Click here to watch (for those with a strong stomach).
Perry's basic assertion is that it's unfair that gays can serve in the military but that children can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.
I barely know where to start.
First of all, Perry confuses active discrimination and freedom of religion. If gays could serve in the military but children who celebrated Christmas were not allowed to go to school, Perry's comparison might begin to approach fair. There has always been a difference, however, between rights we exercise publicly and those we exercise in our personal lives.
Let's briefly make the (in my opinion incorrect) assumption that being gay is a choice. Let's also throw it out there that being Christian is a choice. Actually, practicing any religion is a choice. Religious people make it very clear that their religious choices should not influence how they are treated outside their places of worship, so I see no reason why other personal choices should affect how people are treated outside the home. It makes it even worse that these people have made the choice to serve their country, protecting the very people who think their lives and rights are somehow worth less.
What I'd really like to do, though, is discuss this continual assertion that the school system has somehow made war on religion. This is just simply not true.
Children are free to pray in school, they are just not free to pray in class. At my middle school, there was a Muslim girl, and as our lunch period overlapped with one of the five daily periods of Muslim prayer, the teachers let her use an empty classroom for a few minutes while the rest of us talked about which boys we thought were cute over sandwiches and juice boxes. No one was really bothered by this since she did it in private and never pressured anyone to join her, nor was she ever prevented by the school from practicing her religion as long as it did not disrupt school activities.
My high school had a very strict dress code, including a ban on visible piercings and tattoos. However, this was relaxed to allow for a few nose piercings mandated by some students' religions. There was also a ban on death images, but Catholics were allowed to wear crucifix necklaces. A few Muslim students also worse head scarves to school in what would appear to be a violation of the "no hats" policy. None of these students, however, were prevented from wearing religious clothing or paraphernalia precisely because the school did not want to interfere with their religious choices.
America was founded on the principle of freedom of religion, and that means any religion, including no religion at all. Children are not prevented by schools from practicing their religion, but they are made to do it in a non-disruptive way. Since religion is a personal choice, it is subject to the same restrictions as other personal choices to make sure that the school environment is conducive to learning (for example, I can choose to walk around my house naked all day long, but I think everyone is grateful that myself and others are forced to put on clothes when they go to work or school).
If Rick Perry does want prayer in the classroom, he has to remember that it can be prayer from any religion. That means that while the Christians are saying Our Fathers, the Muslims can be reading from the Koran, the Jews can be lighting Chanukah candles (why should fire and safety regulations interfere with free practice of religion?), and I can be prancing around screaming a Satanist chant if I want to. Is that the public classroom that Rick Perry really wants?
If faith did indeed made America strong, it was the freedom to practice, or not practice, that faith that fed and continues to feed that strength. That means that schools cannot mandate or encourage any particular religion since they are extensions of the government (and indeed non-government schools are exempt from religious abstention). I will endlessly defend the right of others to practice whatever religion they wish, but I will also defend my right not to be encouraged or mandated by anyone, but particularly by our government, to have or practice a religion, because that is my America.
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