The Everything Else P&R

You’re all now Muslims. Gotcha!

Actually, i thought of something.

If someone was compelled to sing a song, THAT would be a problem to me. For instance, if a kid was forced to play amazing Grace, then that would be bad.

It should be entirely voluntary, and totally acceptable for that kid to say, “these songs go against my religious beliefs” and be allowed to only play the other songs, without any kind of reprisal.

And that’s when you make them all religious bullshit songs and tell poor Timmy to go fuck off (if he wants).

That would be a problem. It would be unacceptable to deny a student access to something like musical education unless they were willing to perform religious songs.

“We aren’t officially telling you that Christianity is correct, but all your teachers believe it is. Now sing this hymn with us.”

No, I’m not, you are repeatedly accusing me of doing that so you can argue against a funny strawman where singing a single song converts you. You are at the same time refusing to engage with my actual argument that normalization no one religion creates significant social pressure on those who do not belong to it.

It should be relatively manageable to accept where you live and how things are while also working productively to make things better in ways that are important to you.

And this is where I think you find people take issue with your argument. Because while I agree with this, your position vis a vis Amazing Grace, does not fit this ideal. Because for those we are talking about the options are:

Perform religious song
Or
Lose out on a non trivial portion of your music education while also becoming a social outcast and make your religious affiliation really stand out to the point it will undoubtedly cause trouble with your peers

Because grade schoolers? Especially if their parents are hardcore evangelical types? This is painting a target on that kids back if they dare speak up.

Sorry, i don’t find your argument compelling. I am in that situation. I do not social pressure as a result. As a kid, i was a much more zealous atheist, and I still felt no social pressure.

Actual oppression of minorities is one thing. Deal with those acts of oppression. Don’t use them as some part of a slippery slope argument to try and justify banning other acts which are not oppressive at all.

If you are in a minority, guess what? You aren’t the same as the majority. And that’s fine. Being reminded of that fact isn’t bad. It’s an accurate reflection of reality.

The problem only arises if you are punished for being different. But again, the solution is to deal with that, not try to restrict people’s expressions because you think it might lead to such things.

Since it was already suggested that it would be acceptable to just remove those songs, it cannot be suggested that not playing them would result in some non trivial degradation of your musical education. I mean, you just wouldn’t learn those songs… Although, again, i find such a choice would be foolish, because choosing not to learn something because it goes against your religion seems profoundly stupid to me… but that’s just me.

Regarding the notion of becoming a social outcast because you believe differently, that is not caused by this. It’s a fool’s errand to think that you can somehow make everyone homogenous. We cannot hide our differences. We are in fact different.

You need to deal with the problem of people being afraid of things that are unfamiliar… Not try to hide that unfamiliarity. And the way to make people accepting of the unfamiliar, is to expose them to the unfamiliar.

You can’t sweep such things under the rug and expect good outcomes.

That target is going to be there anyway, unless you are suggesting that the non Christians should just hide their religion and pretend like they are Christians, and so removing any overt acts from school will help them hide it.

I mean, they are gonna find out. And all this kind of thing, of saying that their kids can’t sing Christmas songs in school around Christmas is gonna do, is manufacture resentment. And it’s going to make everything worse.

It’s not solving any problem. It’s just trying to pretend such things don’t exist, but in doing so, makes them worse.

If you guys want to de-Christianize culture, you’ve got your work cut out for you. You’re going to have to do a lot more than object to a popular hymn!

-Tom

I was recently at a catholic funeral and had to sing amazing grace. The lyrics made me uncomfortable, particularly because of the implications regarding those who do not seek a state of grace. Now in that context it’s fine, I’m an adult and should just deal with it. However I wouldn’t be happy with my son being part of a performance in which it was sung.

I do agree with all the not the hill to die on comments, but I also sympathise with the original concern.

[quote=“ravenight, post:330, topic:136518”]
Because it’s school, you are forced to be there, so we have to guarantee balance between different faiths. Can’t do that if you have to include something from every faith each time, so it’s a lot easier to exclude all. Again, from situations where you aren’t specifically studying history or sociology or religion or w/e. The casual inclusion of art from the dominant religion is a problem, because it creates a strong imbalance in the representation. It is not balanced by also celebrating Hannukah.

