[Vision2020] Wall of separation argument leaps tall building in a single bound!

[Donovan Arnold]

"Let me get this straight: arguing that city council
meetings should not officially begin with a Christian
prayer is equivalent to a total ban on religious
expression and this will ultimately lead to genocide?"
JO

Who is arguing that city council meeting should began
with a "Christian Prayer"?

I was simply arguing that if a large number of people
feel a need to pray before a meeting that the
remainder allow them that courtesy. 

If 90% of the people in a room need to go to bathroom
and I do not, is it polite for me try and block the
break because I do not feel a need to pee at the
moment?

If I am at a meeting with ten people and 4 are
diabetic and need to eat at 6 PM, should I vote to
have dinner at 7 PM because I would rather eat at 7
PM? No, I do the courteous thing.

Same thing goes with public meetings. Some people do
not feel comfortable that their elected officials will
make the right decisions without some guidance from a
divine being, why not afford a few seconds for them to
meet that need?

Why not? Is waiting one minute for people to do
something that is very important to them so hard? You
wait 7 minutes for soda at the checkout stand, yet you
cannot wait one minute to do something nice for a
fellow human? If it does not cause you an overbearing
hardship, just be nice and let people meet their
needs.

Donovan J Arnold

--- Joan Opyr <joanopyr at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Let me get this straight: arguing that city council
> meetings should not 
> officially begin with a Christian prayer is
> equivalent to a total ban 
> on religious expression and this will ultimately
> lead to genocide?  Is 
> this paranoia or just ridiculous hyperbole?  Our
> secular government 
> should not begin secular meetings with
> officially-led, 
> officially-sanctioned prayers to any deity, be that
> deity Yahweh, 
> Jesus, Kali or Odin.  Insisting on a "wall of
> separation" between 
> church and state protects both government and
> religion.  You think it's 
> harmful to religion?  Have a look at those countries
> with official 
> state religions -- let's start, since Sunil
> mentioned Episcopalians, 
> with Great Britain.  Anglicanism is the official
> state religion.  How 
> many British people attend services in the Anglican
> Church?  Last time 
> I checked, it was about 4%.  The numbers for the
> Lutherans in 
> Scandinavia are even worse.
> 
> I don't want to stop Kai, Pat, Donovan, or Roger
> from praying wherever 
> and whenever they like.  Perhaps Donovan will stand
> up at the next 
> Moscow City Council meeting on zoning issues or our
> big-box problem and 
> use his five minutes of floor time to offer up an
> Ave Maria.  There's 
> nothing whatsoever to stop him.  What can't happen
> is for Mayor 
> Marshall Comstock to begin the city council meeting
> by leading us all 
> in the Our Father, having first sensitively invited
> all non-Christians 
> to wait out in the hallway.  Do you get the
> difference between these 
> two scenarios?  The former is an example of the free
> exercise of 
> religion; the latter is the attempted establishment
> of a 
> government-sanctioned religion.  Yeah, it's
> government-sanctioned 
> religion on a small scale, but it's unConstitutional
> and it is 
> consequently verboten.
> 
> On a related note, it is not difference that leads
> to genocide; it's 
> intolerance for difference.  It's demonizing those
> we identify as 
> "other."  Who rocked the boat in Great Falls, SC?  A
> Wiccan woman.  
> Want to guess how much fun her life is these days? 
> Care to guess how 
> many times she's been invited to love Great Falls or
> leave it?  The U. 
> S. Constitution is packed with deliberate checks on
> the will of the 
> majority, checks designed to protect the rights of
> the minority.  If 
> the majority rejects those checks (and, often, it
> clearly does), it 
> expresses its anger and disdain by spending tax
> dollars attempting to 
> shove religion or English-only laws or
> anti-immigrant legislation down 
> the minority's throat.  Good thing, then, that we
> have an independent 
> judiciary in place to check the will of the
> majority.  Not that this 
> system always works (Priscilla Owen and William
> Pryor are likely to do 
> untold damage to the wall of separation before their
> lifetime 
> appointments to the federal bench end) but it's the
> best we've got.
> 
> Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
> www.auntie-establishment.com
> 
>
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