From: greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield)
Subject: Re: Prayer at graduations
Organization: Syracuse University, CIS Dept.
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 13:37:02 EDT

In article <nate.372@psygate.psych.indiana.edu> nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
>greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield) writes:
>>Furthermore, I would venture a guess that even non-administration 
>>graduation speakers would be free to speak of god or religion.
>
>    That would seem like a safe guess, but in at least one case it has
>been disproven. There was a recent case in which a high school valedictorian
>was prevented from speaking about his religious faith and reacted by 
>arranging to sneeze during his speech to which his classmates responded
>(on cue) "God Bless You".

When you say "case," do you mean a *court* case, or just an example.  It
sounds like you mean the latter.  If so, then this sets absoultely no
precedent--it is just the misguided position of one school administration.

I seem to recall around Syracuse there was some talk that a few schools were
planning to ignore the recent ruling and include a benediction anyway.  This
is similar in that it sets no precedent--it is just the misguided act (and
malicious disobeyance of the law) of some administrators, who know full well
that *anything* goes until someone *complains*.  And we know how often
someone complains.  (How long have public graduations had benedictions?  And
how many times has someone challenged those benedictions?)


>>However, I seriously doubt that the SC decision could be interpreted to
>>suggest that, for example, a valedictorian could be prohibited from
>>personally thanking god in his speech--the valedictorian is not an agent
>>of the school (and, therefore, the government), and to prohibit any mention
>>of god would be to infringe upon the valedictorian's free speech rights.
>
>    I would agree with this completely. Unfortunately, for whatever 
>reason, the laws are not being enforced in that way. Personally, I'm not 
>terribly religious and I'm all for separation of church and state, but 
>I think that we've got a situation in which overzealous anti-religious
>enforcement may result in a backlash. I don't want the separation of
>church and state policy to be overturned, so I think that it's in all
>our best interests to clean up the way the current policy is enforced.
>That means (firstly) that we have to admit that there's a problem, and
>(secondly) that we're going to have to learn to grit our teeth and bear
>it when someone wants to stand up and exercise their constitutional 
>right to say something we disagree with. At this point I would say that
>the people in charge are being overly sensitive about religion in schools.

But, you see, the Court's position has been based upon the problem with
an *agent* of the school (and, thereby, of the state) promoting religion--
not private individuals promoting religion.  The problem with school *agents*
doing it is that 1) they are explicitly prohibited from doing such by the
constitution, and 2) that there may be a coercive effect even in "voluntary"
participation programs.

This has nothing to do with a student spouting his religious line.  The only
thing that could reasonably be used to prevent that case, were it to get
out of hand, would be time, place and manner restrictions that were not
predicated on the *content* of the speech.


-- 
J. S. Greenfield                                         greeny@top.cis.syr.edu
(I like to put 'greeny' here, 
but my d*mn system wants a 
*real* name!)                        "What's the difference between an orange?"
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