Feminist Atheist Killjoy

So I was in wonder of Dylan Byers’ stupidity on Tuesday when a post caught my eye about school prayer. Now I know my stance is that generally speaking atheists give zero fucks about what other people do with the provision that other people’s religions don’t infringe on the rights of others. However, I do have issues with school prayer, and not just as an atheist but there are complex issues to consider before we go along with the moment of contemplation.

Regardless, Travis Gettys wrote about the whole thing for Raw Story. South Carolina (the less of the Carolinas) legislatures have come up with something they are calling a compromise, but I’d go with waste of the legislature’s time, to fix the unconstitutional bill that requires teachers to lead prayer in public school. What the what? Sorry, I guess South Carolina found an even better way to waste the legislature’s time. Seven Democrats and three Republican co-sponsors introduced the measure to bring the bill in line with the Supreme Court rulings because well, yeah mandatory school prayer is unconstitutional. Our elected leaders, ladies and gentlemen.

The revised bill calls for a moment of contemplation, reflection, or prayer, which makes this bill redundant because South Carolina has mandated moments of silence in public schools starting in 1995. Because of course. Let’s read what the legislators are saying about the bill:

“The compromise would be to have the students to pray to whomever they want to. If they want to do away with teachers conducting the prayer, that would be fine with us. The essential part of the bill, the important part, is putting prayer back in school,” state Rep. Wendell Gilliard (D-Charleston).

“Even the atheists, it gives them the option of praying or not praying without anybody interfering,” Rep. Joseph Jefferson (D-Berkley).  [ßThis guy, atheists don’t pray.]

“Some of the folks say they never saw where prayer killed anyone in school but they saw what weapons did. We’re big on religious principles here. We pray in the General Assembly. We do it every session. What makes the General Assembly different from the school?" says Williams, who has a nice 67% grade from the NRA.

 Some of the Democrats in support of the bill are hiding behind, the my constituents want it line, which is probably bullshit because there is always at least one who wants something and one who doesn’t. Of course the ACLU is on it. They correctly point out that the state isn’t religiously homogeneous.

Seriously though, Williams is my favorite argument because didn’t a kid in Minnesota kill himself after being bully for being gay and then the bullies claimed religious freedom as Christians to protect themselves from a lawsuit? Additionally, I bet it was computers, computers kill students because they happen to have coming into schools during the rise in school shootings. Or, NAFTA, I bet it was NAFTA. Idiot.

The issue of course isn’t being conscribed into praying to a god you don’t believe in. I did it for years, and nothing came of it, except some interesting variations on the “Our Father.” The issue is students being singled out for different beliefs than those in power and by extension their connection to that power structure. Students who opt out, who would rather spend this time reading, or studying, will be singled out as different. And what about the class time it wastes that could be used for I don’t know actual education? Will a student who refuses to sit or sat in silence and instead reads, will that student be treated as a disruption?

I went to Catholic school complete with the ugly skirts and vests that may have been made we fabric that mixed polyester and burlap. So itchy. I wasn’t ever baptized (so my sisters and I are not part of the Catholic faith, that is to say we never left the faith, we just never belonged, more like witnesses to others) just the local public school’s roof fell in and my parents opted for the safer alternative. In Catholic school a lack of participation in faith matters way more than mouthing the words to prayers because of the sacraments. J and I did a teacher called Ms. Z, and this woman believed we were going to hell, our parents, possibly anyone I made eye contact with between birth and age seven. She actually said when our class was preparing for reconciliation that people who can’t ask for forgiveness through confession go to hell, which was frightening to seven year old me. J and I had to respond to this question for the next six years, “Are you really going to hell?” My crush asked me that in the third grade; I’ll never forget it.

I think it may have been the first time I had a cognitive thought about people staying and socializing exclusively within the categories they were prescribed…not in those terms of course. But this is something I wrestle with even now. Also, I think Ms. Z was the first person I associated with a person in power using her power, and acting on behalf of an institution, to bully those without power, and her belief that she was doing the right thing, which, and I don’t want to speak for J, provided me with all I needed to become the nonconformist I am today. Of course, we attended their school because we wanted the opportunities associated with a private education including potential access to college, and I know I’ve mentioned it before, kids who grew up where I did don’t always have the option of college.

I know people complain about the emotional damage from childhood, and I think we’re all better people for surviving it because almost everyone goes through it usually on both sides. But outside of zealots with some racism thrown in (Jesus, not a white guy, probably a brown Jew), things could have been so much worse. I can’t imagine what school would have been like if I were even more different from my peers. Or in a situation where I didn’t have a sister riding it out with me. The assertion that students can just remain silent assumes that those silent are atheists, so what about the kids of other faiths? Asking kids who don’t believe in the dominate religion to stay silent or pretend for the benefit of a tyrannical majority is damaging to those silenced students. Prayer doesn’t have a place in schools. If students want to do it on their own time with their own money, then so be it, but otherwise it is a violation of the separation of church and state. Someone want to complain about how Christians are being persecuted and their rights being violated? No, good because they aren’t.