Geneva, Illinois, is located forty miles due west of downtown Chicago, on the Fox River in Kane County. Tonight, the Geneva City Council will debate adding god-invocations to the beginning of city council meetings. I will be there to explain to them why it's a bad idea.
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The Committee of the Whole will discuss, at 7:00 tonight, a proposal by Alderman Ray Pawlak to add god-speak to the beginning of city council meetings. Alderman Pawlak's idea is a bad one. Here's why:
Citizens go to government meetings to discuss and conduct public business. They do not go there to conduct personal business and they don't go their to be an audience while others conduct their personal business.
Prayer is personal business, not public business. Personal business should be conducted on one's own personal time, not at the expense of the time of others who have come to a city council meeting to conduct public business.
Christians seem to be in the majority. When Christians schedule god ceremonies at the beginning of government activity, they are doing two things. First, they are attempting to coerce everyone in the room, through peer pressure, to participate in their religious activity. Second, they are forcing those who refuse to pray to be an audience, against their will, to the religious activity of Christians. The Christians create a situation where you will either pray or, if you still want to conduct public business, you will have your valuable time consumed watching them pray. Either way, it is an offensive, manipulative tactic by Christians to prove that they have the power to force citizens to be an audience to Christian rituals against their will.
Courts that are controlled by Christians have held that Christians can get away with doing this to their fellow citizens. That doesn't make it right, however.
There are plenty of opportunities for alderman to pray before, during or after city council meetings without forcing their fellow citizens to be an audience to their private religious activity. City council meetings are held in the evening. Aldermen can pray at home, in church, in their cars or even in their council chamber seats before the meeting. They can quietly engage in religious delusions right there in their seats while the city council meeting is going on. They can pray after the meeting.
The only real purpose for holding a prayer session at the beginning of a city council meeting is to force those in attendance to be an audience to the private religious activity of Christians. They claim that the purpose is to solemnize the meeting, but that's just a secular cover for what they are really doing. What they really are doing is forcing those members of the audience who do not wish to pray to be an audience to the religious activity of Christians.
Tonight, the Geneva City Council will decide whether it will make the same bad decision that many other government agencies have made: forcing citizens who wish to conduct government business to be an audience, against their will, to the religious activity of the majority. Other government agencies are getting away with doing the wrong thing. That doesn't mean that the Geneva City Council has to choose to do the wrong thing, too.
Non-Christians don't have the clout to force Christians to stop wasting our time. We can only ask them to be respectful of the value of our time. Tonight, I will go to Geneva to ask the Christians to not implement a policy of wasting the time of non-Christians by forcing us to be an audience, against our will, to their religious activity.
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