Barrett: School prayer censored; logic takes an extended vacation

I was all set to say somebody should form a Freedom from the Freedom from Religion Foundation Foundation when I saw that somebody has -- on Facebook. Prompting the thought was the Freedom from Religion Foundation's censorship of prayers at Hamilton County Schools sporting events.

Targets are plentiful if you want to lay blame for this fresh outburst of secularist pouting. There's the Supreme Court that substitutes wishful thinking for the text of the Constitution in rulings undercutting religious liberty. There's the schools administration, tripping over itself to surrender at the first gripe funneled through some busybody special interest.

And there's the special interest itself, the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Ruminating on its taffy-footed rationales for silencing prayer is fruitful -- assuming you first step through the looking glass. Here are my favorite attempted arguments by one Annie Laurie Gaylor, director of the foundation:

* "Students are a captive audience; they're required to go to school," quoth Gaylor. "When there is a violation like a prayer at a school, they're really vulnerable; it's a violation of their civil rights."

Memo from reality: Football games fall into a category of occurrences known as "extracurricular activities." One standard dictionary definition of "extracurricular" is "not part of the required curriculum." What part of "not required" don't the aggrieved atheists at the Freedom from Religion Foundation get?

* "This is the harm of religion in government: that the people who are religious believe they are the true citizens and the other people have no rights."

Do tell. Hamilton Countians would love to see the evidence that believers here hold a widespread view that "other people have no rights." Such a serious accusation could be suitably leveled against, say, the officially atheist government of China (death toll: 60 million) or the officially atheist government of the former Soviet Union (death toll: 20 million). But it ought not to be laid against peaceable believers without proof. Please provide that proof, Ms. Gaylor. Promptly. Or we might suspect your organization is bigoted and irresponsible.

* "It's perfectly ridiculous to have prayer at football games. Is their deity going to help them win the game? Whoever prays the hardest wins the game? I don't think so."

Here, Gaylor tips her hand. If her organization did not have enthusiastic hostility toward believers at its core, she would feel no need to broach -- in patronizing terms -- the subject of whether prayer works. That has no bearing on its constitutionality. To the contrary, allowing or forbidding prayer based on whether a third party believes it's effective is the sort of meddling the First Amendment aims to kick in the shins.

And one wonders how many prayers the perpetually distressed brethren at the Freedom from Religion Foundation have actually heard at school sporting events. The ones I've been privy to ask God for protection from injury and for a well-fought but fair contest. They are remarkably free of the aroma of barbecued heretics. Somebody somewhere may secretly plead with God to smite Hixson or Ooltewah or Dalton with chickenpox on any given Friday night, but that's not a sentiment often expressed in pregame invocations.

Desperate Davis

Democrat U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, of stimulus fame, must be in trouble in Tennessee's 4th District. His campaign circulated a letter demanding that challenger Scott DesJarlais apologize to law enforcement for likening the response of a police officer during an argument DesJarlais had with his ex-wife to a scene from "The Dukes of Hazzard." A Davis campaign spokesman bizarrely labeled the decade-old fuss "domestic violence." That would be news to the officer, who declared, "No behavior today warranted a criminal offense ... ."

Even more fun is the Davis camp's claim that the letter demanding that DesJarlais apologize was endorsed by three current or former law enforcement officers.

Manchester Police Chief Ross Simmons -- named as one of the endorsers -- says he never signed the letter and that he didn't "know all the facts in this case. ... [W]hile I saw this letter, I didn't write it or sign it," he told the Times Free Press.

Another supposed endorser, former Campbell County Sheriff Ron McClellan, was troubled when he first heard the letter's contents -- read to him by a reporter after the letter had been circulated.

"Gee whiz," McClellan told the Knoxville News Sentinel. "I guess I don't care that Mr. Davis used my name in a letter, but I just hate campaigns like that. ... I don't want to judge Mr. DesJarlais because I don't know him."

DesJarlais, he added, owes him no apology.

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