Prayer, Jail, and the Tyrants of Men

I suppose I am not surprised by much anymore. So when I read that two men were potentially facing up to six months in prison for saying a prayer at a school event, the only thing I could really think was "better get used to it."

Here's the story on CNN if you haven't heard about it. There can be little doubt, at least from my perspective, that these two men are guilty of violating the law. A more important issue for any citizen of this country is that the law exists at all.

School systems already have guidelines for handling internal issues of this nature. The Supreme Court has ruled time and time again in ways that protect the basic freedom of every student in any public education setting to be free from unwanted religious instruction, prayer, or practice. These two men seemingly violated the standards set by the court and I am very sure, the standards set by their school as well.

Normal people living in normal places would expect a complaint to be issued, received by the school, discipline actions to be dolled out to all guilty parties. Sometimes the guilty get a slap on the wrist, other times they loose their jobs. That's the system, that's America.

The real story here isn't that a couple of administrators said a prayer in a school. The real story is that for whatever reason Pace, Florida has determined that "normal" responses to religious expression, even wrong-headed expression, are insufficient without the threat of jail time. That's the real story. And the real story still doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me because in this culture war of ours, we have lost all perspective as a nation.

I won't be surprised if the crazies on the Right get this story swelling in the minds of the American people. In this particular case, I hope they do. Because the crazies on the Left managed to generate law with the threat of imprisonment over a crime of ideological differance. Such tyrants of the mind and heart are of the highest, most abusive order in any civilization. And these must be greeted with a great and ferocious intensity from free-thinking Americans on the Left and the Right.

My take: pray all you want, out loud and in public and in school. Don't expect to keep your job, and don't expect me to advocate that you should because I won't. But expect me to without question rise against any law that would put you behind bars for choosing to express your ideology in public.