Last June the Supreme Court ruled against student-led prayers at high school football games. Last Friday night citizens from Santa Fe made an orderly protest against this decision by having a voluntary and spontaneous prayer before their first football game of the season. I salute them. This may be the beginning of a grassroots movement to protest what many consider an unfair suppression of First Amendment rights of freedom of speech.
The first ten amendments to the Constitution were ratified effective December 15, 1791. Better known and the Bill of Rights, the first of these reads like this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." This amendment has been appealed to by a whole host of liberals as a basis for allowing every kind of language and literature imaginable to be spoken and disseminated on the air waves, in magazines, etc. It will be extremely interesting to see how they react when their own arguments are turned on them.
Surely it wasn't any thing like student-led prayer before football games that our founding fathers had in mind when they proposed and ratified the First Amendment. Praying on such occasions doesn't establish a religion, nor does it infringe upon anyone's right to "the free exercise thereof." Seems to me the ban of it comes closer to prohibiting the free exercise of religion than anything else. I see people at football games who show no respect for our flag when the National Anthem is sung or played, but I haven't heard about any movements afoot to stop its being played. Now these people sit quietly and apparently don't participate in the Star Spangled Banner. Why can't those who don't believe in prayer on such occasions do the same and leave the rest of us alone?
Lonnie Ritchie