Give a Religious Righter enough rope...

scotth said:
This argument is ridiculous and not a parallel at all.

Does the USPS carrying church mail endorse the message of the church or just treat the church as a customer?


The same treatment can be applied to TV and paving.
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And this backpack mail. It was to diseminate about comunity events, and religions have comunity events

Now, bring up the church's lack of taxation, maybe discount postal rates, or other favoritism displayed toward the church and I'll resolutely state my objection.
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If you want to bring in favortism, then building sports teams stadiums when they are for proffit institutions is much more. Now I do not see a real way of preventing churchs from being nonprofit organizations.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Don't be silly, the USPS is intended to delivery mail. Schools are not. These religious whackos pressured the schools to distribute religious propaganda that has nothing to do with the education of these students. If they want to spam people with their prosyletizing, they can use the mail.
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Wrong they did not create the backpack mail program. So it does hold. They just pressured to be allowed to use it.

Now if you have a problem about schools promoting any community events and community activity then that is a separate issue. But what happened here is clearly

1.School instituted Backpack Mail
2.Church decided to use it and force school to let them
3. Pagans followed suit.

The christians did not force to school to start disseminating information about community events, they just forced them to include religious events in the community events that they where disseminating.

It is just like plowing roads, you want the school to exclude just religious community activities, just like not plowing a public road to a church would be the same.
 
ponderingturtle said:
And this backpack mail. It was to diseminate about comunity events, and religions have comunity events
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Not true. "Many public schools use special folders placed in student backpacks to distribute notices about schools events and sometimes extra-curricular activities to parents. "


If you want to bring in favortism, then building sports teams stadiums when they are for proffit institutions is much more.
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Pointing out that wrong has been done in support of others is a worthless arguement. It is also ignores that fact that most cities that give tax breaks to get a team/stadium, knowing that this up front tax break will yield tax dividends that will repay them many fold. (At least in theory). Churches are given tax breaks to 'encourage' religion.

Now I do not see a real way of preventing churchs from being nonprofit organizations.
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Simple, change the law. Poof, they are no longer tax exempt. (yeah, I know it will never happen.... or close enough to never for this arguement)
 
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scotth said:
Not true. "Many public schools use special folders placed in student backpacks to distribute notices about schools events and sometimes extra-curricular activities to parents. "
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Well, church events that students participate can be considered extra-curricular, imo. Say an after school Bible study. My personal feeling is that there is nothing wrong with allowing students to distribute information about extra-curricular activities-say a concert, a school club, etc-even including church events. The only requirement I'd have is what's plainly happened-all groups should be allowed the right to distribute, not just select groups.

Marc
 
scotth said:
Not true. "Many public schools use special folders placed in student backpacks to distribute notices about schools events and sometimes extra-curricular activities to parents. "
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But what matters here is what this school used it for. I read that as some schools use it for extra-curricular activities not that it is rarely used for extra curricular activities. It is a poorly worded statement.
 
scotth said:
Not true. "Many public schools use special folders placed in student backpacks to distribute notices about schools events and sometimes extra-curricular activities to parents. "
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In particular, the rules particular to the relevant school district clearly state that it will "allow equal access to school-sponsored, governmental and outside groups to distribute flyers and request the use of school buildings, subject to reasonable time, place, manner and other content-neutral restrictions." Note, in particular "outside groups," and the requirement any restrictions must be "content-neutral." (See Cathy's blog cited upthread.)

Pointing out that wrong has been done in support of others is a worthless arguement.
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But no wrong has been done. The rules say that "outside organizations" can distribute flyers. You might disagree with the rules -- but you'd be hard pressed to come up with a constitutional argument against it.
 
I am outraged by what went on in Cathy's school, exposed in her blog!

Don't they know that marshmallows aren't Kosher!

(For the clueless in the audience, there should be a :) )
 
Meadmaker said:
I am outraged by what went on in Cathy's school, exposed in her blog!

Don't they know that marshmallows aren't Kosher!

(For the clueless in the audience, there should be a :) )
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Would that depend on if it was gelatin or egg white based marshmallows? Or maybe they where actually made from real marshmallow?

Hmm, am I geeking out on food issues again?
 
