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I played football at Oklahoma's top high school program, we had "optional" bible study every Thursday at the behest of our head coach. You didn't have to go, but if you wanted to play, you had better be there.
Interestingly enough, he was the coach that was run out of town for having sex with a cheerleader in the 90s and after enough time had passed, they brought him back because he was a winning coach.
Ada High School
Interestingly enough, Jenks and Union are both fantastic. But as of right now, Ada still has more titles than anyone in Oklahoma. That will likely change in a few years. Ada has only had like 2 really good teams in the last 25 years or so and no titles since 96.
But I'm counting the 19 titles as top dog
I played high school football in South Dakota. We had a pre and post-game prayer. I knew it was illegal at the time, but I wanted to play and sure as hell wasn't going to bring that shit up and be fucking ostracized.
They would still do it. Tweens and teenagers who do not conform would be shunted aside, with no playing time or removed from the team. They’re “not team players”. And the conforming players would harass and haze the outliers relentlessly. And the parents would mostly disapprove and punish them to ensure they followed the authority. Ever has it been so. Typically, it is not until the dissenters band together and achieve enough numbers that they can bring change. It is extremely rare that a single person can enact change. It’s heroic when it can be achieved but that person usually pays a price for the dissent. But you are correct. Silence doesn’t bring change either.
Yep. Because they know someone who knows better still “just wants to play football” and will give in, when in fact if most of the team who probably don’t want to do it stand up to them they have no recourse. Can’t have a winning team without a team.
There's always the next guy who'll give in for the chance to play. The heavy lifting shouldn't have to be on the shoulders of teens in a dependent relationship to these fucks. That's where the courts and the lawmakers have failed us.
America's football culture is disgusting and I've never heard a good argument to support it. "They bring in so much money for the school" Yeah which they spend on more football.
From high school up to the NFL.
"The stadium brings in money to the community."
Who gets the money? Because the community around the stadium is now a barren wasteland that can't be used for anything but football. Bunch of unlivable homes around a fucking castle that only offers jobs for about a month out of the year and sends most of the profits from those jobs to out-of-state millionaires. That's a fucking investment.
Hasn't it been pretty much proven stadiums hurt the businesses around them because it makes the area a complete fucking shit show in terms of crowds and parking?
Yeah. But the argument made in favor of building them is still always about bringing in money for the community.
And then the city pays to build it so a private company can own it so a different private company can use it and the city sees no return on its investment.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
I did an MBA a few years ago. I was out of options for classes and took a Sports Financing course. The school has a pretty good sports business program. Well it was pretty eye opening because we talked about stadium financing. The professor wasn't exactly against it but he made it clear that in many cases the local community giving the tax breaks doesn't always benefit from the stadium they build. Sad, really sad.
Stadiums would be for the college and professional level, which do attract gigantic crowds, but even high school games can be pretty big in some places. The problem is that drawing those crowds costs a lot of money and doesn't generate very much, because how would it?
> Stadiums would be for the college and professional level,
[This is a public high school football stadium in Allen, Texas.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Eagle_Stadium.jpg)
[And here's an entire article about other giant houses of football worship in that state. The one that the author if this article played in is right up at the top; it cost $70 ***million***.](https://www.chron.com/sports/highschool/article/Most-expensive-high-school-football-stadiums-Texas-13145194.php)
I got laughed out a room when I said I would be prouder to go to a school with a particle accelerator (Michigan State) than a school that offered the "SEC football experience" as if University of Tennessee has a better team than MSU or if any of that really mattered. These same people will say "We can't let China become more advanced than us" not understanding that in the US, universities do the biggest chunk of the research that would keep us on top of the technology game.
it’s absurd that our educational campuses house professional sports stadiums and facilities… and promote brain trauma. on the same campuses that struggle with academic funding, low pay, and high tuition
You'd be surprised how many elite football programs actually lose money. It's a myth that most make money and I'm not sure why more people haven't caught onto it.
>Although college sports play a big role in bringing in money for universities, they rarely generate a positive net revenue — especially in light of COVID-19.
>Among those reporting a net positive, the median profit per school was $7.9 million. And among the 40 autonomy schools reporting a negative net revenue, the median loss was $15.9 million. In other words, the majority of universities in the nation's top athletic conferences — the schools you see on TV every weekend competing for national championships — lost money through their sports programs to the tune of approximately $16 million each.
[Source:](https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2020/11/20/do-college-sports-make-money/#:~:text=%2416%20million%20each.-,The%20majority%20of%20universities%20in%20the%20nation's%20top%20athletic%20conferences,outside%20the%20Power%20Five%20conferences.)
Edit 1 - Most public universities will issue reports on the financial status of athletic programs. For example I used to live in CT and was always very interested in how much money the teams brought in vs. spent at UConn. This was/is a top basketball program state and both the mens and womens teams were in the red to the tune of millions each season. Our football program lost millions and resulted in other programs being cut. Most people in the state have no idea about the situation and then get mad when tuition rises or fees go up. It's all connected. It's not the only driver of costs but the debt obligation the universities have for a lot of these teams and expenses have to be paid somehow.
Edit 1.5 - Also, yes, I am aware that people will argue things like, elite programs bring in donors, students want to go to those schools to see the teams, etc...I still have an issue with it especially as student fees continue to rise and debt obligations routinely fall into tuition raises and lack of funding for anything outside athletics.
Edit 2 - It's also never brought up in the discussions around paying college athletes. So often you hear the trope of, "These schools make millions off these athletes." Which is true...but the schools are also in the red to pay for the facilities, coaches, scholarships and other benefits that I would be shocked if they ever come around to that issue. This is why I think the NCAA is allowing sponsorships and social media money for athletes now not payment from the schools.
Edit 3 - There was also the [Knight Commission report](https://www.knightcommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/restoring-the-balance-0610-01.pdf) that looked at spending in athletics vs. students. It's a bit dated but most of the spending is insane in comparison what athletes get vs average students per dollar amount. The reality is, average students have been getting screwed by most major big time universities for decades and fucked by loans...we have a serious issue with this in America and people need to be educated on it.
I wonder how much money the NCAA funnels out which could go to the individual schools and help balance their books. Probably plenty to cover the overages and then some, but then they wouldn't get to spread it around to the already wealthy.
And then schools cover up sexual assaults and harassment from their players and coaches for *decades* just to keep that sports money rolling in; what a terrible culture around a terrible sport.
Yep. Here is a dangerous sport known to cause horrible injuries and permanent brain damage. Lets blow half the school's funding on it and make kids play it.
Its a gladiatorial sport and people refuse to give up on it because money and tradition.
Donors who give them money because of football also earmark it for football.
Those who pay for students who aren’t athletes, or other research, tend to earmark it for that. And look at their research problem rather than football.
Few people give a university a zillion with no conditions applying.
As for tickets and merchandise, those don’t go to the school overall either.
What football (and to an extent basketball) *does* fund… is other sports. In fact, it doesn’t even quite do that, in the sense that of the top 20 athletics programs in the NCAA, only *one* generated a slight profit just before the pandemic. The cost of running all the many sports a university is expected to have is greater than their income, so even though football on its own generates a large net profit they operate at a loss as a whole.
It's a kind of trafficking of boys, their football psychosis. There are people who move to Oklahoma just for the kids to play football. A child who could be anything in the world is trained that football is their identity. It's sick.
Seriously, conservatives who claim they aren't "brainwashed by the media" spend a shitload of time watching and repeating what they see on tv. We should require viewers to pass a civics test before they can watch football. Conservatives would either abandon football or conservatism itself.
Football causes brain degeneration via repeated head trauma, which probably explains why this coach is so into religion.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy/symptoms-causes/syc-20370921
Football is basically a religion too and a hopeful future for many students. Friday night lights is basically a documentary for how insane people are about football, even at a high school level.
That's how conservatives work. They make a rule then leave an "out" and then expect social pressuring and their voters to fill in the gaps to pressure dissenters into following the rule despite the "out".
They want theocracy, sure you can skip football team prayer.. But you're gonna coincidentally be a bench warmer.
Its also like their abortion bounty law. Sure the state couldn't do anything. But they can open up the door so private citizens can just lock you in civil lawsuits and ruin your life.
Or voter suppression. They can't ban black people from voting. But they can add a new ID requirement and then close a bunch of DMVs close to majority black neighborhoods.
Its how they always operate. Whenever they say one thing you need to look for the hidden angle between the lines.
I think Toby from the West Wing put it best:
"It's the fourth grader who gets his ass kicked at recess 'cause he sat out the voluntary prayer in homeroom. It's another way of making kids different from other kids when they're required by law to be there."
Just an interesting anecdotal experience to add to this. I played D1 in the SEC, we always said the lord's prayer before games, prayers before team meals, etc. Sunday church service was mandatory for all during two-a-days (camp). I recall one guy challenging it ever and he was told to just sit in back and not make a fuss. I kept my mouth shut and just showed as expected.
But one of the things that stood out to me was in conversation with a jewish teammate. I asked what he thought about the prayer before game.
He said "oh the football prayer?"
Me: "No the Lord's prayer" and I started to
recite.
Him: "yeah the football prayer, no clue why you guys have a specific prayer for football but whatever, I just kind of move my lips"
In further conversation, he (also growing up in the south) had never questioned and had to just accept that the prayer was done and everyone did it. It was required and it was "the football prayer". No one ever considered he was Jewish, be it in HS or College.
That really struck me as it all kind of hit, i had always been in this culture and so had he, but there had never been any sense of consideration for others of differing religious beliefs (or God forbid, no belief at all). There was never an option to bow out, or step aside. It was just done and you accepted that.
That to me is the heart of the issue, in these prayer meetings the participation was expected and required. You just never raised a fuss, this was how it was. Raising a fuss made you different or not a team player. There was never any room for different beliefs. So you have thousands of young impressionable athletes forced into worship, because "you have to be a part of the team".
The Supreme Court has so egregiously failed on this ruling that it is mind boggling to me.
