What bothers me about John Freshwater and his actions is they border on obsession, an unhealthy obsession. They HAVE to proselytize 24/7 and if they aren’t they feel like losers or they want to blame others and become the victims.
Most people who have unhealthy obsessions usually require mental help or worse they get put in jail for hurting others – but it seems no one really considers religious obsession wrong.
Conservative Internet news site WorldNetDaily posted a story yesterday about some teachers in Albemarle School District in Virginia, who are refusing orders from the administration to pass out adverts for the children’s summer camp called Camp Quest. The camp is the first summer camp that caters to atheists, humanists, and freethinkers. This isn’t the first time the school district has been in trouble for their lack of equal access. A flyer for a Unitarian Universalist holiday program was not passed out. A lawsuit was filed and the school district lost.
In 1996, Nancy Powell’s son, who was in 1st grade at the time, was present when the Boy Scouts held a recruitment presentation in his school cafeteria during lunch time. Knowing at the time the religious discrimination that the Boy Scouts practice, Powell filed a lawsuit against the school district. She claimed that the recruitment event was an illegal mixing of church and state. Even though the school finally won the suit, they had changed their policy and now no group is allowed to recruit children during school hours. Powell succeeded in her cause. So what is the big fuss over what is probably the oldest youth group in America – steeped in tradition and patriotic fever?
A figure in one of the landmark cases concerning church and state died on August 20th. Vashti McCollum won an 8-1 US Supreme Court decision, in 1948, that ended religious instruction in the public schools.
The Columbus Dispatch reported today that it seems some parents of children who currently attend private school are enrolling their children in troubled public schools so they can get a voucher to pay for the private school they attend. Those who already attend private schools or are home schooled are not eligible to get vouchers.
Lame duck Ohio Governor Bob Taft, obviously knowing he has nothing to protect, reversed course and called for a legal review of Ohio’s 10th-grade biology teaching standards in light of the recent Dover, PA ID court decision. He also plans to ask future state board appointees about their views on the issue of Intelligent Design.
