http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426316/praying-football-coach-religious-liberty-judicial-censorshp

Whose rights are being infringed?

bbauska wrote:http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426316/praying-football-coach-religious-liberty-judicial-censorshp

Whose rights are being infringed?

The coach's.

It would be better if the source was not somebody with such an obvious axe to grind. It's impossible to discern how much truth there is to the story since he's only presenting it in a very one-sided fashion.

For what it's worth, I think it's ridiculous to try and ban this coach from praying at the 50 yard line. If I were one of his students I certainly wouldn't be joining him, but so long as it's true that he isn't attempting to exert influence on the children to join in then so far as I'm concerned his actions are trivial in the extreme and he can do what he likes.

The wider issue is the place of religious doctrine in American schools. It's quite obvious that schools have been turned into something of a battleground in the culture wars. Perhaps some secularists have gone too far in their deployment of the establishment clause to force God out of the classroom, but they're far from the only guilty party in that respect. When you have certain school districts that have been captured by creationists seeking to insert whackjob theology into the science curriculum then it seems clear to me that battle has been joined from both sides. I'm not saying that one justifies the other by any means, but writers like the one you linked to are quite clearly active partisans in a struggle not defenceless victims of the state.

Sassenach wrote:It would be better if the source was not somebody with such an obvious axe to grind. It's impossible to discern how much truth there is to the story since he's only presenting it in a very one-sided fashion.

For what it's worth, I think it's ridiculous to try and ban this coach from praying at the 50 yard line. If I were one of his students I certainly wouldn't be joining him, but so long as it's true that he isn't attempting to exert influence on the children to join in then so far as I'm concerned his actions are trivial in the extreme and he can do what he likes.

Perfect. That is "freedom of religion." What is being practiced is "freedom from religion," which is unconstitutional.

Sass, that was insightful and well written. I agree with it all. Well done!