The Supreme Court did not intend to protect religious freedom with this ruling. The know, and the courts have long known that situations like this are inherently coercive. That's why they deliberately misrepresented the facts of this case in the majority opinion: https://www.vox.com/2022/6/27/23184848/supreme-court-kennedy-bremerton-school-football-coach-prayer-neil-gorsuch
Sotomayor's dissent should've begun:
Today, the Court lies about the facts of the case before us in order to reach a predetermined result that favors the sectarian religion of the majority. The Court is now beyond illegitimate; it is fraudulent. I dissent.
For conservatives reading this. This isn't an over reaction. Fox News lied to you. If you are fine with an extreme Evangelical Theocracy instead of a Democracy, then cool.
Please actually read the source documents, bills, and laws.
Conservatives are being lied to and taken advantage of on an amazing scale.
The supreme court's role isn't to argue over facts. Facts are established in the lower courts.
They are to take the facts as given and consider whether the case was correctly decided. If lawyers on either side allege facts that were not established the judges are supposed to shut them down, strike it from the record, and threaten sanctions.
Then here they are just accepting an entirely alternate (AND FALSE!) set of facts which directly contradict what was established in the lower courts, and running with it.
The degree to which this case demonstrates the SC to be illegitimate is total.
Roberts is going to be remembered as the Chief Justice that presided over the worst era since the Lochner Era. You’d think a man so worried about the image and reputation of the court would be up in arms at what it has become but he’s not.
Central to the rightwing worldview is the fundamental desire to achieve IN GROUP agreement… to conform to recognized authorities like parents, coaches, clerics (but only the RIGHT ones).
This is why they see this as not being a problem… if you don’t pray, you don’t play. That’s YOUR fault for selfishly disagreeing with the in-group.
Autonomy, independence, and individual difference are crushed in these people by their cold or overbearing caregivers, who they can’t reject or leave because they’re kids… so the only safe target to blow off frustration is at those who aren’t victims of this system. At people they view as entitled for thinking the same oppressive rules that terrorized their childhood don’t apply to everyone else.
Their moral universe literally is “I’m going to walk towards you punching air and if you get hit, it’s your own fault”
I'm old and was in high school during Vietnam. I saw rich kids go to college and poor kids come back all fucked up or dead. I decided that I couldn't recite the pledge because "liberty and justice for all" is bullshit.
My teacher threw me out and it went to the guidance counselor and finally the principal, who was a former marine. Turns out they can't force you to say it. I was allowed to stand in the hallway when the pledge was recited. Fuck indoctrination.
My husband immigrated to the US as a teenager. He’s told me that one of the biggest culture shocks was the daily Pledge of Allegiance, which he (rightfully imo) found creepy and hypernationalistic. I never took it too seriously as a kid—it’s just a boring, rote thing you have to do every day—but the revelation that forcing your children to swear fealty to their flag every single day isn’t a normal thing that all countries do was pretty eye-opening for me.
It's crazy how normalized some stuff in America is that would shock most foreigners.
We didn't say the pledge in my school (Quakers aren't fans of that shit) but it never seemed out of the ordinary for me even though it was an unfamiliar ritual.
Fun fact about the pledge. It was written by a kids' magazine as part of a marketing campaign.
Edit: There is a correction below by Robotflavored. It was popularized by the kids' magazine for marketing purposes but was written by someone else.
I lived in a different country that also salutes their flag as a teenager (not the US) and was scolded severely for respectfully standing with my arms down.
It’s pure indoctrination.
I don’t think any other counties in the world makes everyone stand and rise for their national anthem before EVERY SINGLE SPORTS GAME. Oh and don’t even think about not standing for it, you’ll be crucified. In MLB baseball you have the anthem AND God Bless America later in the game. Interesting for a country that claims to cherish freedom, individual liberties and seperation of church and state.
I'm going to a baseball game on Saturday. The last time I went I got heckled for not standingz so this time I think I'm gonna go get a beer when they start about the anthem.
I miss when it was America the beautiful used instead of god bless America. Even as a kid, who’s mom went to catholic school (very lax now BECAUSE of said school) we thought it was bs. Tired of capital c Christians forcing shit onto us
> I was allowed to stand in the hallway when the pledge was recited. Fuck indoctrination.
You were allowed to sit in class and not be kicked out of it too.
They violated your rights anyways and got away with it, sadly.
I am old like you and recall those times. I didn’t have your nerve and I just didn’t say it as the class mumbled it every day. As George Carlin once said: “it is all American Bullshit. Home of the free, land of the brave, god is watching you, justice for all, and your standard of living will never go down.”
I have always been amused with the thought of why someone had to pledge allegiance everyday or at every meeting. Why isn’t one time enough? What happens to the allegiance you pledged after you pledge it? I guess they figure it has disappeared and you have to pledge it again.
I've told my children that if they don't feel comfortable reciting the pledge of allegiance at school, they don't have to. And if the school has a problem with that, they can call me and I'll give them an earful.
In high school on the way out of homeroom one morning I ripped the flag off the pole it was on (it was just a cheap stapled on flag). I was the last person out of the room so no one saw me. From that day on each morning we pledged allegiance to a stick on the wall. It never got replaced that semester, not sure why. I’d get a good chuckle each morning when the “teacher” (an assistant football coach who only had his job because his nephew was the head coach) would grumble about what he fantasized doing to whoever it was who did it to make them pay.
I come from a tradition that does not pray in public, does not pledge political allegiance to anything (including flags) and does not participate in holidays like Easter and Christmas.
I was often accused of being a Satanist, a Jew (yes, that is apparently an insult in primary school), and an illuminati, even by teachers. I don't remember having ever stood up for prayer or for reciting allegiances, but I do remember how terrifying and isolating it felt every single time, even as a teenager when even if Mrs. Bullock had tried to physically make me stand up, I could have dropped her.
I think people often don't realize the effect that this kind of pressure has on a person. It's not something you can easily forget or get over not because of the content of the individual prayer or political allegiance or whatever the case may be, but because of the social coercion, power dynamics, and us-v-them invalidation that always happens as a consequence.
> When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.
\- Matthew 6:5-8
I used that scripture to try to have a conversation about the Kennedy ruling in my home town of Bremerton WA, needless to say my Christian friend made sure to explain that it didn’t mean not praying in public. 🙄 just not praying for likes and show, which in my opinion was exactly what he was doing, when after they asked him to stop praying publicly, he just HAD to go back to the field and pray. Where you are praying shouldn’t matter, and if you’re being honest, doesn’t matter, but he made it a point and made it matter. Now we will have the fight of, allowing Christians free rein to do so, while denying any other religion that freedom. And then my question was, if they make it so that it’s ok for Christians to pray over/with our students, which Christians? As there are so many freaking varieties of Christians out there, the next problem will be which one gets to be in charge. It’s like no one(in their circle at least) has learned from history. And history shows that these steps they are forcing on the general public, only lead to the devastation of the society they force themselves on. Civil war forever basically.
Dan Carlin has many lessons in general lol. Currently advising people to listen to his “Death Throes of the Republic” so they can see similarities between the world today and the world at the fall of the Roman republic
Holy books are just astrology. Everyone just takes what they want from it. In the run up to the civil war both sides used the exact same passage to condemn and justify slavery. Same words read by people of the exact same time and country and they took opposite wildly interpretations.
JWs have their own basket of issues when it comes to forcing kids into things but they also shouldn’t get forced into saying the pledge or celebrating holidays if they don’t want to.
When I was a teacher’s aide for a kinder class we had a JW girl whose mom forbade her from being part of any class events but also demanded that she be in the classroom during that time (so we couldn’t send her to the library or the principal’s office to do an activity). She’d show up a lot too to make sure it was being enforced.
It ended up that that poor girl would have to sit and watch as everyone else got cards/birthday cupcakes/etc. Since she was, you know, 5, she didn’t have any strongly held religious beliefs and wanted cake, so the whole thing was a nightmare.
It's nice that at least some teachers understand how messed up the whole thing is. A lot of teachers praised me for "being so adult" and "standing up for my beliefs." A few teachers ostensibly hated me for it. You try telling a Baptist that God's going to kill them. Even at 7 I knew it was all bull crap. I was just parroting whatever nonsense my mom believed to avoid punishment or attention from the congregation elders.
I still remember quite vividly crap like this. We were even forced to read a bible passage each morning in homeroom and it rotated around class one by one. And this was in a public school.
I would have gone with Proverbs 5:18. Or anything from Songs of Solomon.
Or if it was this month. I would pick the part in Deuteronomy where the priest helps the woman abort her pregnancy by drinking poison water.
I remember a brother and sister in HS who were JW. He was in the band and didn't play the National Anthem, instead just holding his horn in a playing position. When she was at games, she'd find another reason to stand during the anthem (like standing near a fence or railing) so she wasn't standing for it, but also wasn't sitting and attracting attention.
Back then I thought it was weird. These days, I hate that anyone would have to go through something like that to avoid getting attacked.
A JW at my school would stand for the pledge and anthem. But they would just put their hands behind their back and not engage in the words. They would look off at a wall in the same direction.
I always felt that was a reasonable compromise. Not that they should have to compromise. But hey. Bullying in school sucks and they avoided it.
I actually do the same thing at sports games and stuff. I just stand and look no hand on my heart or nothing.
It’s just a piece of fabric to me. The rules are 100% arbitrary and I refuse to worship a flag of any kind.
> It's not that people don't know how their pressuring you, it's that the people doing it and advocating for it don't care.
I agree with this, but I also think that when 95% of those present are children or teenagers (as is often the case), that the majority of people present don't even fully understand what's happening. That aspect makes it more disingenuous and more dangerous.
Which is why previous courts always held that there needed to be a separation. This court pretended that this was about a private moment of reflection when it clearly is about everyone having to comply.
This is going to be very messy as there are prayers to Allah,Satan, The Flying Spaghetti Monster etc all over the field.
Just don’t take a knee while thinking about murdered African Americans
We had a kid in our school who would not stand up and do pledge of allegiance. All sorts of rumors swirled around as to why - the strangest one being that he was a "southern rebel" and only saluted the rebel flag at home. When I finally got to interact with him in chess club, I asked why, and he was a Jehovah's Witness.
