(no subject)
For your interest and consumption, here is an interesting letter to the editor that ran in today's Tuscaloosa News...
We still have religious freedoms
Bob Collins
Birmingham
January 06, 2004
Dear Editor: It is difficult to imagine a letter with more misconceptions than Dorothy Alford’s “God isn’t welcome here anymore," (12/31/03). Alford is undoubtedly sincere, but she has been badly misled into attacking her own most precious right -- religious freedom.
No U.S. court has ruled “against the Ten Commandments." There are many legal ways for government to display the commandments. Federal judges, a majority of whom were Christians, agreed that Roy Moore’s monument violated the constitutional principle that government could not endorse a particular religious doctrine. Since Moore knew where the legal line was, and purposely stepped over it, he violated his campaign promise because he promoted himself instead of the commandments.
Alford then claims that “school prayer was made unconstitutional in 1962." This will surely come as a surprise to the hundreds of Christian student organizations that meet every week in Alabama public schools to pray, study the Bible and witness. The courts have repeatedly affirmed this right so long as it is voluntary, student-led and on non-instructional time. Alford thinks things were better before 1962. Just what does she miss? A million Alabamians being denied the right to vote, having good jobs or living with the fear of being lynched?
“Religious freedom" does not mean that the government promotes your beliefs and no one else’s. Freedom has to apply equally to everyone.
We still have religious freedoms
Bob Collins
Birmingham
January 06, 2004
Dear Editor: It is difficult to imagine a letter with more misconceptions than Dorothy Alford’s “God isn’t welcome here anymore," (12/31/03). Alford is undoubtedly sincere, but she has been badly misled into attacking her own most precious right -- religious freedom.
No U.S. court has ruled “against the Ten Commandments." There are many legal ways for government to display the commandments. Federal judges, a majority of whom were Christians, agreed that Roy Moore’s monument violated the constitutional principle that government could not endorse a particular religious doctrine. Since Moore knew where the legal line was, and purposely stepped over it, he violated his campaign promise because he promoted himself instead of the commandments.
Alford then claims that “school prayer was made unconstitutional in 1962." This will surely come as a surprise to the hundreds of Christian student organizations that meet every week in Alabama public schools to pray, study the Bible and witness. The courts have repeatedly affirmed this right so long as it is voluntary, student-led and on non-instructional time. Alford thinks things were better before 1962. Just what does she miss? A million Alabamians being denied the right to vote, having good jobs or living with the fear of being lynched?
“Religious freedom" does not mean that the government promotes your beliefs and no one else’s. Freedom has to apply equally to everyone.