[Rich]

Originally posted by Texas Aggie
The issue of the thread is the coach resigning. In my view, he doesn't really advance his position by resigning. He should make his thoughts known and move forward. We don't always get to do what we want, even if occassionally our rights get unconstitutionally violated.

As far as this nonsense about islamic or buddist prayer, we don't live in a society that is largly (or really, even remotely) of those religions. There is no "recognition" by the state of someone prayer, even if the coach or a teacher is involved. Even if there was, it doesn't trump the free exercise clause regardless of what idiotic decision the Supreme Court has made with respect to school prayers. If you look very closely at the decisions over the last 20 or so years, you will find the SC disallowing prayer in secondary (and below) schools while essentially allowing the same thing in colleges and other public settings. There is absolutely no constitutional basis for this. Further, the original basis of the establishment clause is NOT to keep religion out of schools, it is actually to keep the federal government from monkeying around in state established churches! Yes, you read that right: hence the phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." It means no national religion establishment and no favoring of one state religion over another.

We don't have any state establishments anymore (Mass. had one until at least 1832), so the establishment clause basically doesn't have the meaning it did in the early years of our country. Essentially, virtually all arguments we have on school prayer, religious displays, etc., are POLITICAL and not constitutional. In other words, they should be left up to the people and not the courts. Even as a Christian, I've got zero problem with a Star of David or other Jewish symbol in a public display, and if a town really wants to put up a Budda statute, fine. Nobody will, of course. These arguments are theorectical nonsense. We don't shut down mosques or make it illegal to go there. Muslims have the same free exercise right we all do, but that doesn't mean they get to put a symbol of their religion in the town square if the city council doesn't want it there.

I wrote a law review-type article on this issue in law school. Drove my prof absolutely mad. Of course, he couldn't refute any of it, hated every word, and gave me an A in the course and high grade in the class.

So what you are saying is that the majority wins. The majority of students are Christian, so the prayers should be that way too.

The founding fathers were smart enough to not set up the US as a direct democracy. Sometimes the majority isn't right -- sometimes the outnumbered minority's rights need to be protected, as well. Unfortunately, politicians are afraid to rule without polls (after all, their #1 priority is getting re-elected) so it leaves the (protected) courts to have to do the dirty work.

It's never about the prayer. In this case, it's about the coach taking his ball and going home because someone dared tell him what to do.