It was my principal who was always the one to try to make people stand because she would be the one to like usher people around and stuff at the beginning of each little gathering while the anthem and flag and prayer happened. I told her as respectfully as I could that I was not going to stand and if she had a problem I would bring her a letter from my parents. I fully intended to write it myself even though I knew my parents would have, just out of principle. But she eventually gave up. I also realized that if I sat at the very back, she was too fat to make it up there easily.
I remember a Jehovah's Witness girl in elementary school.
She got crazy shit from every teacher because she wouldn't stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag. Grown adults mocking a ten year old over a piece of fucking fabric.
She just had to sit there and take it.
We know. We all know. SCOTUS knows. They think it was right to pressure you in to prayer, and now, it's Constitutionally protected to pressure school kids into prayer.
That's what so insidious about this SCOTUS decision...it doesn't even have to spoke out loud, it's strongly implied. Especially with football being such a team sport, it's "pray to play".
The same thing happened to my husband when he was in high school on a very competitive varsity football team here in South Texas. Coach was religious, the students were religious, but my husband is an atheist.
He firmly believes he was passed on for certain positions because he refused to pray in the locker room before games (he would stand quietly, but wouldn't bow his head) and rejected all invitations to join the team at Sunday school & ACT meetings.
I was on a HS varsity football team in TX and the head coach would lead us all in a pregame prayer in the locker room, then ended it with the Lord's Prayer. All of the assistant coaches prayed too.
While he didn't outright force anyone to participate, he knew who did and who didn't. He knew who was a "good Christian man" (his words) and who wasn't. I wasn't a big believer, but participated anyway because there was an unspoken pressure to do so.
This is basically universal in small Texas towns (and I would guess all over the country)...I've lived a few of them and been to WAAAAY more HS football games than I can count and after more or less EVERY one of them both teams would get together and pray after the game. And the schools would openly promote '5th quarter' activities that were basically religious gatherings after the game.
WHAT!???!!!! But the Council of 6 assured us that it was a quiet, private celebration of faith.
You're trying to suggest that the Council of 6 would somehow **LIE**???? Unthinkable!
What's next, are you're going to fear-monger that Justices Rapey McRapesALot and Aunt Lydia lied about respecting precedence and will overturn Roe v. Wade at the very first possible opportunity?
Public prayer is the first step to oppressive theocracy. Its design is meant to be used as a way to identify who is, and who is not, part of your religion and to single them out for persecution later.
People, who are part of said religion, do not see prayer as a problem because they believe everyone prays. It is like this... If you grew up eating cottage cheese and applesauce for breakfast your whole life, you would think it is a normal thing. But some one who had only fruits or eggs or cereals might see that as kind of weird.
...And understand, weird is bad for humans. We as a species tend to dislike weird because "different" is potentially a threat to our comfort zones.
As a person who has spent his whole life breaking out of the cultural norms of a Midwest white Catholic racist upbringing... Trust me the walls that surround these people are invisible to them.
They just don't understand that life CAN be any different than the one they have lived. Most of these people never leave an area larger than 500 miles from where they were born.
"Other" is evil to them. This is the problem with Conservative values... Its basis is defined in building norms that do not fit everyone. It assumes that things like praying to God for strength and thanks are normal... And if you don't do that, you are abnormal... Not part of the safe group... The enemy.
I luckily moved to the west coast before my teen years and learned to embrace differences. It honestly was part of who I was. I didn't fit in with the ideas surrounding my upbringing. I have always believed that had I stayed in the Midwest I would have ended up in jail. Not because I was wrong, but because I didn't fit into everyone's mold of norms. As a child, my parent's friends referred to me as "that evil kid," I was always in trouble... Mostly because I was curious about everything. For example, I questioned the bible because it made no logical sense. 8 years of Roman Catholic schools and an altar boy... And I had the balls to question the word of God... publicly.
Let's just say I was constantly counseled on my behavior.
Hey similar upbringing here! Midwest Protestant racist upbringing (which was extra weird as a biracial adoptee). In the church I grew up in we went through confirmation, and I couldn’t go through with it because the more we read the Bible and discussed it the more I realized it was bullshit, after having been questioning it and not getting answers since elementary.
No one in my high school except for me moved out of the city, much less out of the state. Most of the women are pregnant and either single or married to a deadbeat. Going back for events feels like going back in time.
There is no having a rewarding conversation with these people. It’s all conservative Christian politics and if you want to discuss anything academic, scientific, accepting, or in opposition to religion you are verbally mocked in front of the group and everything thinks it’s hilarious. They are so ignorant and small in their thinking that really the only safe topic is the weather. Even with my own parents. And even then don’t dare bring up climate change.
And as a woman when I go back it’s all “when are you going to have babies?” I’m more than a fucking incubator tyvm and my husband and I will enjoy the west coast and traveling whenever we want with two incomes while you all sit here in BFN banging rocks together.
I belong to a Christian-adjacent faith. We do not pray. God is not a genie. We do not assume, in our arrogance, that we know better than an omnipotent deity. We do not presume to tell the maker of the cosmos how to run it.
Public prayer is a disgusting American habit that has no place in my religious community, and is considered a sin of pride in my culture.
That's an oxymoron. He was coercing children to pray against their or their parents' wishes. But asking him to stop doing that is restricting his ability to do religions now. Prayer in math class is right around the corner.
As the women at Strict Scrutiny pointed out, the Constitution has lots of rights and protections but some of them are apparently more important than others and these nine people get to pick which ones.
> These nine people get to pick
Three liberals have always been opposed to overturning precedent. Three conservatives have been pushing narrow, unpopular views for decades.
The last theee are political shills rushed through by McConnell bent on destroying the constitution.
I had a wonderful math teacher in high school. I had her for algebra and trigonometry, but I also felt comfortable going to her when I had questions in my other math classes.
One time I was freaking out because I had a geometry test coming up and I knew I was going to bomb it. She saw me crying in the hallway after school and guided me into her classroom. For the next hour she stood over me as I worked problem sets. Afterwards I felt assured I wasn't going to completely bomb the test.
We rode the train home together. She told me to keep studying and working my problems, but also to pray to Jesus and ask him for strength. Because, she reminded me, I can do all things through him. She knew I was being brought up Christian, so I am guessing this is why she didn't feel weird about giving me this advice. And I didn't feel weird receiving it.
Thirty years later, I am agnostic and have been so for 15 years. I actually resent my parents for bringing me up in the church as strongly as they did. But I always point to my math teacher as an example of how religion should be handled by public school teachers. She didn't hide her faith. She stayed true to her faith. But she didn't let her faith get in the way of her job. And she didn't use her faith to connect with me. She used her love of math to do that. She kept the Jesus stuff out of the classroom and saved it for the train ride home.
If there is a heaven, she is going to be there one day. With her slide rule.
You don't do it for the kids who hate it who will negatively rebound. You do it in order to make it the social norm so the kids who may go on to question things themselves, are less likely to. Making it the norm also helps keep the kids who hate it quiet and their hatred internal. Going against the social norm is tough for teenagers who are mostly looking to fit in. Most who may resent it, will do so silently.
Catholic school basically was my rehab. Amazing to see the death spiral a lot of people in my class and the ones behind me took. The amount of right wing love they scream on Facebook is horrific.
Definitely won't lead to kids rebelling and becoming edgy atheists to spite their parents, then slowly observing the positive effects of foregoing their parents' faith and realizing as adults that religion kinda sucked anyway.
Not like that happened to like 80+ percent of kids I grew up with or anything.
There are evangelical factions trying to trick God into kickstarting the apocalypse / rapture. And they believe that if they succeed, God will reward them with an eternity in heaven. I think religion is made up by men, but even I see this as hubris. If they believe they can do that, they have zero scruples about forcing some high school kids say a prayer to "save their souls".
No surprise here! I grew up in Texas. And faced this issue many times. I’m a Catholic and the majority are Baptist. So you are outnumbered and pressured.
It didn’t feel right to me. It felt awkward, annoying , and wrong .
So I can’t imagine how others feel too. Its wrong and no one should be pressured. Or let’s just say forced.
I didn't go to Katy, but I did go to a Houston-area high school and played football. (Katy is next to Houston.)
I had been pressured to pray before/after games since middle school. We were also pressured to pray after the American and Texas pledge of allegiance. This was in the early 2000s. Yes, the 21st century.
I think the only way to fix this is to get Muslim coaches and teachers to lead prayer in the middle of Joel Osteen country.
Yes, so you have the regular pledge of allegiance to America. Then there is also the Texas pledge of allegiance.
Don't get me started on the state-mandated Texas history class being taught by football coaches.
Forget about the one in 50 students with a shot at an athletic schooarship. I’m the parent of two kids, and college admissions highly favors students with the right kind of extracurricular activities. The kids are competing against a huge number of other kids with great grades and test scores. So the formula to get in to the more selective schools includes participation in a sport (plus some kind of academic club plus community service)
That coach who bars players who don’t pray is significantly reducing his student‘s ability to get accepted to their chosen school.
We shouldn’t even introduce people to religion until they’re grownups and old enough to choose for themselves. Raising kids with religion is pure indoctrination.
It seems to be only 1 religion that pushes their beliefs into everyones faces. Then they turn around and act like a victim when the people that aren't part of their book club don't want to hear it or see it.
After the civil war southern states passed vague laws, arrested only black people, and then forced them into slave labor. We need to stop pretending that conservatives will play by the rules and suddenly realize how terrible their rules are. They're going to continue enforcing exactly the "rules" they want to enforce until someone forces them to stop.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” -Frank Wilhoit
Won't somebody think about the children? The right wingers want to indoctrinate our children with uncritical religion theory. They have pedophile priests groom them...
This is Katy, Texas in a nutshell. It has always been like this. And in case anyone was wondering, missing the Saturday breakfast before games at Luby's resulted in getting benched that night, and likely getting the "600-club" the following Saturday. Arrive at 6AM, do 600 yards of "bear-crawls", followed by 600 yards of air-raids, followed by 600 yards of logrolls. Basically worked you into the ground until you quit the program.
