Today’s post comes from multiple sources on Facebook with a couple of different variations.
Why is it that 70% of the population can’t stop a Muslim Mosque from being built at ground zero, but one Atheist can get crosses removed from a soldier’s grave and prayer taken out of schools?
To avoid distraction I’m going to set aside the words “mosque” and “ground zero” even though there’s much discussion to be had about accuracy there. I’m also going to just toss out the words “crosses removed from a soldier’s grave” because that’s demonstrably false and likely included only to be inflammatory.
So the basic question remains “Why can’t the opinion of 70% of Americans stop a few Muslims from doing something unpopular even though one atheist got prayer booted from schools.”
Let’s take a quick read of the First Amendment to the United State Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
So as to the first part of the question the answer is simply “because no matter how many people don’t like it, the Muslims have the Constitutional protection to do to build their building — just like everybody else.” So while you can go out an protest it, write a letter to the editor decrying it, or sign a petition against it, you cannot ask the government to stop it. They can’t legally do anything about it.
Let’s move on to the second part. Did “one man” get prayer taken out of Schools? A quick to trip Wikipedia gives us the basic facts that the cases involving school prayer were:
Engel v. Vitale [1962] and Abington School District v. Schempp [1963] (which included the well publicised case of Murray v. Curlett), establishing the current prohibition on state-sponsored prayer in schools.
Aha! So it was multiple trips to the Supreme Court and a ruling on an interpretation of the Constitution that removed state sponsored prayer from schools. Now we can argue over whether or not a teacher-led prayer actually amounts to an establishment of religion but the obvious fact is that it was not one person who got “prayer removed from schools” it was multiple cases before nine duly-appointed Supreme Court Justices holding copies of the same Constitution that keeps the government from prohibiting Christians and Muslims alike from building their places of worship.
Now there’s one last bit of this status to debunk. Prayer hasn’t been “taken out of schools.” As it turns out, students can still pray all they want in public schools. The rules are that the teacher (a state employee) can’t lead the prayer and no student can be forced to pray if they don’t want to. The prayer also can’t be disruptive to class or events. That sounds positively…reasonable.
Do your own research, folks. A viral Facebook status is no place to get your view of history, law, or current events.