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Forcing people to pray is authoritarian. Not forcing them to is not authoritarian. Organized prayer in schools is forcing people to pray. Abolishing organize

• pattrn 8y ago
  The question did not mention forcing people to pray or organized prayer. Your last two statements would not be possible if the government "[abolished] school prayer." If that's not what this is about, then they should have written the question more specifically. As it is, they included _all_ forms of prayer -- both organized and voluntary -- in their question. That's the problem I have with this entire survey: it uses language loosely, and does so in a manner that shows bias. From what you wrote, I think we agree on the definition of authoritarian, and I suspect if you interpreted "abolish school prayer" the way I did (abolishing all prayer at schools), then we might agree on all points :).
• rayiner 8y ago
  Your “on their own time” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The debate over the last three decades has not been about “forcing people to pray.” It has been over whether students can pray “on school time” or must do so “on their own time.” The current interpretation of the Establishment Clause requires schools to prohibit student-led prayers at school events, lest it seem like such prayer is being given official sanction. I think forcing kids to pray in school is clearly authoritarian. I don’t think it’s clear that banning them from doing so is anti-authoritarian. As I mentioned in a sibling post, you can reframe both sides of the debate as “authoritarian” or anti-authoritarian. Here, it’s the majority’s right to publicly practice their religion versus the minority’s right to participate in school free from public displays of religion. The debate isn’t about authoritarianism at all, but about the existence and scope of their rights. Is the right to practice one’s religion limited to practicing it in private? In public? Along with a group that happens to make up the majority of the community? Is there such a thing as a right to be free of religion?
  • throwawayjava 8y ago
    > The current interpretation of the Establishment Clause requires schools to prohibit student-led prayers at school events This issue is still in flux and is more complex than this. Santa Fe ruled that the school's practice of running an election to select a person who then says a prayer on a PA system before a football game was unconstitutional. But after Santa Fe was decided, the 5th circuit ruled in favor of Ward by finding that explicitly prohibiting student-led prayers is also unconstitutional! (At this point you've got to feel real bad for the school... damned from one side and damned again by the other.) Also after Sante Fe, Texas passed RVAA which explicitly allows student-led prayers at school events. The constitutionality of those provisions have not been tested in SCOTUS. So generally, the current state of affairs is quite subtle and messy. Student-led prayers at voluntary student-organized events are certainly allowed. Employee-led prayers in front of students are certainly not allowed in any circumstance. Everything in-between is murky, and none of the case law is particularly revealing. E.g., what if Sante Fe had not used the PA system and didn't have any voting/guidelines about praying? Much of the legal reasoning in the majority opinion would not have been applicable.