High school coach suspended for praying
Fascists: A high school coach in Washington state has been suspended by school officials for praying after football games.
What the coach had been doing was to kneel at the 50 yard line after games and pray for a few minutes. He asked no one to join him.
Kennedy’s tradition started seven years ago when he thanked God for the game and the players after coaching his first game at Bremerton High School. A few games into his private practice, students began to ask the coach what he was doing. “I was thanking God for you guys,” Kennedy remembered saying to his players, according to a Liberty Institute statement. “Then a couple said they were Christians and asked if they could join. I responded, ‘It’s a free country, you can do whatever you want to do.’”
Essentially, the school is telling him that he is not permitted to express his religious beliefs while at work. Sounds kind of unconstitutional to me.
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Fascists: A high school coach in Washington state has been suspended by school officials for praying after football games.
What the coach had been doing was to kneel at the 50 yard line after games and pray for a few minutes. He asked no one to join him.
Kennedy’s tradition started seven years ago when he thanked God for the game and the players after coaching his first game at Bremerton High School. A few games into his private practice, students began to ask the coach what he was doing. “I was thanking God for you guys,” Kennedy remembered saying to his players, according to a Liberty Institute statement. “Then a couple said they were Christians and asked if they could join. I responded, ‘It’s a free country, you can do whatever you want to do.’”
Essentially, the school is telling him that he is not permitted to express his religious beliefs while at work. Sounds kind of unconstitutional to me.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The attach will continue until they have cast the cords off. You are right, the scary thing is the close vote which should have been dramatically in favor. The antiChrist crowd sure has the right to voice their dissent (with bottles etc) in the view of the courts. The police should arrested the one throwing the bottles!
This is a world wide problem with the US system having the rights embedded in the constitution (however overlooked by the left).
I have often wondered how the NAZIs got power and kept power. I think we are seeing the same both in Canada and the USA. Europe has been lost for a long time.
Such whacky rulings and policies come from the misunderstood and misused (abused) phrase “separation of church and state.” This separation was intended to mean that government would not advocate any specific religion, however, it is now used to justify the removal of religion from any government property.
Ignoring religion is not the same as banning religion, and this is where the anti-religion crowd has it wrong. They advocate for the banning of religion.
However, this separation only seems to apply to certain religions, and does not seem to apply to others — which are given preference and special treatment. Here is an example:
http://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/Muslim-Prayer-in-Schools-Religion-Students/2015/03/25/id/634403/
Some people seem to believe that schools should allow “prayer for me, but not for thee,” where the coach falls under the category of “thee.”
Whether or not the phrase “separation of church and state” is misunderstood is beside the point as that phrase appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. The phrase “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” does appear in the text of the 1st Amendment and is entirely germane to the issue in dispute here. Given that the religious observance in question is neither sanctioned by any organ of government nor made mandatory by same, the coach would appear to have a pretty much open and shut case that his free exercise rights were being egregiously violated by anti-religious busybodies.
I agree with all your points. However, the phrase was used by Thomas Jefferson in order to explain the religion aspects of the First Amendment.
He and the other Founding Fathers, including the authors and signatories to the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, never intended for the Constitution to be used to limit the free exercise of one’s religion. However, the phrase has in recent decades been used to unconstitutionally ban any religious expression or exercise from any government property (at any level of government).
My point is that some government officials are cowed into creating unconstitutional policies and rulings because they fear that someone may be offended — or even turn violent.
http://www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org/press-release/ninth-circuit-upholds-ban-on-american-flag-shirts-in-a-california-high-school/
Instead of punishing those bullies who threaten violence, the government becomes part of the bullied crowd (and forces others to acquiesce to the threats). The lesson learned is that bullying and threats of violence work to get one’s way and to intimidate others. Government, which is supposed to protect us and our rights, caves to the bullies and fails to perform its most basic function.
The whole purpose of the First Amendment was to protect the rights for differing religions and opinions to be expressed, despite the fact that they may offend some other people. If we were required not to offend anyone, then we would all be required to be one religion (e.g. Protestant) and we could only discuss the weather (and government would force us to believe in global warming, not just climate change/weirding/nom-du-jour).
That the coach was not allowed to pray out loud (much less not allowed to pray in silence) is clearly against the intention of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That the Supreme Court has ruled against such expression of opinion or faith on even the property of local governments is likewise against their intention, too. It is these types of Supreme Court misinterpretations of the Constitution that have made the coach’s case less than open and shut — at least in the eyes of the very same government that is supposed to protect his right to do so. The Constitution is no longer being followed as written (letter of the supreme law of the land) or as intended (spirit of the supreme law of the land).
Some people have told us that the Constitution is out of date, but human nature has not changed. The same need for the First Amendment (and the rest of the Bill of rights, and the rest of the Constitution) exists today as it did then, because there are people today — just as there were then — who insist upon abridging our freedoms of expression and the practices of our beliefs (as well as other natural or God given rights).