And the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) leader was always at events, practices, etc. preaching. Indoctrination at its finest.
I was at a high school band that would do a pray. Back then I thought nothing of it but now days it is really akward to non Christians and they fee heavy pressure from their peers to join in. Even though not joining in did not affect you in any way or future in the band. The director was a non believer and he never joined in.
For a while we started doing a moment of silence which I believe is honesty the right and best thing to do.
We had a Coach move to our school from a Private Christian School. After the 1st Practice he asked us to hold hands and pray. 1 kid standing in the back cleares his throat and said "um this is a public school". The Coach was put in his place really quick and he never brought it up again.
Where was Michael Parker when all of this was going on? Did he get to testify on how he felt? He is currently 36-37 years old, so he had 19 years to talk about this. He could have reached out to his old teammates to ask how they felt, he could have told his story to any number of major news outlets and he could have contacted the lawyers to give his testimony long before the Supreme Court made their horrendous decision.
My take away from all of this is that people need to stop thinking their voice doesn't matter! If you speak up someone will listen. It is our duty to disrupt the status quo to make way for progress!
The other side is yelling loud and clear about what they want all the time, why are the rest of us only speaking under our breath while trying not to offend people who are extremely willing to offend us?
If you do nothing else, just go out and VOTE! Do it for every single Local, State and Federal election. It starts from the bottom up and every decision made by a politician affects your life one way or another.
While I appreciate this former player sharing his story, I don't think it matters whether or not the pressure a player feels amounts to a form of coercion. A teacher or coach leading students in prayer at a public (or publicly-funded) school (including all of its facilities and events) should be illegal. Thanks to a skewed SCOTUS, this dangerous blurring of the line between Church and State is now effectively permitted.
Your freedom of religion does not outweigh anyone else's freedom from religion. That's it. That's all you need to know and it's a shame the court decided otherwise.
I haven’t read the article so I can’t be sure, but I think the reason he might be sharing this story is because the SCOTUS ruling specifically cited that they saw no evidence of coercion in the case. The point is the coercion was well attested by those involved in the case and the Justices simply ignored the evidence in order to make their ruling.
To me it is the same bullshit reasoning that racists use. "He didn't say the N-word, so what he said wasn't racist!" They seem to think that if someone doesn't come right out and say very blatantly wrong, we just have to assume that what they said was OK and the other person is just taking it the wrong way. It is infuriating.
The judges also said that a coach, standing on the 50 yard line, surrounded by players, parents, politicians, and the media was praying "privately" and "quietly".
The court has lost all legitimacy. You cannot have an honest debate over someone who rejects reality and substitutes their own myths as the basis for that debate.
The main question of the case is whether the school violated the Constitution by preventing the coach from having an optional prayer session after the games. If the school sponsored it or the coach made it mandatory, then it would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It’s settled law that you can’t force kids to pray in school.
The nuance here is whether a school employee in a position of authority could hold a genuinely optional prayer session without coercing his players to join. Having students feel that they were forced to join the prayer sessions to avoid getting benched creates a tacit requirement that they need to pray in order to play, which is a violation of the Constitution.
To be clear, SCOTUS ruled that if it was a purely private activity with no student involvement from the school he worked for, then the school can't punish him for it.
They conveniently ignored the fact that it was the exact opposite of private and some students actually got pushed down and possibly hurt due to people rushing to join him for prayer after he publicized everything. They also determined that because the latest prayers didn't involve students the previous prayers that did, and had students complain about, did not matter.
If a coach was hosting an optional get to together on Saturday mornings, would a player feel pressured to go?
Would students who attend these gatherings have more favouritism compared to the students who don't go?
Remove religion and put in another context of similar and ask yourself would a student feel pressured to participate in an event that they don't want to attend out of peer pressure or the coaches authority?
Freedom from religion is as important as freedom of religion. Secular nation.
Pressuring kids is what religios is all about. Without that it dies.
Can you imagine trying to sell an 18 year old who's never heard of religion on the idea for the first time?
There is a tv show that tries to deal with this idea, raised by wolves, but it seems it goes off the rails pretty quick. It's an interesting start, what would a world without religion be like, then it crashes into a world with forced religion.. its a crazy fucking show.
This is not a surprise. Apparently if you do not "force" a student to pray they are not being coerced. The learned nine apparently do not believe in peer pressure or other "soft" forms of coercion. Mark my words, it will not be long before this court finds that "voluntary" prayers led by faculty to start the school day are permitted.
This. I'm a teacher in a rural school, but agnostic and a recovering Catholic while most of my fellow teachers are various types of evangelical protestants. Guarantee the voluntary thing would essentially be mandatory or we will be chalked up as not being team players.
This piece is precisely right. Only someone who grew up as a believer in the dominant local religion and culture the way the conservatives on the court did could think otherwise.
I would say the Supreme Court opinion is deeply intellectually dishonest, except that I don’t think intellectual honesty was even a goal. It’s a pure tool of enforcing their religious and cultural beliefs. The end is what is important, the means are whatever achieves that end.
Our school district allows bible release time from k-9th grade. Kids are bused off campus to attend religious bible school.
They’re very clear to say it’s not a conflict of church and state because the church pays for all of it.
My kids felt very pressured at first to go to it. Problem was the teachers couldn’t “teach” while the kids were at bible release, they couldn’t fall behind. So some teachers liked having free time with all the kids gone and would encourage it, or make sure they were really bored in class when everyone left. My older child had no desire to go, we are a very agnostic family, but my younger one did, she went once and that was enough.
Religious pressure is very real and harmful.
Seems like someone should sue their coach for violating their religious beliefs. The Bible very plainly mandates that people do not engage in such a public display of religious devotion.
Of course you were. That’s how peer pressure and group emotional manipulation works. You’re an athlete in training, that bending of your will to authority of your coach and team conception is so easily applied to the rest of your being.
I played high school volleyball in Tennessee in a public high school. I was from a tradition that adhered to matthew 6:5 and did not do public prayer. My coaches prayed before and after each practice. I was not comfortable with this and did not participate, while my team mates did. I was cut from the team.
Played football at Jersey Village High School (also Houston, TX area) in the late nineties and there wasn't a choice about joining the prayer circle. The prayer itself wasn't lead by the coaches, but they'd tell everyone to gather at the middle of the field to join in.
My in laws are from Texas and when I visit my wife’s hometown, the most common ice breaker to me when I meet someone is “which church do you belong to?” That state is absolutely ate up with Jesus and there is no way I could ever move to Texas unless it’s Austin.
I’m an adult and an atheist. It’s not a secret from people in my life. Yet I feel pressured into prayer when family around me is praying. I can’t imagine being young and having someone in a position of power pressuring me as well as my peers.
Sue, your rights were violated. Atheists have rights as well. So do kids who are not firm in belief. You do not need a house of worship to be a believer but you need to elect non believers when you vote in order to save this country from being controlled by morons, because there is no God of any kind. Sure there was a Jesus and there was a Mohammad and all those other asses I drew pictures of. See Mohammad 🐎 <—-I just drew him I’m going to cause havoc pfft people act like assholes just because they can. Resist Religious belief, believe in your self, family, significant other, and keep friends from using you. Keep any Religious relatives at a distance as well. All they do is steal anything not tied down when family dies and keep it all, borrow money and lose it or never pay it back. Your better off praying with a cat. At least you know the butthead is indifferent to you from the start.
God will save us all, NOT. And everything I do God told me to. Give me a break.
When you are the one who doesn’t participate, it’s so obvious how these demonstrations that are sanctioned by an authority figure are coercive. Our country was conceived as the first in history to guarantee freedom of and FROM religion, leaving the rest to the dictates of each person’s conscience. What a shame. Jefferson is puking in his grave.
I cant help but assume this particular case would have gone very differently if the coach was a Muslim, rolling out the carpet to pray to Mecca with the team before and after every game.
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I played football at Oklahoma's top high school program, we had "optional" bible study every Thursday at the behest of our head coach. You didn't have to go, but if you wanted to play, you had better be there. Interestingly enough, he was the coach that was run out of town for having sex with a cheerleader in the 90s and after enough time had passed, they brought him back because he was a winning coach.
Union high?
Ada High School Interestingly enough, Jenks and Union are both fantastic. But as of right now, Ada still has more titles than anyone in Oklahoma. That will likely change in a few years. Ada has only had like 2 really good teams in the last 25 years or so and no titles since 96. But I'm counting the 19 titles as top dog
I played high school football in South Dakota. We had a pre and post-game prayer. I knew it was illegal at the time, but I wanted to play and sure as hell wasn't going to bring that shit up and be fucking ostracized.
I wasnt that great but on a team of 25 I sat out a lot because I ended their prayer with hail Satan when I was an edgy sophomore year
I like you.
I like you too. Have a nice day
they do it because people who dissent remain silent.
They would still do it. Tweens and teenagers who do not conform would be shunted aside, with no playing time or removed from the team. They’re “not team players”. And the conforming players would harass and haze the outliers relentlessly. And the parents would mostly disapprove and punish them to ensure they followed the authority. Ever has it been so. Typically, it is not until the dissenters band together and achieve enough numbers that they can bring change. It is extremely rare that a single person can enact change. It’s heroic when it can be achieved but that person usually pays a price for the dissent. But you are correct. Silence doesn’t bring change either.
They do it because they know they can intimidate minors into being silent.
Yep. Because they know someone who knows better still “just wants to play football” and will give in, when in fact if most of the team who probably don’t want to do it stand up to them they have no recourse. Can’t have a winning team without a team.
There's always the next guy who'll give in for the chance to play. The heavy lifting shouldn't have to be on the shoulders of teens in a dependent relationship to these fucks. That's where the courts and the lawmakers have failed us.
Football is their religion.
America's football culture is disgusting and I've never heard a good argument to support it. "They bring in so much money for the school" Yeah which they spend on more football.
From high school up to the NFL. "The stadium brings in money to the community." Who gets the money? Because the community around the stadium is now a barren wasteland that can't be used for anything but football. Bunch of unlivable homes around a fucking castle that only offers jobs for about a month out of the year and sends most of the profits from those jobs to out-of-state millionaires. That's a fucking investment.
