Appeals court upholds Mo. prayer ballot measure

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A state appeals court has upheld the ballot summary for a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution on public prayer.

The proposed amendment asserts the right in Missouri to pray in public places as long as doing so does not disturb the peace. It also says that students may express their religious beliefs and cannot be compelled to participate in assignments that violate those beliefs.

The summary was challenged in a lawsuit claiming it failed to mention the potential for students to refuse homework or that prisoners could lose some religious protections.

A panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals’ Western District ruled Wednesday that the challenge was without merit.

The proposed amendment will appear on Missouri’s Aug. 7 statewide ballot.

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Sequoia 11 months, 1 week ago

Can anyone give me an example of a case where a student has not been able to express his/her religious beliefs, or been compelled to participate in an assignment that violates those beliefs?

Legislation should be reserved to solve an actual problem. This kind of legislation to set up a straw man (the straw man being the idea that students are, in fact, being compelled to participate in assignments that violate religious belief) just to score some kind of point in the culture wars is a waste of time.

Vote these clowns out. They are not serious about getting down to business.

These legislators are not serving the people. They are serving the "conservative movement."

Sequoia 11 months, 1 week ago

And if you could just tell me what poor decision you are talking about, or something more specific other than "this is needed to balance things out."

I can't think of any possible school assignment that would violate anyone's religious belief. Can you?

If there are "anit-Christian forces" out there, can you tell me who they are and what they are doing specifically that justifies this measure?

Or is the point of the measure just to make me think "Gosh, that poor Christian majority in America really must be under attack, if they need this measure"?

Is this just a scare tactic? Because your reply actually suggests that it IS just a scare tactic.

I'm confident in my Christian faith. No one on the left or the right scares me (and I've had to defend Christianity against both sides... against lefties who think religion is just superstition and righties who think Jesus was a Republican).

I'd actually say that the conservative movement is a greater threat to Christianity than anything the left has come up with. Go look at some statistics on kids who reject Christianity solely because, thanks to the conservative movement, they see faith as nothing more than a stick for intolerance and bossiness. Kids are leaving because they think Christianity is all about hating gays, muslims and liberals. It's sad. Jesus said, "That which you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me."

It is a shame what the conservative movement has done to Jesus' reputation. I'm surprised more Christians don't stand up to them. You can call me "liberal" and lefty and all the names you want... I'm not afraid to be insulted because of my faith.

If I need to, I'm perfectly capable of defending my faith to anyone who wants to step up. I don't need the government to tell me it is okay to be Christian. My faith doesn't need the government's protection. I don't need the Republican Party to weigh in on whether my view of Jesus' teaching is acceptable to their political agenda or not.

And I don't support legislators working on scare tactics. Go solve a real problem.

I'll be voting no.

If I were a high school student, I'd by praying (in and out of school) that this passes. Uh, I've got, like, a religious opposition and stuff, to this, uh, like, book report. LOL!

Sequoia 11 months, 1 week ago

So, you're saying that Jesus actually taught: "Love your neighbor as yourself, unless your neighbor doesn't worship me in the way that the majority of the society says he ought to. Then, I command you to make his life as unpleasant as possible."

I must have missed that sermon.

For someone who is so committed to original intent in constitutional interpretation, you take an awful lot of liberties with the Word of God.

Sequoia 11 months, 1 week ago

So, correct me. You seem to be saying that Jesus taught compassion for the marginalized only if the marginalized person in question accepted Jesus as the Son of God. Isn't that what you're saying? If not, what ARE you saying?

asb 11 months, 1 week ago

The law is the survival of the fit, and it is not fiction. Religious fundamentalists are proof that repeating a lie long enough to make it true in the minds of the ignorant works well enough to warp a free society's information exchange ala FOX and Behe's Discovery institute.

deboldt 11 months, 1 week ago

Sequoia said that he can't think of any possible school assignment that would violate anyone's religious belief. I would think that much of what is taught in public schools’ science and history classes would violate Biblical literalists’ religious beliefs.

We can’t have Johnny and Jane coming home and asking Mom and Dad for help writing a paper about Evolution, the Pleistocene Epoch or that the Exodus from Egypt never happened when their faith tells them man was specially created, the earth is 6,000 years old and Moses was a real person. And forget trying to teach anything to fundamentalist kids about human reproduction or STDs. Such an amendment will cripple public education worse than it is now—if such a thing is even possible.

