The following is a transcript of Todd’s morning radio commentary – heard on hundreds of stations around the nation.
Hello Americans, I’m Todd Starnes. Stand by for news and commentary next.
The good people of Orrville, Ohio start every school board meeting with a word of prayer. They also recite the pledge of allegiance.
This sort of behavior used to be common in the United States – until our public school districts were hijacked by godless heathen atheists along with sex and gender revolutionaries.
But in Orrville they still pledge and pray — in the name of our savior Jesus Christ. And that turned out to trigger a bunch of out of town atheists from Wisconsin.
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The Freedom From Religion Foundation says such prayers are illegal – unconstitutional. And they want the district to cease and desist.
“Students and parents have the right — and often have reason — to participate in school board meetings. It is coercive, embarrassing and intimidating for nonreligious citizens to be required to make a public showing of their nonbelief (by not participating) or else to display deference toward a religious sentiment in which they disbelieve,” attorney Karen Heineman wrote in a letter to the school board president.
The FFRF says the prayers are coercive, embarrassing and intimidating for non-religious citizens.
“Public schools exist to educate, not to indoctrinate,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The board presumes to speak for the religious belief of the entire population of Orville City — a presumption that is quite certainly false.”
But the fact is that no one is forced to pray. No one, not even a godless heathen, is even forced to listen to the prayer.
Beyond that – why in the world would a bunch of aggrieved atheists be bothered that people would pray to a deity that they don’t even believe exists?