| by Cal Thomas
SOMETHING QUITE REMARKABLE happened last week at a high school
graduation in Calvert County, Maryland. It wasn't that the American
Civil Liberties Union had intervened on behalf of a lone student who
said he would be offended if a fellow graduate went ahead with her
plans to deliver an invocation at commencement. The religious version
of "ethnic cleansing'' happens all the time, from the courthouse to
the schoolhouse. Seventeen-year-old Julie Schenk, who wanted to
deliver the invocation, compromised and announced that she would
instead call for a "time for reflection'' that did not mention God.
That seemed fine with everybody, including the ACLU. But when
Schenk asked for 30 seconds of silence and the crowd of 4,000 rose, a
single loud male voice began reciting the Lord's Prayer, which begins,
"Our Father, who art in heaven.'' The prayer was quickly picked up by
others in the audience until it rolled like thunder across the room.
The student who had protested the offering of an audible prayer,
18-year-old Nick Becker, walked out. When he tried to reenter to
receive his diploma, he was barred by authorities under a school
policy that forbids students from returning to an assembly once they
have left. Becker has been described as having an independent streak.
Last year he was forced to wash his hair when he came to school with
it in spikes resembling the Statue of Liberty, and he had also refused
to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and was about to be disciplined
when the ACLU intervened. He was put in a patrol car until
commencement ended. Becker was also barred from a post-graduation boat
cruise that was limited to those who had participated in the ceremony.
What amazes about this incident is that the audience reaction seems
to have been spontaneous. Indeed, an ACLU spokesperson appeared
frustrated when she noted the corporate prayer wasn't initiated by
graduates or school officials. Nor did the prayer specifically mention
"God,'' only "Our Father,'' so technically it might be said to have
been in compliance.
Perhaps this is the "virtue'' empire striking back at the
ravenously and increasingly secularized culture that seems powerless
to stem the Godforsaken tide of violence and corruption among us. For
decades we have been told that the price we all must pay for a healthy
First Amendment is the toleration of the most disgusting filth oozing
through every pore of our society and culture. Creeps, louts,
pornographers, blasphemers, alternative lifestylers, fornicators,
adulterers, liars, slanderers and other forms of human rubbish enjoy
the full protection of the law, but those who believe in God and order
their lives accordingly, and who wish to participate in the pluralism
and diversity which they hear so much about (but which never seems to
apply to them) are increasingly losing their rights to be heard in the
same public places occupied by those dedicated to tearing down, not
building up, society.
What these Maryland parents and friends of graduates discovered was
a power they had forgotten they had. Frustrated by the aimlessness of
Washington and its inability to do anything except focus on the
self-preservation and survival of the politically unfit, the audience
at the Calvert County graduation decided to practice what "We the
people'' actually means. As their forebears did with immoral and
tyrannical British rule, they stood up and spoke out for, and to, an
Authority higher than the state. When those Marylanders were told they
had no right to speak of God publicly, they chose to speak
to God.
When Rosa Parks decided she would not obey an immoral law that
required her to sit at the back of the bus because her skin color was
not white, she inspired a civil rights movement that is ongoing. Maybe
those prayer protesters are the Rosa Parks of the secularist '90s.
When the people speak, there's nothing the ACLU or anyone else can do
about it.
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