Report Inappropriate Comments

Hello, Stephanie:

I saw your response on FB (via the Support the Banner Decision page) to my question/comment on the Cranston Herald site.

The "this" in "this issue" referred to the separation of church and state, not to costs per se. Because the town stubbornly refused to follow the law, it's now on the hook for $173k. There's a fair chance that if you guys vote to appeal, it'll climb into the millions.

It's not about money, per se. It would have cost something to alter the banner in situ, contextualize it so it would be constitutional, or whatever. My understanding is that Ahlquist/the ACLU suggested this, waited, and never got anything but either silence or "no." However, following the law would indeed have cost money. By your argument, that was reason *not* to remove/alter it. Or perhaps you'd argue (rightly) that spending a little up front is better than being on the hook for a ton down the line...? Still misses the point of my point: this is about separation of church and state (SOCAS)

Now we've had a jihad in this ol' town against a 16-year-old. It's embarrassing and a permanent stain on the town.

Religious or not, a school prayer, titled "School Prayer," in that central location breaks the Establishment Clause. Moreover, the banner reaction has less to do with religion per se than with the hysteria of a formerly dominant ethno-religious group (loosely defined: white, European Catholics) having an illegal privilege taken away from it.

I do respect your privacy about religion, etc. There are a lot of out-of-town New Atheist dogmatists (I'm a lifelong atheist, btw; hate the New Atheist fundamentalists -- an orgy of instantly self-refuting self-congratulation and ignorance) trying to make this into secular/atheism vs religion. It isn't.

Educating people about SOCAS might have helped a lot; that is what I didn't ever see happen. Nor am I aware of any seriously public plea to leave this kid alone, if not to praise her, before national and international embarrassment forced the hand, so to speak. Again, I could have missed it, but the town's government should have spoken with one voice on the constitutional and personal-safety issues.

Furthermore, there is a basic moral point here, beyond its enshrinement in the Constitution: you don't put up markers of "people like you" backed by the full force of the State in public places. It's just a ridiculously arrogant and egotistical move, all else aside, and the viciousness with which this removal of privilege has been met -- up to and including elected officials demonizing this kid -- has been quite telling, not about Cranston, necessarily, per se, but about how vicious, ignorant, narcissistic, and stupid people can be.

It's this kind of tribal garbage that's rapidly running this species off a cliff. One would have thought that that point would have been obvious, and would have been talked about publicly. As far as I can tell, none of the points I've made really came up. That was *my* point: that's *why* SOCAS exists; that's *why* religious people invented it -- after centuries of slaughter, and especially decades of Protestant-vs-Catholic bloodshed in 16th-C England, the founders -- deist or devout Christian -- figured enough was enough. Rightly.

I presume you'll vote against an appeal. I really hope your compadres do, because they will get utterly hammered in the courts -- every lawyer I know thinks this is a sealed case. You guys will only raise the tab. Massively. And I'd bet a lot the ACLU did lowball it. It seemed low. Don't blame them for it. It's your (collective) fault for letting this get to where it's gotten.

Funny how people were far more motivated about saving some fetishized banner than about following any of the supposedly much-loved precepts actually stated *on* the banner. To say nothing of the obvious fact that if people cared as much about, say, feeding the poor of this town as they do about, ultimately, their own egos, we'd all be a lot closer to the Sermon on the Mount. Another irony.

All the best, Dug