick. That’s worth listening to, and learning from. There is something to learn from everything around us.

    If a boy sharing what makes him tick bothers you then my guess is the problem does not lay with the boy.

    Insofar as defying science goes, we know so little about the universe we live in. Things we’ve learned as facts of our universe were, in past centuries, spat upon as wrongheaded; as fairytales.

    There’s a lot of dark matter and dark energy in the known universe. We have no idea what it is. Perhaps the boy who bothers you will grow up continuing to earning his grades, and one day teach the two of us a thing or two about our universe. I hope so. I hope so because I like to learn, and I don’t let my petty notions get in the way of that.

    The thing I learned from this boy is that he was brave enough to stand up and express what he wanted to express despite little brained people. Braveness is a part of manhood.

    Marvin Shilmer

  • Marvin Shilmer
    Marvin Shilmer

    -

    “…the absence of God in our schools has created nothing but a society of self indulged Godless people with no moral character.”

    More than anything else, it’s self indulged parents responsible for lack of moral compass in society.

    Being a parent doesn’t take God. It takes time with your kids.

    Marvin Shilmer

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