I agree that it is inappropriate for religious material to be distributed at public school.

However, the First Amendment does not specifically address the separation of church and state. The phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, but rather is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. It is a political doctrine which states that the institutions of the state or national government should be kept separate from those of religious institutions.

The First Amendment prohibits the federal legislature from making laws that:

  • Establish a state religion or prefer a certain religion (the "Establishment Clause");
  • Prohibit free exercise of religion (the "Free Exercise Clause");
  • Infringe the freedom of speech;
  • Infringe the freedom of the press;
  • Limit the right to assemble peaceably;
  • Limit the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
ImaginalDisc said:
It's inappriopriate for a public (read: government funded) school to distribute religious propaganda. That's the use of government resources for religious purposes. It's arguably a violation of the first amendment.
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From the opinion of a parent, I don't want my child being handed literature about any sort of religion while he's at school, no matter the religious affiliation. For that matter, while walking through one of the exhibit tents at the Texas State Fair, some lady shoved a card in my son's hand and asked him "If you died today do you know that you will go to heaven.". I took the card and handed it back to her, told her "No thank you for the card.", and asked my son to tell her the same before we walked away. The ordeal was horrible for my son, who is Autistic. For the remainder of the day he fixated on if he was going to go to heaven or not.

I'd just really rather not have my son in a dither because someone thinks they are saving him from hell, or they want him to know their god.
 
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ponderingturtle said:
Would that depend on if it was gelatin or egg white based marshmallows? Or maybe they where actually made from real marshmallow?

Hmm, am I geeking out on food issues again?
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Yes. I think the point is that there has been endless and pointless discussion over the kosher-ness of gelatin. ;)
 
ponderingturtle said:
Is it inappropriate to distribute religious propaganda on a state owned media? How then do religious broadcasting works as the state licenses out its ownership of the airwaves.

I don't see how this is all that different, clearly if they provided the distribution method and the people wanting it distributed I don't see why it is clearly inappropriate.
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Religious whackos have equal access to broadcast wavelengths as everyone else. Now please explain to me what on earth that has to do with using the backpacks of public school students to spread religious propaganda?
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Religious whackos have equal access to broadcast wavelengths as everyone else. Now please explain to me what on earth that has to do with using the backpacks of public school students to spread religious propaganda?
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The school put in a system to distribute information about comunity events, so why do religious whackos not have equal rights to that? When to they lose their rights to use a public facility?
 
ChristineR said:
Yes. I think the point is that there has been endless and pointless discussion over the kosher-ness of gelatin. ;)
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The earliest extraction process I remember hearing about for gelatin was boiling it out of harts horn(or antlers really).

Is there some specific issue with bones? Are all Stocks not kosher as well as they have gelatin in them?
 
kittykatkarma said:
I agree that it is inappropriate for religious material to be distributed at public school.

However, the First Amendment does not specifically address the separation of church and state. The phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, but rather is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. It is a political doctrine which states that the institutions of the state or national government should be kept separate from those of religious institutions.

The First Amendment prohibits the federal legislature from making laws that:

  • Establish a state religion or prefer a certain religion (the "Establishment Clause");
  • Prohibit free exercise of religion (the "Free Exercise Clause");
  • Infringe the freedom of speech;
  • Infringe the freedom of the press;
  • Limit the right to assemble peaceably;
  • Limit the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
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Thanks, but "seperation of church and state" is the standard interpretation of the two clauses of the first amendment relating to religion.

From the opinion of a parent, I don't want my child being handed literature about any sort of religion while he's at school, no matter the religious affiliation. For that matter, while walking through one of the exhibit tents at the Texas State Fair, some lady shoved a card in my son's hand and asked him "If you died today do you know that you will go to heaven.". I took the card and handed it back to her, told her "No thank you for the card.", and asked my son to tell her the same before we walked away. The ordeal was horrible for my son, who is Autistic. For the remainder of the day he fixated on if he was going to go to heaven or not.

I'd just really rather not have my son in a dither because someone thinks they are saving him from hell, or they want him to know their god.
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I just don't see what the heck religion has to do with education in a public school. If a chruch wants to inform local parents about something, they can use email, snail mail, or skywriting. Piggybacking off of an educational resource seems pointless.
 
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