ACLU again attacking student-led prayer

ACLU again attacking student-led prayer

A plan allowing students at all six Ouachita Parish high schools to include student led prayers at graduations next week is unconstitutional, the head of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has told school officials.

Joe Cook said the parish school system is “trying to do an end-run around the Constitution with the so called student-led prayers.”

The parish school board announced earlier this month that each senior class would be given the choice of whether to include a prayer in its ceremony. Those choosing to pray will elect a student to deliver the message.

Cook said the policy sent a message endorsing prayer.

“I’m proud of all of the students for wanting to do that,” Superintendent Bob Webber said. “There is no intent to discriminate against anyone. We are simply allowing the students to continue the tradition of prayer at graduation.

“We’re going to allow it with little or no influence by the adults concerned.”

Cook faxed a letter on American Civil Liberties Union letterhead late Tuesday to Webber and Ouachita Parish High School principal Todd Guice. It accused them of “trying a shell game of ’student-led prayers’ to address legal problems with a minister-led prayer at OPHS in 2006.”

“We’ve gotten more complaints out of that school system than any other besides Tangipahoa Parish,” Cook said Wednesday. The ACLU has been involved in litigation over the years witih Tangipahoa Parish schools over religious issues.

“I consider that a compliment,” Weber said later in response. “I don’t necessarily agree that they have gotten that many complaints about us.

The school system received a letter earlier this year regarding a complaint that it received about last year’s graduation ceremony at OPHS. The ceremony included a prayer led by a minister.

Guice said this year’s senior class voted unanimously to have prayer at its graduation ceremony.

Guice said he offered any objecting student a chance to discuss the matter privately. He said no one took him up on the offer.

If the prayer is student-initiated and student-led, it’s perfectly constitutional. Seems to be the case here, so what’s the beef ACLU?

The ACLU is once again pushing back the boundaries of the First Amendment in its ongoing effort to silence public prayer. Why does the ACLU insist on silencing public prayer? Who exactly is harmed when a prayer is recited? Just the ACLU's psyche. But no matter, the ACLU will break out the muzzle anyway and twist the intent of the First Amendment further beyond recognition.

The IS the same Joe Cook who called a school board who opened meeting with a prayer a bunch of Islamic terrorists and attacked a Katrina memorial because of the inclusion of a cross…a memorial that was on private land, funded with private money and erected by private citizens…but in Joe Cook’s book, if it is NEAR public land it’s “unconstitutional.”