No there is no requirement that there be equal representation of all religions. There is nothing in the constitution nor in the long history of 1st amendment court rulings that says we must have if we have a Christian song, there must be an equal number of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Atheist songs.

We live in majority Christian nation we are going to have prayers, hymns, and they are going to be predominately Christian prayers in public events. This is settled law, but the general public, heard the phrase of separation of church and state, and has taken the phrase too literally and too simplistically. The House of Representative has Chaplin and while there are guest religious official who give prayers of different religion, the vast majority of the prayers that start each day Congress is in session are Christian.

Remember there are two equal and compete 1st amendment rights, the right of people to freely exercise their religion, and the prohibition of the state establishing an official religion. If Granath doesn’t want his kids to play Amazing Grace, he is absolutely free to not have them play those song. The school must accommodate his desire and can’t for instance kick his kids out of the band for not playing Amazing Grace, while it could kick them out for not refusing play Twinkle Twinkle little star.

However, his right does not extend to deprive other parents of the right to have their kids play Amazing Grace and other religious songs during Christmas.

Speaking of settled law with regard to prayer, I offer:

Held: The District’s policy permitting student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games violates the Establishment Clause.

The Court must be confused by what the establishment clause means, too.

If you only have Christian songs in homework assignments given by a public school, how is that not an establishment of religion? Prayer in schools is unconstitutional if you want to talk about settled law. The reasoning is the same as what I’m offering here: it’s not enough to say that kids are free to refuse participation. Overtly religious songs seem just as problematic to me as explicit prayers, and it’s far from an unreasonable extension of the principle.

Allowing people to pray how they choose is important and obviously protected. I don’t think it should be ok for official proceedings to include prayers, but I understand the majority’s opinion on it (basically, if I invite a speaker I can’t pick and choose what they say, so they are allowed to invite those present pray with them). As long as the process of selecting speakers is not requiring a specific religious affiliation, you simply can’t prevent it without severely limiting speech by, say, banning specific words.

This far from settled law, though, as there are many nuances involved and the relevant opinion is only a few years old and had a strong dissent. Related matters will likely hinge on the details.

If the school let the kids and parents choose the songs so that each kid/parent had a say in what the kid performed, I don’t think anyone would object to some kids choosing religious songs. That’s not what’s happening here. If you think Christians would have their rights denied by the non-inclusion of Amazing Grace in the song list laid out by the school, then you are saying that literally every other religion is having its rights denied because there aren’t any others represented.

Wut?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/24/can-students-pray-in-public-schools-can-teachers-say-merry-christmas-whats-allowed-and-forbidden/?utm_term=.094be5ddec20

Can students pray inside their public school buildings? Can teachers say “Merry Christmas” to their students? Can religious music be played in public schools?

Yes, yes and yes.

Or as Bill Clinton said:

It appears that some school officials, teachers and parents have assumed that religious expression of any type is either inappropriate, or forbidden altogether, in public schools.

As our courts have reaffirmed, however, nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones, or requires all religious expression to be left behind at the schoolhouse door.

Nothing in that article contradicts anything I said.

Except for the things you said that it directly contradicted.

Other than those, sure.

You mean the thing that you isolated from its context and then selected a different meaning for? I explicitly said, in bunch of places, that voluntary prayer or religious expression initiated by students is not prohibited and not the issue here. So, no, nothing that I said is contradicted by that article.

You missed this quote from the article, I wonder why:

“the U.S. Supreme Court banned school-sponsored prayer in public schools in a landmark 1962 decision”

This was obviously what he was referring to. This kind of worthless pedantry is the polar opposite of constructive discussion.

The entire argument has been pedantry divorced from reality and law. But when I read what someone says and respond accordingly it’s unacceptable pedantry. Gotcha. I forgot to plug into Cerebro before I got online and mistakenly looked at the words.

Have fun with it, I’m done.