And BTW hkchas: Bush lost both bids for the presidency in 2000 and 2004. Gore and Kerry decided not to serve rather than muster the courage to challenge the evidence of massive Republican vote fraud in Florida and Ohio.

gregpalast.com/florida-by-the-numbersal-gore-won-florida-in-2000-by-77000-votes/

gregpalast.com/how-they-stole-ohio/

And the Republicans say they are now concerned with Democrat vote fraud. HA!

asb 11 months, 1 week ago

Another creationist tool to teach the controversy. Americans will devolve into the remarkable state of being the wealthiest nation on Earth, with the resources to educate but no desire to do so for fear of learing about the real world. We'll slip further and further behind Elbonia in academic efforts due to religious fluff being taught as fact and teachers being fired for teaching reality, and being marginalized as un-needed.

asb 11 months, 1 week ago

creationism isn't knowledge, it's the obfuscation of knowledge. The bill would allow a parent to tell his kid to ignore knowledge and so not pay the low-grades consequences of his religious beliefs. Knowledge about creationism has a place in school, just not in science classes.

Sequoia 11 months, 1 week ago

Creationism is faith, not factual knowledge. Science by definition can be replicated. Knowledge of God can't be confirmed by instruments. It is an experience only possible in the heart of an individual human. The proof is not mathmatical. It is mystical.

Trying to reduce God to a scientific explanation is reducing God. God is not within science. Science is within God. That's why science can't see God.

asb 11 months, 1 week ago

When a faith utterly contradicts knowledge, it is more than a faith. It is a political stance. When it is promoted by agents with political agendas, it is much more than a faith. All mainstream religions have learned to adapt to knowledge. Failure to do so causes blasphemy and conflict. Conflict with knowledge is war with the insane.

asb 11 months, 1 week ago

Nobody on the left says man knows it all, that's extremist FRight wing propaganda. Creationism is at war with knowledge. It denies reality and promotes religious beliefs as truth and demands equal time in the classroom with actual truth. There is no science supporting creationism and no science refuting Evolution, yet creationism continues on, making its proponents rich, burying the otherwise good minds of the faithful in hogwash. And, you misrepresent the left regarding Christianity. The left often opposes ANY religious domination or political involvement. In America that's usually Christian. The left would be just as active in opposition to Islamic extremism as Christian fundamentalism.

Sequoia 11 months, 1 week ago

"Creationism" is the scientific explanation of God. I'm not making that up. That's what creationists SAY IT IS.

Public schools don't exclude "the ultimate goal" from education. They teach it in world religion classes. They simply don't recognize whether one goal is better or more correct than another. That is the final leap of faith for the mystical function of the individual human soul, and I don't want the government to have any input on that. God is for man to find, not government to mandate.

Confirmation and replication is key to science, not all education. We don't teach literature in science class for that reason.

asb 11 months, 1 week ago

No, the left, and true conservatives don't want creationism taught as plausible in science classes. Religion classes, philosophy classes, fine. Just not in classes where competition in the world of knowledge-based technology demands our students be taught reality regarding science, not faith forced into the classroom disguised as science.

Sequoia 11 months, 1 week ago

Creationism is fine in a public school world religion class. Just not in a science class.

deboldt 11 months, 1 week ago

I too would love to see Creationism critically examined in the public schools of Missouri--only in a class on religion, philosophy, history or logic.

Teaching students to recognize, analyze and disprove archaic, theological absurdities disguised as pseudo science would give them an invaluable leg up as responsible, informed citizens in an ever more complex informational world.

It's just that there is precious little time as it is in the science classroom to even teach the legitimate material let alone "alternatives" to the Theory of Evolution like creationism, Lysenkoism, Hindu cosmology, interstellar alien colonization, etc.

spelchek 11 months, 1 week ago

"...informed citizens in an ever more complex informational world. " -- Is that what you call people texting behind the wheel of a car? Complex? Please. Seems the more and more secularists have their way the dumber we get. Can't wait to see a society void of all God's and morals once you're complete in your mission.

asb 11 months, 1 week ago

You've opened a whole tin of red herrings there Spel Texting has what to do with any of this? Secularists aren't the ones teaching superstition to children and calling it intelligent design. My mission is not to remove morals from society, but rather to have religious dogma stay in the house of worship, and to have those pushing their morals on me stop doing so. My morals are as good as anybody's and I don't need an afterlife to justify or explain them.

deboldt 11 months, 1 week ago

Spelchek has just activated my impertinence alert alarm system.

ding ding ding ding.

Please do not panic. Sanity will be restored shortly.Had this been a real argument you would have been alerted as to where to go to secure accurate information.

JMO 11 months, 1 week ago

Evolution is a fact. God is a matter of faith. I have no problem with the concept that God, in whom I have faith but will never be able to scientifically prove exists, caused evolution, a fact which I can study and scientifically prove exists. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that what we see as evolution taking millions of years, God would see as occuring in seven days. How arrogant is mankind to insist an eternal being measures time like we do? But none of that changes the fact that God is faith and science is science. One belongs in church, the other in school.

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