Saturday, May 21, 2011

Backhanded Help

I don't know how many people haven't yet heard about Damon Fowler's case yet. The short version of it is that a school was sponsoring prayers during graduation ceremonies. A student at the school, Damon, pointed out this was illegal and promised to contact the ACLU should the school continue.

The school, not being completely stupid, backed down and removed the prayer, but this caused public outrage. Community members started meeting at the local church to figure out how to worm prayer back into the ceremony, teachers publicly slandered him, and Damon started receiving death threats.

At the "class night", apparently a dress rehearsal for the graduation ceremony with senior awards mixed in, the school had its "moment of silence" which was anything but silent as the school allowed a student "leading" the moment of silence to lead the audience, instead, in prayer. Then, at the graduation itself, she did the same thing.

In the meantime, Damon's parents have promised to no longer help him pay for college and have apparently abandoned him, throwing his stuff on the lawn and then leaving for an unplanned "vacation".

Fortunately, the atheist community has done a fantastic job of coming together to support him. Currently, he's received nearly $10,000 in donations for a college fund.

To be fair, it's not only the atheist community that's decried the actions of those antagonizing Damon for enforcing Constitutional law. Many Christians have condemned them as well.

Well, kinda....

Here's a perfect example. In this article, a pastor chastises Christians who behave like so, but in doing so, says the following:
The power of evil through Satan is largely at work to hinder the love of Jesus in this world.
Translation: Don't be a jerk, but this kid is Satan.

Big help there.

1 comment:

Conroy said...

Sponsoring prayer through money? I don't get it? If anything, banning religion from a public ceremony is essentially communism.

I agree that we shouldn't sponsor beliefs but dang, don't cry about it really, its just a prayer, snap if there is no god then why should anyone care about a prayer?