The second letter, delivered Aug. 27, details “Establishment Clause” violations and warns of financial liability.
The letter, from FFRF’s Andrew Seidel, also addresses a “pro-bono” offer to represent the school district as “disingenuous.” Seidel was referring to Liberty Counsel of Orlando, Fla., which sent a letter from Richard Mast on Aug. 23, offering legal representation against the FFRF.
Mast maintains that FFRF’s complaints are a series of “ridiculous” and “overreaching” assertions that “taking public school football teams to church, even for a meal, is unconstitutional.”
FFRF, a Wisconsin-based group, is alleging that Ridgeland High School football coach Mark Mariakis allowed churches to prepare meals and feed the football team, including at least one meal that included preaching; led prays with his team after games; used Bible verses in motivational speeches and on team shirts; held Christian football camps during summer break. The foundation delivered its first complaint on Aug. 21.
Seidel’s letter cites 10 court cases and the legal fees that were incurred, ranging from a $120,000 settlement in Rhea County, Tenn., in 2004, to a $1.4 million settlement against a charter school that was promoting Islam.
Liberty Counsel was listed three times in Seidel’s list of cases, two of which involved display of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky. The third was an Establishment Clause challenge in which the Santa Rosa. Fla., school system was held liable and paid $265,000, according to documentation.
The Liberty Counsel response does acknowledge a Supreme Court ruling regarding prayer at games. “Public schools may not devise plans designated to perpetuate or initiate religious invocations,” Mast wrote.
Liberty Counsel’s offer of representation requires the Walker County school system to “adopt a strategy and practice consistent with Liberty Counsel’s advice and an agreement for representation is reached.”
All school system personnel are prohibited by the Establishment Clause “from encouraging or discouraging prayer, and from actively participating in such activity with students,” according to the U.S. Department of Education website, and further refrain from any “attempt to persuade or compel students to participate in prayer or other religious activities.”
“Teachers may, however, take part in religious activities where the overall context makes clear that they are not participating in their official capacities.”
Teachers may meet and conduct Bible study during lunch if they choose and may even “participate in their personal capacities in privately sponsored ceremonies,” according to the overview of Constitutional principles by the Department of Education in 2003.
Mast states that “a coach in his private capacity may be present at the post-game student-lead prayer, may bow his head and otherwise be respectful according to is beliefs.”
Seidel used a Walker County Messenger article in the second complaint, which cited comments from a “Support Coach Mariakis” Facebook page. The article’s quotes regarded pre-game speeches that coach Mariakis gave and a team chaplain identified as Rocky Bradford.
“This atheist group continues to lick stamps and send frivolous letters with militant zeal designed to hurt communities because of its anti-Christian fixation,” said Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. “Nothing in the Constitution requires communities to abandon common sense and create zones hostile to religion.”
Another letter that was recently sent to superintendent Raines is from the Limited Government and Inalienable Rights Society (LGIRS), which was established in 2011 in Ringgold.
The letter, from Ringgold attorney Marshall Bandy Jr., states “The Constitution does not coerce a public employee to deny universal truth when he reports to work.”
Bandy goes on to claim that atheists hate freedom and “that secular humanists want to place us in bondage by their law.”
The local foundation has sent Mariakis an award for “his quotation of scripture in public,” one of LGIRS’s core principles.
"Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
NOTE: this prohibits the very notion of the govenrment from making any law, or rule that would stop prayer in school, or in any setting both public and private. No govenrment official, or group, can therefore make any rule, or law, to stop any religious group from excercising this right to be free of oppression with regards to expressing their beliefs in any setting, including government buildings and property. If you read this any other way, you seriously need to reconcider your intelligence quotient, as someone has misinformed you as to how smart you really are. The largest problem with society today, is that there is simply no accountability. Depending on who you represent, you can say anything with no one to call you out on it, even if you are proven to be a fool.
Ferinstance. If you have a 15 year old, loves and lives for football. His coach is a satanist. Your kid wants to play so bad, that he prays to satan along with the coach, because if he doesn't, it's implied (of course NEVER spoken outright) that he will ride the pine for games, and be a tackling dummy for practice. So he sacrifices goats, goes to the dark mass ceremonies and starts every game. Win-win right? Oh sure you tell him satan is bad, but he wants to start varsity next year. Have you caught on yet?
