PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK

                                                                                by asbury tune

            Im going to rant for a few minutes.  If you are easily offended, you may lose some of your more delicate skin if you read it.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. 

            Several times in the last couple of years I have received an email that makes me cringe.  This email states that a majorityand it gives a percentage, although it does not say where the figures came fromof citizens of the United States want Christian prayer offered at school functions.  It says that, since this is a government by the majority, these people should tell all those who disagree to sit down and shut up.  It is arrogant, offensive, and dangerous.

            This email urges violation of basic rights by a supposed majority without allowing recourse to the dissenters.  It would gut the First Amendment, making the guarantee of religious freedom useless as it trumpets the right of the majority to that freedom.  It urges this majority to take away the rights of the minority without ever putting the subject up for consideration in any forum other than cyberspace.  It also demonstrates the failure of the educational system. 

            Every schoolchild knows that Pilgrims and some other colonists came to the coloniesnow our countrybecause they were persecuted for their religious beliefs.  That persecution might have been as mild as forcing the colonists to attend a church they didnt want to attend, or as extreme as execution for attending a non-sanctioned church.  In any case, these people were serious about their religion, and they left a settled country to come to a wilderness in order to keep that religionwhichever it wasintact.  The First Amendment was written to guarantee that the persecution would stop.   The email urges persecution again.

This is a basic failure of the educational system.

            The First Amendment also guarantees the right to speech and press.  We may say or print anything we wish without fear of governmental retaliation.  (Of course, this does have limits:  no sedition, no inciting to riot, and so on.)  It certainly guarantees citizens the right to speak his/her mind on political or religious issues.  The ideas expressed dont have to be popular.  The ideas dont have to kowtow to any group.  The ideas dont even have to make sense.  The speaker still has the right to speak.

            The other side of that coin is that the listener has the right not to listen.  No speaker may treat others as a captive audience.  (In other words, you dont have to read this if you dont want to.)  Each persons rights end at the other persons nose.

            The fourth freedom is the freedom to assemble peaceably.  Citizens may come together in a group for their own purposessay graduations or school award ceremonies, to watch movies, to do any number of things. 

            The First Amendment guarantees that the government will not block those four freedoms, nor will government force a religion onto the citizenry while they are enjoying those freedoms.  In other words, because the public schools are an arm of the state, schools may not force the audience to pray or to listen to a prayer when assembled for a school function. 

            What is the function of the First Amendment?  It was written to protect the minority from the majority, to protect unpopular ideas and religions.  The majority needs no protection; the majority votes into office those who will do their bidding.  The minority needs the protection, and needs it from precisely the sort of action this email urges.  The men who wrote the Bill of Rights deliberately guaranteed that the minority would be able to worship as they please, even if it didnt please their neighbors.  Furthermore, they placed this amendment at the top of the Bill of Rights.  Coincidental?  I dont think so.  We elect our official government on the basis of ideas and words; protection of those ideas and words is paramount.  This email urges erosion of that protection.     

            The email wants to curtail the rights of freedom of worship, speech, and assembly of the minority in an unconstitutional manner.  Ironically, the proponents of this idea are also those who send me the sentimental emails about respect for those who died for the ideals and freedoms of this country.  They make much of how wonderful this country is as they seek to undermine one of the basic building blocks that made this country the envy of the world for its freedoms.