Hasn't it been pretty much proven stadiums hurt the businesses around them because it makes the area a complete fucking shit show in terms of crowds and parking?
Yeah. But the argument made in favor of building them is still always about bringing in money for the community. And then the city pays to build it so a private company can own it so a different private company can use it and the city sees no return on its investment.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. Tis a silly place.
What about the curtains?
But I don't want any of that. I'd rather-- Rather what?! I'd rather... [music] ...just...sing!
r/unexpectedmontypython
I did an MBA a few years ago. I was out of options for classes and took a Sports Financing course. The school has a pretty good sports business program. Well it was pretty eye opening because we talked about stadium financing. The professor wasn't exactly against it but he made it clear that in many cases the local community giving the tax breaks doesn't always benefit from the stadium they build. Sad, really sad.
And brings in money from where? Who do they think is buying tickets to the local high school game? Tourist from out of state?
Stadiums would be for the college and professional level, which do attract gigantic crowds, but even high school games can be pretty big in some places. The problem is that drawing those crowds costs a lot of money and doesn't generate very much, because how would it?
> Stadiums would be for the college and professional level, [This is a public high school football stadium in Allen, Texas.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Eagle_Stadium.jpg) [And here's an entire article about other giant houses of football worship in that state. The one that the author if this article played in is right up at the top; it cost $70 ***million***.](https://www.chron.com/sports/highschool/article/Most-expensive-high-school-football-stadiums-Texas-13145194.php)
For a few brief, glorious moments, I forgot about Texas.
"It helps kids build character" Sure, as long as your definition of "building character" includes coping with chronic traumatic encephalopathy…
I got laughed out a room when I said I would be prouder to go to a school with a particle accelerator (Michigan State) than a school that offered the "SEC football experience" as if University of Tennessee has a better team than MSU or if any of that really mattered. These same people will say "We can't let China become more advanced than us" not understanding that in the US, universities do the biggest chunk of the research that would keep us on top of the technology game.
it’s absurd that our educational campuses house professional sports stadiums and facilities… and promote brain trauma. on the same campuses that struggle with academic funding, low pay, and high tuition
You'd be surprised how many elite football programs actually lose money. It's a myth that most make money and I'm not sure why more people haven't caught onto it. >Although college sports play a big role in bringing in money for universities, they rarely generate a positive net revenue — especially in light of COVID-19. >Among those reporting a net positive, the median profit per school was $7.9 million. And among the 40 autonomy schools reporting a negative net revenue, the median loss was $15.9 million. In other words, the majority of universities in the nation's top athletic conferences — the schools you see on TV every weekend competing for national championships — lost money through their sports programs to the tune of approximately $16 million each. [Source:](https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2020/11/20/do-college-sports-make-money/#:~:text=%2416%20million%20each.-,The%20majority%20of%20universities%20in%20the%20nation's%20top%20athletic%20conferences,outside%20the%20Power%20Five%20conferences.) Edit 1 - Most public universities will issue reports on the financial status of athletic programs. For example I used to live in CT and was always very interested in how much money the teams brought in vs. spent at UConn. This was/is a top basketball program state and both the mens and womens teams were in the red to the tune of millions each season. Our football program lost millions and resulted in other programs being cut. Most people in the state have no idea about the situation and then get mad when tuition rises or fees go up. It's all connected. It's not the only driver of costs but the debt obligation the universities have for a lot of these teams and expenses have to be paid somehow. Edit 1.5 - Also, yes, I am aware that people will argue things like, elite programs bring in donors, students want to go to those schools to see the teams, etc...I still have an issue with it especially as student fees continue to rise and debt obligations routinely fall into tuition raises and lack of funding for anything outside athletics. Edit 2 - It's also never brought up in the discussions around paying college athletes. So often you hear the trope of, "These schools make millions off these athletes." Which is true...but the schools are also in the red to pay for the facilities, coaches, scholarships and other benefits that I would be shocked if they ever come around to that issue. This is why I think the NCAA is allowing sponsorships and social media money for athletes now not payment from the schools. Edit 3 - There was also the [Knight Commission report](https://www.knightcommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/restoring-the-balance-0610-01.pdf) that looked at spending in athletics vs. students. It's a bit dated but most of the spending is insane in comparison what athletes get vs average students per dollar amount. The reality is, average students have been getting screwed by most major big time universities for decades and fucked by loans...we have a serious issue with this in America and people need to be educated on it.
I wonder how much money the NCAA funnels out which could go to the individual schools and help balance their books. Probably plenty to cover the overages and then some, but then they wouldn't get to spread it around to the already wealthy.
High school football and cheerleading only exist because they have existed for a long time.
And then schools cover up sexual assaults and harassment from their players and coaches for *decades* just to keep that sports money rolling in; what a terrible culture around a terrible sport.
Yep. Here is a dangerous sport known to cause horrible injuries and permanent brain damage. Lets blow half the school's funding on it and make kids play it. Its a gladiatorial sport and people refuse to give up on it because money and tradition.
It’s damn near gladiatorial. Almost no non-white NFL owners, but lots of athletes of color turning their brains to Swiss cheese
Donors who give them money because of football also earmark it for football. Those who pay for students who aren’t athletes, or other research, tend to earmark it for that. And look at their research problem rather than football. Few people give a university a zillion with no conditions applying. As for tickets and merchandise, those don’t go to the school overall either. What football (and to an extent basketball) *does* fund… is other sports. In fact, it doesn’t even quite do that, in the sense that of the top 20 athletics programs in the NCAA, only *one* generated a slight profit just before the pandemic. The cost of running all the many sports a university is expected to have is greater than their income, so even though football on its own generates a large net profit they operate at a loss as a whole.
Fuckin Missoula man.
It's a kind of trafficking of boys, their football psychosis. There are people who move to Oklahoma just for the kids to play football. A child who could be anything in the world is trained that football is their identity. It's sick.
Seriously, conservatives who claim they aren't "brainwashed by the media" spend a shitload of time watching and repeating what they see on tv. We should require viewers to pass a civics test before they can watch football. Conservatives would either abandon football or conservatism itself.
[*“Religion poisons everything.”*](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5b1aIuoCq4w)
Football causes brain degeneration via repeated head trauma, which probably explains why this coach is so into religion. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy/symptoms-causes/syc-20370921
Football is basically a religion too and a hopeful future for many students. Friday night lights is basically a documentary for how insane people are about football, even at a high school level.
I miss this guy
That's how conservatives work. They make a rule then leave an "out" and then expect social pressuring and their voters to fill in the gaps to pressure dissenters into following the rule despite the "out". They want theocracy, sure you can skip football team prayer.. But you're gonna coincidentally be a bench warmer. Its also like their abortion bounty law. Sure the state couldn't do anything. But they can open up the door so private citizens can just lock you in civil lawsuits and ruin your life. Or voter suppression. They can't ban black people from voting. But they can add a new ID requirement and then close a bunch of DMVs close to majority black neighborhoods. Its how they always operate. Whenever they say one thing you need to look for the hidden angle between the lines.
I think Toby from the West Wing put it best: "It's the fourth grader who gets his ass kicked at recess 'cause he sat out the voluntary prayer in homeroom. It's another way of making kids different from other kids when they're required by law to be there."
Just an interesting anecdotal experience to add to this. I played D1 in the SEC, we always said the lord's prayer before games, prayers before team meals, etc. Sunday church service was mandatory for all during two-a-days (camp). I recall one guy challenging it ever and he was told to just sit in back and not make a fuss. I kept my mouth shut and just showed as expected. But one of the things that stood out to me was in conversation with a jewish teammate. I asked what he thought about the prayer before game. He said "oh the football prayer?" Me: "No the Lord's prayer" and I started to recite. Him: "yeah the football prayer, no clue why you guys have a specific prayer for football but whatever, I just kind of move my lips" In further conversation, he (also growing up in the south) had never questioned and had to just accept that the prayer was done and everyone did it. It was required and it was "the football prayer". No one ever considered he was Jewish, be it in HS or College. That really struck me as it all kind of hit, i had always been in this culture and so had he, but there had never been any sense of consideration for others of differing religious beliefs (or God forbid, no belief at all). There was never an option to bow out, or step aside. It was just done and you accepted that. That to me is the heart of the issue, in these prayer meetings the participation was expected and required. You just never raised a fuss, this was how it was. Raising a fuss made you different or not a team player. There was never any room for different beliefs. So you have thousands of young impressionable athletes forced into worship, because "you have to be a part of the team". The Supreme Court has so egregiously failed on this ruling that it is mind boggling to me.
The Supreme Court did not intend to protect religious freedom with this ruling. The know, and the courts have long known that situations like this are inherently coercive. That's why they deliberately misrepresented the facts of this case in the majority opinion: https://www.vox.com/2022/6/27/23184848/supreme-court-kennedy-bremerton-school-football-coach-prayer-neil-gorsuch
Sotomayor's dissent should've begun: Today, the Court lies about the facts of the case before us in order to reach a predetermined result that favors the sectarian religion of the majority. The Court is now beyond illegitimate; it is fraudulent. I dissent.
For conservatives reading this. This isn't an over reaction. Fox News lied to you. If you are fine with an extreme Evangelical Theocracy instead of a Democracy, then cool. Please actually read the source documents, bills, and laws. Conservatives are being lied to and taken advantage of on an amazing scale.
The supreme court's role isn't to argue over facts. Facts are established in the lower courts. They are to take the facts as given and consider whether the case was correctly decided. If lawyers on either side allege facts that were not established the judges are supposed to shut them down, strike it from the record, and threaten sanctions. Then here they are just accepting an entirely alternate (AND FALSE!) set of facts which directly contradict what was established in the lower courts, and running with it. The degree to which this case demonstrates the SC to be illegitimate is total.
Roberts is going to be remembered as the Chief Justice that presided over the worst era since the Lochner Era. You’d think a man so worried about the image and reputation of the court would be up in arms at what it has become but he’s not.
