Replies to post #481217 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

That will take a while, I think. When I was in elementary school, we had a brief bible reading (the Old Testament, for the Jewish kids), and then said the Lord's Prayer.

Nobody really took it seriously. It was just something they made us do.

And then at some point the Supreme Court decided that was wrong, so it stopped. Nobody I knew thought that was a big deal, either. And I lived in what at the time would have been considered staunchly Republican areas.

[blackhawks]

Not EVEN the Christo-Fascist right thinks that crucifixes in public schools would withstand challenges all the way to the SCOTUS.

Private schools can promote religious dogma. Public schools were prohibited from such in 1962. Hell, I remember in the 50's that we got out early one day a week so that Catholics attending nearby public schools could come to receive religious instruction in my parochial school.

Both I and my 🐕️ were greatly pleased with the early release.

Two constants in the 50's, for me, the above and the air raid sirens going off every Tue at 10:30 AM.

Sox fan mayor Richard J. Daly caught much shit for setting them off the evening the White Sox won the pennant in '59.

Not thinking, I suppose, that many Cub fans and non-baseball fans were not watching the game.

This decision came down when when the public school bodies were far less diverse religiously and ethnically than today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel_v._Vitale#:~:text=Vitale%2C%20370%20U.S.%20421%20(1962,violation%20of%20the%20First%20Amendment.

The Court said government support of religion results in indirect coercion of religious minorities: [21][22]

The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental coercion...That is not to say, of course, that laws officially prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion.