Indiana student sues over school graduation prayer

The injury caused by the government's action, and the reason why Daniel and Deborah Weisman object to it, is that the State, in a school setting, in effect required participation in a religious exercise. It is, we concede, abrief exercise during which the individual can concentrate on joining its message, meditate on her own religion, or let her mind wander. But the embarrassment and the intrusion of the religious exercise cannot be refuted by arguing that these prayers, and similar ones to be said in the future, are of a de minimis character. To do so would be an affront to the Rabbi who offered them and to all those for whom the prayers were an essential and profound recognition of divine authority. And for the same reason, we think that the intrusion is greater than the two minutes or so of time consumed for prayers like these. Assuming, as we must, that the prayers were offensive to the student and the parent who now object, the intrusion was both real and, in the context of a secondary school, a violation of the objectors' rights. That the intrusion was in the course of promulgating religion that sought to be civic or nonsectarian rather than pertaining to one sect does not lessen the offense or isolation to the objectors. At best it narrows their number, at worst increases their sense of isolation and affront.

Lee v. Weisman

 

Great, a religious test for appearing at a milestone ceremony. Getting deeper into the constitutional muck by the second.

 

Being a high school valedictorian has nothing to do with the real world. Plenty of book-smart people are fucking idiots who can barely tie their shoes without the help of a study session. Perhaps this kid will go on to do great things that matter, but right now he's just like every other kid in America -- he's a self-absorbed know-it-all. The difference is that he's gotten a head start on adding to this country's burgeoning tradition of litigious jackassery.

 

To say a teenage student has a real choice not to attend her high school graduation is formalistic in the extreme. True, Deborah could elect not to attend commencement without renouncing her diploma; but we shall not allow the case to turn on this point. Everyone knows that, in our society and in our culture, high school graduation is one of life's most significant occasions. A school rule which excuses attendance is beside the point. Attendance may not be required by official decree, yet it is apparent that a student is not free to absent herself from the graduation exercise in any real sense of the term "voluntary," for absence would require forfeiture of those intangible benefits which have motivated the student through youth and all her high school years.

Lee v. Weisman

 

I hope a school class votes to shoot a teacher. I mean, hey, if they voted for it, then it overrides the law, right?

It's just as outrageously out there and wrong as any point made pro-graduation-prayer on this thread.

 

It took a lot of "litigious jackassery" to improve civil rights, improve product safety, reduce sexual discrimination, and so on. Sometimes, it takes the court to make old, powerful white men do the right thing.

 

Could you possibly be more cliched, dools? You're smarter than that. Granted, not as smart as this American hero at Greenwood High, but smarter than parroting bullshit talking points.

 

So court decisions didn't have a part in any of those things I just mentioned, YGs? And the country's power structure hasn't been old, white men? You're too smart to think that.

 

Junkie, your cat was playing with your keyboard while you were taking a leak.

 

How do you know what kind of flowers he likes?

 

Awesome.

 

Ah, there's the cat