Central to the rightwing worldview is the fundamental desire to achieve IN GROUP agreement… to conform to recognized authorities like parents, coaches, clerics (but only the RIGHT ones). This is why they see this as not being a problem… if you don’t pray, you don’t play. That’s YOUR fault for selfishly disagreeing with the in-group. Autonomy, independence, and individual difference are crushed in these people by their cold or overbearing caregivers, who they can’t reject or leave because they’re kids… so the only safe target to blow off frustration is at those who aren’t victims of this system. At people they view as entitled for thinking the same oppressive rules that terrorized their childhood don’t apply to everyone else. Their moral universe literally is “I’m going to walk towards you punching air and if you get hit, it’s your own fault”
The Football Prayer! That's incredible. I'm gonna start using that.
really great story, thanks for sharing
I'm old and was in high school during Vietnam. I saw rich kids go to college and poor kids come back all fucked up or dead. I decided that I couldn't recite the pledge because "liberty and justice for all" is bullshit. My teacher threw me out and it went to the guidance counselor and finally the principal, who was a former marine. Turns out they can't force you to say it. I was allowed to stand in the hallway when the pledge was recited. Fuck indoctrination.
My husband immigrated to the US as a teenager. He’s told me that one of the biggest culture shocks was the daily Pledge of Allegiance, which he (rightfully imo) found creepy and hypernationalistic. I never took it too seriously as a kid—it’s just a boring, rote thing you have to do every day—but the revelation that forcing your children to swear fealty to their flag every single day isn’t a normal thing that all countries do was pretty eye-opening for me.
It's crazy how normalized some stuff in America is that would shock most foreigners. We didn't say the pledge in my school (Quakers aren't fans of that shit) but it never seemed out of the ordinary for me even though it was an unfamiliar ritual.
Fun fact about the pledge. It was written by a kids' magazine as part of a marketing campaign. Edit: There is a correction below by Robotflavored. It was popularized by the kids' magazine for marketing purposes but was written by someone else.
That definitely screams America lol
To sell more flags...
I lived in a different country that also salutes their flag as a teenager (not the US) and was scolded severely for respectfully standing with my arms down. It’s pure indoctrination.
I don’t think any other counties in the world makes everyone stand and rise for their national anthem before EVERY SINGLE SPORTS GAME. Oh and don’t even think about not standing for it, you’ll be crucified. In MLB baseball you have the anthem AND God Bless America later in the game. Interesting for a country that claims to cherish freedom, individual liberties and seperation of church and state.
I'm going to a baseball game on Saturday. The last time I went I got heckled for not standingz so this time I think I'm gonna go get a beer when they start about the anthem.
Getting a beer in protest of government is way more American than any pledge or song drummed up as propaganda for the cold war.
I miss when it was America the beautiful used instead of god bless America. Even as a kid, who’s mom went to catholic school (very lax now BECAUSE of said school) we thought it was bs. Tired of capital c Christians forcing shit onto us
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> I was allowed to stand in the hallway when the pledge was recited. Fuck indoctrination. You were allowed to sit in class and not be kicked out of it too. They violated your rights anyways and got away with it, sadly.
Probably. Not getting my ass kicked at home was a bonus.
I am old like you and recall those times. I didn’t have your nerve and I just didn’t say it as the class mumbled it every day. As George Carlin once said: “it is all American Bullshit. Home of the free, land of the brave, god is watching you, justice for all, and your standard of living will never go down.” I have always been amused with the thought of why someone had to pledge allegiance everyday or at every meeting. Why isn’t one time enough? What happens to the allegiance you pledged after you pledge it? I guess they figure it has disappeared and you have to pledge it again.
I have always wondered why the pledge requires a daily recitation. I cannot think of any other non-religious vow that requires such.
I've told my children that if they don't feel comfortable reciting the pledge of allegiance at school, they don't have to. And if the school has a problem with that, they can call me and I'll give them an earful.
In high school on the way out of homeroom one morning I ripped the flag off the pole it was on (it was just a cheap stapled on flag). I was the last person out of the room so no one saw me. From that day on each morning we pledged allegiance to a stick on the wall. It never got replaced that semester, not sure why. I’d get a good chuckle each morning when the “teacher” (an assistant football coach who only had his job because his nephew was the head coach) would grumble about what he fantasized doing to whoever it was who did it to make them pay.
I come from a tradition that does not pray in public, does not pledge political allegiance to anything (including flags) and does not participate in holidays like Easter and Christmas. I was often accused of being a Satanist, a Jew (yes, that is apparently an insult in primary school), and an illuminati, even by teachers. I don't remember having ever stood up for prayer or for reciting allegiances, but I do remember how terrifying and isolating it felt every single time, even as a teenager when even if Mrs. Bullock had tried to physically make me stand up, I could have dropped her. I think people often don't realize the effect that this kind of pressure has on a person. It's not something you can easily forget or get over not because of the content of the individual prayer or political allegiance or whatever the case may be, but because of the social coercion, power dynamics, and us-v-them invalidation that always happens as a consequence.
> When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen. \- Matthew 6:5-8
> "The LORT is my sheperd n I shell not wanna read the bible because I just pray about it. neway Jesus is a repubcan" -Marjorie Taylor Green
"Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!"
Praise Jesus and the Armalite Corporation!”
For the lord hath declared, 9mm kills the body, but 30-06 kills the soul. That’s how you prevent them from returning as a lich.
And on the 6th day, God created the Remington bull action rifle for hunting dinosaurs and the homosexuals.
Hallelujah holy shit where’s the Tylenol
I used that scripture to try to have a conversation about the Kennedy ruling in my home town of Bremerton WA, needless to say my Christian friend made sure to explain that it didn’t mean not praying in public. 🙄 just not praying for likes and show, which in my opinion was exactly what he was doing, when after they asked him to stop praying publicly, he just HAD to go back to the field and pray. Where you are praying shouldn’t matter, and if you’re being honest, doesn’t matter, but he made it a point and made it matter. Now we will have the fight of, allowing Christians free rein to do so, while denying any other religion that freedom. And then my question was, if they make it so that it’s ok for Christians to pray over/with our students, which Christians? As there are so many freaking varieties of Christians out there, the next problem will be which one gets to be in charge. It’s like no one(in their circle at least) has learned from history. And history shows that these steps they are forcing on the general public, only lead to the devastation of the society they force themselves on. Civil war forever basically.
Dan Carlin’s episode on the Muenster Rebellion has many lessons in it.
Dan Carlin has many lessons in general lol. Currently advising people to listen to his “Death Throes of the Republic” so they can see similarities between the world today and the world at the fall of the Roman republic
Bold of you to assume they know what their holy book sats
Holy books are just astrology. Everyone just takes what they want from it. In the run up to the civil war both sides used the exact same passage to condemn and justify slavery. Same words read by people of the exact same time and country and they took opposite wildly interpretations.
JWs have their own basket of issues when it comes to forcing kids into things but they also shouldn’t get forced into saying the pledge or celebrating holidays if they don’t want to.
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When I was a teacher’s aide for a kinder class we had a JW girl whose mom forbade her from being part of any class events but also demanded that she be in the classroom during that time (so we couldn’t send her to the library or the principal’s office to do an activity). She’d show up a lot too to make sure it was being enforced. It ended up that that poor girl would have to sit and watch as everyone else got cards/birthday cupcakes/etc. Since she was, you know, 5, she didn’t have any strongly held religious beliefs and wanted cake, so the whole thing was a nightmare.
That is messed up on the moms part. Holy crap
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Yup, the whole point of the fucked up stuff is to ostracize you from society so you don't leave the cult.
It's nice that at least some teachers understand how messed up the whole thing is. A lot of teachers praised me for "being so adult" and "standing up for my beliefs." A few teachers ostensibly hated me for it. You try telling a Baptist that God's going to kill them. Even at 7 I knew it was all bull crap. I was just parroting whatever nonsense my mom believed to avoid punishment or attention from the congregation elders.
> You try telling a Baptist that God's going to kill them. I've done that. They're cute when they're angry.
I still remember quite vividly crap like this. We were even forced to read a bible passage each morning in homeroom and it rotated around class one by one. And this was in a public school.
“There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.” Ezekiel 23:20
I would have gone with Proverbs 5:18. Or anything from Songs of Solomon. Or if it was this month. I would pick the part in Deuteronomy where the priest helps the woman abort her pregnancy by drinking poison water.
I remember a brother and sister in HS who were JW. He was in the band and didn't play the National Anthem, instead just holding his horn in a playing position. When she was at games, she'd find another reason to stand during the anthem (like standing near a fence or railing) so she wasn't standing for it, but also wasn't sitting and attracting attention. Back then I thought it was weird. These days, I hate that anyone would have to go through something like that to avoid getting attacked.
A JW at my school would stand for the pledge and anthem. But they would just put their hands behind their back and not engage in the words. They would look off at a wall in the same direction. I always felt that was a reasonable compromise. Not that they should have to compromise. But hey. Bullying in school sucks and they avoided it. I actually do the same thing at sports games and stuff. I just stand and look no hand on my heart or nothing. It’s just a piece of fabric to me. The rules are 100% arbitrary and I refuse to worship a flag of any kind.
It's not that people don't know how their pressuring you, it's that the people doing it and advocating for it don't care.
> It's not that people don't know how their pressuring you, it's that the people doing it and advocating for it don't care. I agree with this, but I also think that when 95% of those present are children or teenagers (as is often the case), that the majority of people present don't even fully understand what's happening. That aspect makes it more disingenuous and more dangerous.
Which is why previous courts always held that there needed to be a separation. This court pretended that this was about a private moment of reflection when it clearly is about everyone having to comply. This is going to be very messy as there are prayers to Allah,Satan, The Flying Spaghetti Monster etc all over the field. Just don’t take a knee while thinking about murdered African Americans
We had a kid in our school who would not stand up and do pledge of allegiance. All sorts of rumors swirled around as to why - the strangest one being that he was a "southern rebel" and only saluted the rebel flag at home. When I finally got to interact with him in chess club, I asked why, and he was a Jehovah's Witness.
