First some background, my class's salutatorian is deeply religious due to her parents being devout Christians her entire life so she often tries to spread the word of god and denounces much of science, for example she believes the earth is only 6000 years old. She is very smart though and is compassionate, possibly one of the nicest and upbeat people I've ever met. So on Saturday during my graduation she went up to the podium to give her speech and said that what she was about to say wasn't her original speech because the school board forced her to change her speech due to some messages she put in it telling people that all that they achieved was because of god and because she directly quoted the bible in her speech. Her new speech still had a large amount of references to god (one of my friends said he counted about 20 mentions throughout the speech). Shortly there after people began saying that it wasn't right to censor her original speech, and that the girl was so brave for sticking up for what she believed in. In the local paper the following Monday, when normally the front page article about graduation would feature the valedictorian and a simple headline about the graduation, this one a large picture of the salutatorian and the headline "Class of 2014 stand up for what you believe in." A local radio station also invited her on to say her original speech which featured a message from god to all of the graduating class.
I have been fed up about this ever since Saturday because of how many people in the city I live in can't comprehend the idea of separating the church from a public high school that is funded by the government. I can't even count the amount of people I saw on Facebook trying to say how this was a violation of free speech whilst they ignore another part of the first amendment saying how there will not be a national religion established which is in part what the salutatorian was trying to do in her original speech by saying that only her god was right and that he was the reason we achieved what we did. It also irks me how people are calling for the school boards heads when they were only trying to do their job and make sure people of different beliefs or no belief weren't going to be offended instead of pretending it's the 50's and that only Christians or Catholics matter. Also for a bit of clarity its not like I live in the Bible Belt or something I live in upstate New York where we should be more understanding that other religions exist and that people who don't have a religion also exist.
Now that that's out of my system what does the escapist think about this?
I have been fed up about this ever since Saturday because of how many people in the city I live in can't comprehend the idea of separating the church from a public high school that is funded by the government. I can't even count the amount of people I saw on Facebook trying to say how this was a violation of free speech whilst they ignore another part of the first amendment saying how there will not be a national religion established which is in part what the salutatorian was trying to do in her original speech by saying that only her god was right and that he was the reason we achieved what we did. It also irks me how people are calling for the school boards heads when they were only trying to do their job and make sure people of different beliefs or no belief weren't going to be offended instead of pretending it's the 50's and that only Christians or Catholics matter. Also for a bit of clarity its not like I live in the Bible Belt or something I live in upstate New York where we should be more understanding that other religions exist and that people who don't have a religion also exist.
Now that that's out of my system what does the escapist think about this?