Change satan to allah, vishnu, whatever. this is not in any way apples to oranges. Why do Xtians never see the other side? Is it willful ignorance, or just ignorance?
It's willful ignorance. Anyone who can look at you with a straight face and admit to believing in a talking snake and talking donkey has no interest in reality.
"United we stand! Divided we fall" "I have a dream, I have a dream, where my little children will be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." We all need to be personally responsible for our words actions and works. Lets come together as a nation. No matter what you believe, or where you come from, we are all in this together. Lets work together to make it a better place. Stop dividing, and start bringing people together. We owe it to each other, and to our chidren.
If I am to understand your latest post, you are taking the absolutely correct position that we are free to think what we want, and even spread those beliefs to our children. Before I go further, let me say I may misunderstand your post.
If I assume I have it right, then bringing this back to the coach controversy, the coach would have to be the father of every player on the football team. I can't say he's not. But odds are that he isn't. Who (taking my position, as well as the government's that there is not an all-powerful god) gave him the right to tell your kid or my kid, that he has to pray to his god?
He absolutely cannot tell my kid to pray as he does. He cannot take my kid to a religious football camp. He cannot take my kid to a church to eat and be proselytized at.
We do all have the sweet and absolute freedom to believe what we want. But that ends at the teacher-student or pretty much any other position-of-power to underling relationship. That is and should be irrefutable.
And if you are implying at the end of your post that we all need to think like you to make this a better world, then I take great offense and can promise you that I can help make this a better place as an atheist, just as much as any other religious person can (and more so if you ask me). The FFRF is REACTING to an illegal action by a coach. They did not start the problem here, they are attempting to correct it.
You are correct to say that you as a parent have the power and responsibility to teach your beliefs to your children, and I also agree with the statement that the coach is not the father of these young men, who are placed in his charge by the parents of each child. For the question of who gave him the right to tell them that they have to pray to his or any other deity, well thats a two fold answer. First, The parents, and School system granted him the right to lead these children, based on his experiance, and knowledge. If the parents or School system decide that he is not the proper person for that role, they have the power to take him out of the position, or remove their children from his charge at any time. From the infomation that I have read throuout this entire situation, there has been no mention of force, or punishment used to persuade any student to participate in, nor believe anything. That being said, I feel your worry regarding this comes from the fact that they were being exposed to these ideas and beliefs. As a parent, it is your responsibility to educate your children, so that they can make a proper decision regarding belief, or at least make them aware that there are others who might express a differing view of belief, and help them to resolve any questions they might have. If it is normal practice to expose them to beliefs you don't approve of, you as a parent have the right to prohibit your child from attending such activities. But you most definately do not have the right, based on your beliefs to prohibit others, who might share in that particular ideology from doing so freely, and without persecution. Lets face it, There are many ideas that we would prefer to keep our children from being influenced by. We can bury our heads in the sand, and pretend that the boogyman will not see us. But in reality, we would better serve our children to educate them, expose them to all sides and let them decide for themselves what they believe. I have 4 children, one is athiest, two are confused, and one devoutly believes in God. I give them facts, and let them decide for themselves what they beleve. I don't force my opinion upon them. I guide them with love.
If anyone in a position of power were to use Force, or punishment to convince a child to believe one way or the other, then you are correct. We should not support that in any way. however I have not seen anything in this issue that would lend me to beleve that to be the case.
As to your last point, I believe that you as a person have many fine attributes to offer to prosperity, but just because I say that, does not take away from a christian having the same attributes, or differing opinions to offer to make life better for us all. The whole idea that the USA is a melting pot of many religions, views, opinions, strenghs, and weaknesses, is what makes the diversity that is the USA such a powerful force in the world. And this is the reason I am truely thankful to be part of it.
As for the FFRF, I disagree. They are stiring the pudding, base on a flawed understanding of what it means to be a free American. However. like I have stated before. They are free to be fools, and I will excercise tolerance for them. But I will not bow to their wishes, and change my ways because they do not agree with me.
Lastly, It is not my intent to offend anyone,so if I have, I appologise. However, no one is too good, to be offended from time to time, me included.
And I would love to hear about these "universal truths". If Mr. Bandy means beliefs in a deity (as a univ truth to be denied at work), then no one has been asked to leave them anywhere. They are being told to not coerce, force, blackmail, trick, bribe or guilt impressionable kids into praying by a person representing the government in a position of authority. But if he's really a lawyer, that couldn't be what he is refering to.