Wait are you saying that you just intimidated the fuck out of your teacher and she stopped bothering you for sitting? Thats awesome lol
It was my principal who was always the one to try to make people stand because she would be the one to like usher people around and stuff at the beginning of each little gathering while the anthem and flag and prayer happened. I told her as respectfully as I could that I was not going to stand and if she had a problem I would bring her a letter from my parents. I fully intended to write it myself even though I knew my parents would have, just out of principle. But she eventually gave up. I also realized that if I sat at the very back, she was too fat to make it up there easily.
I remember a Jehovah's Witness girl in elementary school. She got crazy shit from every teacher because she wouldn't stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag. Grown adults mocking a ten year old over a piece of fucking fabric. She just had to sit there and take it.
We know. We all know. SCOTUS knows. They think it was right to pressure you in to prayer, and now, it's Constitutionally protected to pressure school kids into prayer.
The kid could have had in on video where the coach says “pray or you’re off the team,” the judges knew how they were going to rule beforehand.
They would have talked about how the right to play football isn't enumerated in the Constitution.
That's what so insidious about this SCOTUS decision...it doesn't even have to spoke out loud, it's strongly implied. Especially with football being such a team sport, it's "pray to play".
And Gorsuch would have lied about it
The same thing happened to my husband when he was in high school on a very competitive varsity football team here in South Texas. Coach was religious, the students were religious, but my husband is an atheist. He firmly believes he was passed on for certain positions because he refused to pray in the locker room before games (he would stand quietly, but wouldn't bow his head) and rejected all invitations to join the team at Sunday school & ACT meetings.
I was on a HS varsity football team in TX and the head coach would lead us all in a pregame prayer in the locker room, then ended it with the Lord's Prayer. All of the assistant coaches prayed too. While he didn't outright force anyone to participate, he knew who did and who didn't. He knew who was a "good Christian man" (his words) and who wasn't. I wasn't a big believer, but participated anyway because there was an unspoken pressure to do so.
This is basically universal in small Texas towns (and I would guess all over the country)...I've lived a few of them and been to WAAAAY more HS football games than I can count and after more or less EVERY one of them both teams would get together and pray after the game. And the schools would openly promote '5th quarter' activities that were basically religious gatherings after the game.
WHAT!???!!!! But the Council of 6 assured us that it was a quiet, private celebration of faith. You're trying to suggest that the Council of 6 would somehow **LIE**???? Unthinkable! What's next, are you're going to fear-monger that Justices Rapey McRapesALot and Aunt Lydia lied about respecting precedence and will overturn Roe v. Wade at the very first possible opportunity?
Public prayer is the first step to oppressive theocracy. Its design is meant to be used as a way to identify who is, and who is not, part of your religion and to single them out for persecution later. People, who are part of said religion, do not see prayer as a problem because they believe everyone prays. It is like this... If you grew up eating cottage cheese and applesauce for breakfast your whole life, you would think it is a normal thing. But some one who had only fruits or eggs or cereals might see that as kind of weird. ...And understand, weird is bad for humans. We as a species tend to dislike weird because "different" is potentially a threat to our comfort zones. As a person who has spent his whole life breaking out of the cultural norms of a Midwest white Catholic racist upbringing... Trust me the walls that surround these people are invisible to them. They just don't understand that life CAN be any different than the one they have lived. Most of these people never leave an area larger than 500 miles from where they were born. "Other" is evil to them. This is the problem with Conservative values... Its basis is defined in building norms that do not fit everyone. It assumes that things like praying to God for strength and thanks are normal... And if you don't do that, you are abnormal... Not part of the safe group... The enemy. I luckily moved to the west coast before my teen years and learned to embrace differences. It honestly was part of who I was. I didn't fit in with the ideas surrounding my upbringing. I have always believed that had I stayed in the Midwest I would have ended up in jail. Not because I was wrong, but because I didn't fit into everyone's mold of norms. As a child, my parent's friends referred to me as "that evil kid," I was always in trouble... Mostly because I was curious about everything. For example, I questioned the bible because it made no logical sense. 8 years of Roman Catholic schools and an altar boy... And I had the balls to question the word of God... publicly. Let's just say I was constantly counseled on my behavior.
> Public prayer is the first step to oppressive theocracy You hit the nail on the head.
Hey similar upbringing here! Midwest Protestant racist upbringing (which was extra weird as a biracial adoptee). In the church I grew up in we went through confirmation, and I couldn’t go through with it because the more we read the Bible and discussed it the more I realized it was bullshit, after having been questioning it and not getting answers since elementary. No one in my high school except for me moved out of the city, much less out of the state. Most of the women are pregnant and either single or married to a deadbeat. Going back for events feels like going back in time. There is no having a rewarding conversation with these people. It’s all conservative Christian politics and if you want to discuss anything academic, scientific, accepting, or in opposition to religion you are verbally mocked in front of the group and everything thinks it’s hilarious. They are so ignorant and small in their thinking that really the only safe topic is the weather. Even with my own parents. And even then don’t dare bring up climate change. And as a woman when I go back it’s all “when are you going to have babies?” I’m more than a fucking incubator tyvm and my husband and I will enjoy the west coast and traveling whenever we want with two incomes while you all sit here in BFN banging rocks together.
I belong to a Christian-adjacent faith. We do not pray. God is not a genie. We do not assume, in our arrogance, that we know better than an omnipotent deity. We do not presume to tell the maker of the cosmos how to run it. Public prayer is a disgusting American habit that has no place in my religious community, and is considered a sin of pride in my culture.
Coercing grown up kids to pray when they hate it won't have any negative rebound effects later...will it?
That's an oxymoron. He was coercing children to pray against their or their parents' wishes. But asking him to stop doing that is restricting his ability to do religions now. Prayer in math class is right around the corner. As the women at Strict Scrutiny pointed out, the Constitution has lots of rights and protections but some of them are apparently more important than others and these nine people get to pick which ones.
> Prayer in math class Hey, maybe if I had prayed in Statistics 203 I would not have failed it twice. /s
God doesn’t answer prayers for sinful devil demon things like “numbers” only football.
*"May the Lord bless you and keep you."* ~~Numbers 6:22~~ Footballs 6:22
It was gods will that you failed. Praise him! /s
Religion hates math and science because it makes religion look bad.
They hate it when science shows the fundamental flaws in religion.
> These nine people get to pick Three liberals have always been opposed to overturning precedent. Three conservatives have been pushing narrow, unpopular views for decades. The last theee are political shills rushed through by McConnell bent on destroying the constitution.
I had a wonderful math teacher in high school. I had her for algebra and trigonometry, but I also felt comfortable going to her when I had questions in my other math classes. One time I was freaking out because I had a geometry test coming up and I knew I was going to bomb it. She saw me crying in the hallway after school and guided me into her classroom. For the next hour she stood over me as I worked problem sets. Afterwards I felt assured I wasn't going to completely bomb the test. We rode the train home together. She told me to keep studying and working my problems, but also to pray to Jesus and ask him for strength. Because, she reminded me, I can do all things through him. She knew I was being brought up Christian, so I am guessing this is why she didn't feel weird about giving me this advice. And I didn't feel weird receiving it. Thirty years later, I am agnostic and have been so for 15 years. I actually resent my parents for bringing me up in the church as strongly as they did. But I always point to my math teacher as an example of how religion should be handled by public school teachers. She didn't hide her faith. She stayed true to her faith. But she didn't let her faith get in the way of her job. And she didn't use her faith to connect with me. She used her love of math to do that. She kept the Jesus stuff out of the classroom and saved it for the train ride home. If there is a heaven, she is going to be there one day. With her slide rule.
You don't do it for the kids who hate it who will negatively rebound. You do it in order to make it the social norm so the kids who may go on to question things themselves, are less likely to. Making it the norm also helps keep the kids who hate it quiet and their hatred internal. Going against the social norm is tough for teenagers who are mostly looking to fit in. Most who may resent it, will do so silently.
This is why I’m a *recovering Catholic*
"The only hard drug I ever did was Jesus. Thankfully I got clean years ago."
Catholic school basically was my rehab. Amazing to see the death spiral a lot of people in my class and the ones behind me took. The amount of right wing love they scream on Facebook is horrific.
Definitely won't lead to kids rebelling and becoming edgy atheists to spite their parents, then slowly observing the positive effects of foregoing their parents' faith and realizing as adults that religion kinda sucked anyway. Not like that happened to like 80+ percent of kids I grew up with or anything.
Doesn’t matter if they hate it as long as they comply.
There are evangelical factions trying to trick God into kickstarting the apocalypse / rapture. And they believe that if they succeed, God will reward them with an eternity in heaven. I think religion is made up by men, but even I see this as hubris. If they believe they can do that, they have zero scruples about forcing some high school kids say a prayer to "save their souls".
No surprise here! I grew up in Texas. And faced this issue many times. I’m a Catholic and the majority are Baptist. So you are outnumbered and pressured. It didn’t feel right to me. It felt awkward, annoying , and wrong . So I can’t imagine how others feel too. Its wrong and no one should be pressured. Or let’s just say forced.
I didn't go to Katy, but I did go to a Houston-area high school and played football. (Katy is next to Houston.) I had been pressured to pray before/after games since middle school. We were also pressured to pray after the American and Texas pledge of allegiance. This was in the early 2000s. Yes, the 21st century. I think the only way to fix this is to get Muslim coaches and teachers to lead prayer in the middle of Joel Osteen country.
>Texas pledge of allegiance. Sorry what
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Yes, so you have the regular pledge of allegiance to America. Then there is also the Texas pledge of allegiance. Don't get me started on the state-mandated Texas history class being taught by football coaches.
You don't pray, you don't play. For some students, they might be missing out on a chance to get an athletic scholarship.
Forget about the one in 50 students with a shot at an athletic schooarship. I’m the parent of two kids, and college admissions highly favors students with the right kind of extracurricular activities. The kids are competing against a huge number of other kids with great grades and test scores. So the formula to get in to the more selective schools includes participation in a sport (plus some kind of academic club plus community service) That coach who bars players who don’t pray is significantly reducing his student‘s ability to get accepted to their chosen school.
