Prayer is totes secular!!


Ohhhhhhh the Daily Mail. It’s a sin to tell whoppers.

Headline on story about Jessica Ahlquist and the judge’s decision:

School ordered to remove ‘religious’ banner which tells pupils to be kind

Scare quotes on “religious” when the banner starts with “HEAVENLY FATHER” – does the Mail think that’s a secular greeting?

A school has been ordered to tear down a banner encouraging its pupils to be kind to one another after a judge decided it violated the First Amendment.

The banner at Cranston High School West in Rhode Island was judged to promote religion because it takes the form of a prayer addressed to ‘Our Heavenly Father’ and concluding ‘Amen’.

Yes…….a prayer that begins with “our heavenly father” and ends with “amen” is in fact religious. What else would it be?

Comments

  1. says

    “If only Princess Diana was alive!”

    It’s become a problem when all you can hear is Russell Howard screaming that when you hear the words daily and mail together XD

  2. Stacy says

    Yes…….a prayer that begins with “our heavenly father” and ends with “amen” is in fact religious. What else would it be?

    No, no. The kindly kindness-urging banner just takes the form of a prayer. That’s quite different from a, you know. Regular prayer.

  3. says

    “What else would it be?”

    Well, you might think its a prayer, but there’s more than meets the eye. It’s really a lawsuit in disguise!

  4. says

    I love the “It’s been hanging there 60 years it’s a historical artifact!!!” defence.

    Who came up with that whole separation of church and state thing again and when did he do that???

  5. Jurjen S. says

    Stephen Fry wrote, over twenty years ago now, that the Mail is peculiarly dishonest in that it’s a tabloid that has the pretense of being a broadsheet. It’s the Sun pretending to be the Telegraph (as if the Telegraph weren’t bad enough).

  6. Dunc says

    Ah yes the good old Daily Fail, where would British bigotry be without it?

    Reading the Express instead…

  7. jamessweet says

    That “tells students to be kind to each other” line is just dirty pool. It would be like if a school choir was going to perform Dr. Dre’s Bitches Ain’t Shit, and when the administration put the kibosh on it, the Daily Mail reported: “School bans song that encourages young men to be open to their friends about their feelings during emotionally trying times”

  8. stewart says

    Have any of those people who claim this isn’t religious given an example of what they think would be religious?

  9. jamessweet says

    Have any of those people who claim this isn’t religious given an example of what they think would be religious?

    Anything that promotes Islam, Wicca, or atheism.

  10. H.H. says

    Funny. Before deciding to bring suit, Jessica offered the compromise of simply removing the offending religious language from the existing banner. All that stuff about telling students “to be kind to one another” could have stayed up. The school made it clear that they considered the god stuff to be important part. And now that they’ve lost the case, it’s the mean atheist’s fault the banner must come down. When actually it was the clueless Christians’ fanatical belief that they have a right to proselytize to other people’s children that ensured the banner’s removal.

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