Remind me not to go to Cranston, Rhode Island.
Apparently a Roman Catholic fortress, it seems that many people in that town are up in arms that a teenager, Jessica Alquist, took to the courts to have a prayer removed from the grounds of the school she attends. A federal judge has ruled that keeping the prayer would be unconstitutional, but that hasn't stopped the people of Cranston from asserting -- sometimes loudly and even violently -- that they want it to remain.
Jessica has received threats and even had to be escorted to school by the police. State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, whom I'm ashamed to say is a Democrat, has called her "an evil little thing." Seriously.
As far as I'm concerned Jessica is a hero. Secularism is one of the few areas left (homosexuality being one of the others) where some people in the US feel it's perfectly fine to discriminate against others.
Read the article about Jessica here and then read the comments. Interesting, isn't it, that the removal of an obviously unconstitutional prayer from a school, after a federal judge has agreed it is unconstitutional, has some Christians thinking their entire religion is under siege. While thankfully there are a lot of people who defend Jessica, you also get people who think atheists are out to destroy religion entirely.
I'm all for letting people believe in whatever they want to believe in, whether it's nothing at all, a supernatural god being, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As long as they're not hurting anyone else -- or forcing their beliefs on anyone else -- it's a free country, and freedom of religion is guaranteed in our Constitution, as the judge upheld. But I find it funny that Christians think their religious beliefs should be allowed to appear on public property, paid for by the taxpayer dollars of all, when they would raise holy hell if a verse from the Koran, or a Jewish saying, or a Wiccan prayer, for instance, were shown. I believe they call that hypocrisy.
New rule for 2012: if someone wishes me a "Merry Christmas" they're going to get "and a Happy Winter Solstice to you" right back at them. The Christians co-opted that holiday from the pagans, right down to the decorated tree, the feast and the presents. If someone says "Happy Easter" to me they will get "and a Happy Vernal Equinox to you." Just because I choose not to believe in any supreme being doesn't mean my beliefs, or lack thereof, are any less valid than a Christian's.
I say kudos to Jessica, and I hope more secularists stand up for the right to believe as they choose. Now if we could just get "In God We Trust" off the darn currency!