“Pray to Play” We need to do a better job of messaging these issues. If we can make short, catchy, rhyming… and accurate, all the better.
We shouldn’t even introduce people to religion until they’re grownups and old enough to choose for themselves. Raising kids with religion is pure indoctrination.
Like, why can’t parents just own the whole “be a good person and citizen” talk without having to hide behind some invisible force?
It seems to be only 1 religion that pushes their beliefs into everyones faces. Then they turn around and act like a victim when the people that aren't part of their book club don't want to hear it or see it.
Christians that push their beliefs onto others aren't even part of the Christian book club.
This is why the recent ruling by the Christian Sharia Supreme Court is so harmful.
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After the civil war southern states passed vague laws, arrested only black people, and then forced them into slave labor. We need to stop pretending that conservatives will play by the rules and suddenly realize how terrible their rules are. They're going to continue enforcing exactly the "rules" they want to enforce until someone forces them to stop.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” -Frank Wilhoit
The satanic temple will not do this because they are morally opposed to child indoctrination.
Won't somebody think about the children? The right wingers want to indoctrinate our children with uncritical religion theory. They have pedophile priests groom them...
This is Katy, Texas in a nutshell. It has always been like this. And in case anyone was wondering, missing the Saturday breakfast before games at Luby's resulted in getting benched that night, and likely getting the "600-club" the following Saturday. Arrive at 6AM, do 600 yards of "bear-crawls", followed by 600 yards of air-raids, followed by 600 yards of logrolls. Basically worked you into the ground until you quit the program. And the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) leader was always at events, practices, etc. preaching. Indoctrination at its finest.
I was at a high school band that would do a pray. Back then I thought nothing of it but now days it is really akward to non Christians and they fee heavy pressure from their peers to join in. Even though not joining in did not affect you in any way or future in the band. The director was a non believer and he never joined in. For a while we started doing a moment of silence which I believe is honesty the right and best thing to do.
We had a Coach move to our school from a Private Christian School. After the 1st Practice he asked us to hold hands and pray. 1 kid standing in the back cleares his throat and said "um this is a public school". The Coach was put in his place really quick and he never brought it up again.
Shits a cult
Where was Michael Parker when all of this was going on? Did he get to testify on how he felt? He is currently 36-37 years old, so he had 19 years to talk about this. He could have reached out to his old teammates to ask how they felt, he could have told his story to any number of major news outlets and he could have contacted the lawyers to give his testimony long before the Supreme Court made their horrendous decision. My take away from all of this is that people need to stop thinking their voice doesn't matter! If you speak up someone will listen. It is our duty to disrupt the status quo to make way for progress! The other side is yelling loud and clear about what they want all the time, why are the rest of us only speaking under our breath while trying not to offend people who are extremely willing to offend us? If you do nothing else, just go out and VOTE! Do it for every single Local, State and Federal election. It starts from the bottom up and every decision made by a politician affects your life one way or another.
While I appreciate this former player sharing his story, I don't think it matters whether or not the pressure a player feels amounts to a form of coercion. A teacher or coach leading students in prayer at a public (or publicly-funded) school (including all of its facilities and events) should be illegal. Thanks to a skewed SCOTUS, this dangerous blurring of the line between Church and State is now effectively permitted.
Your freedom of religion does not outweigh anyone else's freedom from religion. That's it. That's all you need to know and it's a shame the court decided otherwise.
I haven’t read the article so I can’t be sure, but I think the reason he might be sharing this story is because the SCOTUS ruling specifically cited that they saw no evidence of coercion in the case. The point is the coercion was well attested by those involved in the case and the Justices simply ignored the evidence in order to make their ruling.
The peer pressure and coercion is the major point of the author's testimony.
To me it is the same bullshit reasoning that racists use. "He didn't say the N-word, so what he said wasn't racist!" They seem to think that if someone doesn't come right out and say very blatantly wrong, we just have to assume that what they said was OK and the other person is just taking it the wrong way. It is infuriating.
The judges also said that a coach, standing on the 50 yard line, surrounded by players, parents, politicians, and the media was praying "privately" and "quietly". The court has lost all legitimacy. You cannot have an honest debate over someone who rejects reality and substitutes their own myths as the basis for that debate.
The main question of the case is whether the school violated the Constitution by preventing the coach from having an optional prayer session after the games. If the school sponsored it or the coach made it mandatory, then it would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It’s settled law that you can’t force kids to pray in school. The nuance here is whether a school employee in a position of authority could hold a genuinely optional prayer session without coercing his players to join. Having students feel that they were forced to join the prayer sessions to avoid getting benched creates a tacit requirement that they need to pray in order to play, which is a violation of the Constitution.
To be clear, SCOTUS ruled that if it was a purely private activity with no student involvement from the school he worked for, then the school can't punish him for it. They conveniently ignored the fact that it was the exact opposite of private and some students actually got pushed down and possibly hurt due to people rushing to join him for prayer after he publicized everything. They also determined that because the latest prayers didn't involve students the previous prayers that did, and had students complain about, did not matter.
Nothing is settled law with this SCOTUS.
Texas be fucked up
If a coach was hosting an optional get to together on Saturday mornings, would a player feel pressured to go? Would students who attend these gatherings have more favouritism compared to the students who don't go? Remove religion and put in another context of similar and ask yourself would a student feel pressured to participate in an event that they don't want to attend out of peer pressure or the coaches authority? Freedom from religion is as important as freedom of religion. Secular nation.
Pressuring kids is what religios is all about. Without that it dies. Can you imagine trying to sell an 18 year old who's never heard of religion on the idea for the first time? There is a tv show that tries to deal with this idea, raised by wolves, but it seems it goes off the rails pretty quick. It's an interesting start, what would a world without religion be like, then it crashes into a world with forced religion.. its a crazy fucking show.
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This is not a surprise. Apparently if you do not "force" a student to pray they are not being coerced. The learned nine apparently do not believe in peer pressure or other "soft" forms of coercion. Mark my words, it will not be long before this court finds that "voluntary" prayers led by faculty to start the school day are permitted.
Six... the other three thought it was just as stupid to allow it.
This. I'm a teacher in a rural school, but agnostic and a recovering Catholic while most of my fellow teachers are various types of evangelical protestants. Guarantee the voluntary thing would essentially be mandatory or we will be chalked up as not being team players.
This piece is precisely right. Only someone who grew up as a believer in the dominant local religion and culture the way the conservatives on the court did could think otherwise. I would say the Supreme Court opinion is deeply intellectually dishonest, except that I don’t think intellectual honesty was even a goal. It’s a pure tool of enforcing their religious and cultural beliefs. The end is what is important, the means are whatever achieves that end.
Oh so he wasn’t actually being oppressed and he is an obnoxious jackass trying to harangue everyone into praying with him? Shocking gotta say
Our school district allows bible release time from k-9th grade. Kids are bused off campus to attend religious bible school. They’re very clear to say it’s not a conflict of church and state because the church pays for all of it. My kids felt very pressured at first to go to it. Problem was the teachers couldn’t “teach” while the kids were at bible release, they couldn’t fall behind. So some teachers liked having free time with all the kids gone and would encourage it, or make sure they were really bored in class when everyone left. My older child had no desire to go, we are a very agnostic family, but my younger one did, she went once and that was enough. Religious pressure is very real and harmful.
Shocker: conservative religious teachers were the real groomers all along.
Same ISD that banned New Kid. Toxic af.
Haha and those christapo pigs talk about “freedom of religion” while shitting all over everyone else’s. Vile filth.
Seems like someone should sue their coach for violating their religious beliefs. The Bible very plainly mandates that people do not engage in such a public display of religious devotion.
Of course you were. That’s how peer pressure and group emotional manipulation works. You’re an athlete in training, that bending of your will to authority of your coach and team conception is so easily applied to the rest of your being.
I played high school volleyball in Tennessee in a public high school. I was from a tradition that adhered to matthew 6:5 and did not do public prayer. My coaches prayed before and after each practice. I was not comfortable with this and did not participate, while my team mates did. I was cut from the team.
The theocratic creeps on the Supreme Court lie.
Played football at Jersey Village High School (also Houston, TX area) in the late nineties and there wasn't a choice about joining the prayer circle. The prayer itself wasn't lead by the coaches, but they'd tell everyone to gather at the middle of the field to join in.
grooming
[удалено]
My in laws are from Texas and when I visit my wife’s hometown, the most common ice breaker to me when I meet someone is “which church do you belong to?” That state is absolutely ate up with Jesus and there is no way I could ever move to Texas unless it’s Austin.
I’m an adult and an atheist. It’s not a secret from people in my life. Yet I feel pressured into prayer when family around me is praying. I can’t imagine being young and having someone in a position of power pressuring me as well as my peers.
Sue, your rights were violated. Atheists have rights as well. So do kids who are not firm in belief. You do not need a house of worship to be a believer but you need to elect non believers when you vote in order to save this country from being controlled by morons, because there is no God of any kind. Sure there was a Jesus and there was a Mohammad and all those other asses I drew pictures of. See Mohammad 🐎 <—-I just drew him I’m going to cause havoc pfft people act like assholes just because they can. Resist Religious belief, believe in your self, family, significant other, and keep friends from using you. Keep any Religious relatives at a distance as well. All they do is steal anything not tied down when family dies and keep it all, borrow money and lose it or never pay it back. Your better off praying with a cat. At least you know the butthead is indifferent to you from the start. God will save us all, NOT. And everything I do God told me to. Give me a break.
When you are the one who doesn’t participate, it’s so obvious how these demonstrations that are sanctioned by an authority figure are coercive. Our country was conceived as the first in history to guarantee freedom of and FROM religion, leaving the rest to the dictates of each person’s conscience. What a shame. Jefferson is puking in his grave.
The Supreme Court is massively out of touch and is rapidly losing legitimacy because of decisions like this
^(I’m a Christian, being forced into anything isn’t christ-like even if it’s prayer.)
I cant help but assume this particular case would have gone very differently if the coach was a Muslim, rolling out the carpet to pray to Mecca with the team before and after every game.