Friday, July 23, 2010

Public Prayer Under Fire More And More In America

Click to read full story from Fox News

Arizona school children are told they can't pray in front of the Supreme Court building ... Two University of Texas Arlington employees are fired for praying over a co-worker's cubicle after work hours ... In Cranston, R.I., a high school banner causes controversy when a parent complains it contains a prayer and demands that it be removed.

There are more legal challenges to prayer in the United States than ever before, says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist organization whose business is booming as Americans increasingly tackle church vs. state issues.

"We've never had more complaints about government prayer," Gaylor says. "We have just hired a second staff attorney in July. It's turned into a cottage industry for our attorneys."

The foundation has had a huge volume of complaints about prayer in the public sector, including numerous issues involving civic and government meetings where sessions have traditionally begun with a prayer or moment of silence.

In Augusta, Ga., the city's law department just issued a legal opinion defending the city's practice of a pre-meeting prayer, saying it does not violate federal law. The statement was in response to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's letter to the mayor's office urging him to stop the invocations at the start of meetings. The foundation sent similar letters to three cities in South Carolina.

"These are flagrant violations of the laws," Gaylor says.

Not so, says Nate Kellum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Arizona school children and their teacher, Maureen Rigo, who say they were told they couldn't pray on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

"Religious liberties are under attack across the country," Kellum says. "My sense is that there's some type of knee-jerk reaction, almost an allergic reaction, if someone sees the expression of religion," he says.

And the bulk of the complaints are directed at Christians, he says.

"There's an overreaching presumption that there's something wrong," he says.

But Gaylor says there's no country in the world where religion flourishes as much as in the United States, and she says conflicts over public expression are going to increase.

"Fifteen percent of the people are not religious," she says. "There's an increasing plurality of faiths. It's inevitable there's going to be this clash with more people being offended."

Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute, represents the two University of Texas employees who were fired for praying over a co-worker's desk after hours. The co-worker was not there at the time and didn't know until months later why the employees were fired.

The university, in legal documents, said it the employee's prayer had been deemed harassment. Judge Terry Means of the U.S. Federal District Court in Ft. Worth rejected that argument.

"One of the women just said 'amen' while the other prayed," Shackelford said. "So she was fired for just saying 'amen.'"

"It's just so crazy!" he said. "There's a hostility, and there are folks who want to change this country and want to engage in some kind of religious cleansing."

Georgia University Is Trying To Force Christian Student To Alter Her Beliefs To Graduate

Click to read full story from Christian Post.com

By Nathan Black|Christian Post Reporter
An Augusta State University student filed suit Wednesday after she was told to change her Christian beliefs or otherwise be expelled from the school's graduate counseling program.

"A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here," said David French, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. "Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform."

Jennifer Keeton, 24, has been enrolled in the College of Education's School Counselor masters degree program since fall 2009. She has expressed her Christian beliefs in class discussions and written assignments, but it was her views regarding gender and sexuality that irked faculty.

According to the filed complaint, "She has stated that she believes sexual behavior is the result of accountable personal choice rather than an inevitability deriving from deterministic forces. She also has affirmed binary male-female gender, with one or the other being fixed in each person at their creation, and not a social construct or individual choice subject to alteration by the person so created. Further, she has expressed her view that homosexuality is a 'lifestyle,' not a 'state of being.'"

In May, Keeton was notified that she would be asked to participate in a remediation plan. Mary Jane Anderson-Wiley, an associate professor who also oversees student education and discipline, explained that the faculty wanted to see Keeton's writing skills improve and that they are concerned with some of her beliefs and views pertaining to GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender) issues.

Several faculty members later met with the student and told her that they considered her to be failing to conform to certain professional standards. In a written Remediation Plan, the faculty said her speech on GLBT matters violated the codes of ethics that counselors and those in training are required to adhere to.

Keeton's views "depart from what 'the psychological research about GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning) populations asserts' that that 'sexual orientation is not a lifestyle or choice, but a state of being,'" faculty members said.

The Remediation Plan required that Keeton attend workshops on diversity sensitivity training toward working with GLBTQ populations, work to increase exposure and interaction with gay populations by attending such events as the Gay Pride Parade in Augusta, and read more on the topic to improve counseling effectiveness with GLBTQ populations.

Failure to complete all elements of the remediation plan will result in dismissal from the Counselor Education Program, according to the plan.

Keeton told faculty members, "I can’t alter my biblical beliefs, and I will not affirm the morality of those behaviors in a counseling situation."

But she stressed, "I understand the need to reflect clients’ goals and to allow them to work toward their own solutions, and I know I can do that."