Amendment 2 of the Missouri Constitution, also known as the "right to pray" amendment, passed yesterday by a wide margin, and is purported to clarify the status of religion in Missouri schools. It's wholly unnecessary, threatens the separation of church and state, and could allow students to opt out of any assignments that go "against their religion." From the NY Times :
But the amendment is unnecessary because the state and federal constitutions and court rulings already guarantee these rights. It would, instead, create confusion and wreak havoc in classrooms by giving students the right to refuse to read anything or do any assignments that they claim offends their religious views.What bothers me most is that the foundation of this amendment is the every-growing narrative that somehow "christianity is under attack." A large majority of Missouri's citizens practice some form of christianity or identify as christians, so I doubt that's hardly the case, but it could could be harmful to religious minorities. The Post Dispatch's Tim Townsend clarifies:
The measure has already provoked lawsuits over its ballot wording, which plaintiffs argue is a Trojan horse attack on the state's 200-year-old protections for religious minorities, public education and church-state separation. Those lawsuits failed in Missouri's courts, and the measure's ballot wording will stand as written.He adds:
Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have questioned how disturbance or disruption would later be defined. What if one person's "right to pray" intrudes on another's right to abstain from prayer, or to pray according to the tenets of his or her own faith?It's almost, nay, it is, distasteful the way supporters of this amendment claim a "threat" against christianity, especially after six people died in a shooting at Sikh temple in Wisconsin this weekend, and in Missouri itself, just one day later, a mosque was burned to the ground.
While I don't agree with what Missouri has just done, I think your flow of logic is just a tad skewed. For example:
ReplyDelete"What bothers me most is that the foundation of this amendment is the every-growing narrative that somehow "christianity is under attack." A large majority of Missouri's citizens practice some form of christianity or identify as christians, . . ."
Do you think that people belonging to a certain entity have to be in a minority position to be under attack? For example, since the United States is the greatest military power on earth, it couldn't claim to be under attack on 9/11?
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". . .it is, distasteful the way supporters of this amendment claim a "threat" against christianity, especially after six people died in a shooting at Sihk temple in Wisconsin this weekend, and in Missouri itself, just one day later."
Again, are you suggesting that an entity can't claim to be under attack if some other entity has been attacked? Or if the other entity's attack has been of a different nature? This seems very incoherent thinking to me.