Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
Governor George Ryan has on his desk House Bill 4117, the "Student-Initiated Prayer" bill, which was passed by both houses of the Illinois General Assembly last month. As explained in the May 5th edition of Liberal News and Commentary, the bill is not a religious liberty bill, as the bill's sponsors contend. Rather, the bill is just a scam to deceive administrators and students into mistakenly believing that captive audience proselytizing by students at public schools is legally permissible.
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Americans are fed up with the glut of advertising with which we are bombarded. We look for any way we can find to avoid the harassment of intrusive ads. In an effort to purge the marketers from our midst, we have invested in Caller ID boxes and telephone answering machines so that we only talk to people that we want to talk to. We purchase televisions with remote controllers that have mute buttons so that we can silence the noise that interrupts our TV shows. We have spent hundreds of dollars on video cassette recorders and similar devices to enable us to skip the blabber.
Christianity zealots have responded to our aversion to advertising by targeting their messages to captive audience situations. They look for situations where we have gathered to engage in one type of activity, such as education, a sporting event or an assembly. Then, after we have taken our seats for the purpose of engaging in those other activities, they harass us with their unwanted messages about Jesus or God. That, by the way, is why they want the phrase, "under God," retained in the Pledge of Allegiance. It is a way to coerce Americans, who just want to express patriotism for our country, to either mouth support for monotheism or appear to be unpatriotic.
Yesterday, I spoke about HB 4117 with Sarah Watson, a senior policy advisor to Illinois Governor Ryan. I explained to her the real purpose of the bill. Public school administrators are not permitted to lead students in prayer. The purpose of HB 4117 is to create the false illusion that public school administrators who want to sneak religion into the classroom, auditorium or stadium could have students do it for them in what is known as "planned spontaneity." Administrators could arrange for students, rather than teachers, to lead their fellow students in prayer, but to create the false illusion that it was legal, administrators would feign ignorance as to what the content would be of the student presentation. "Gosh, we had no idea what the student was going to say. We just gave the student the opportunity to say anything she wanted. She never reviewed the content of her presentation with us and we never asked her what she was going to say."
One key phrase in HB 4117 states, in pertinent part: "In order ... that each student has the freedom to not be subject to pressure from the State either to engage in or to refrain from religious observation on school grounds..." What is missing, by design, from the bill is a provision to ensure that students have the freedom to not be subject to pressure from their fellow students to engage in or refrain from religious observation on school grounds. With this bill, if an administrator (the State) wants to subject students to religious observation, all the administrator needs to do is find a student to do it for him via planned spontaneity.
Planned spontaneity is a term that I coined to describe a situation where an action appears to be spontaneous, but in actuality was planned in advance but presented in a way to make it look like it was spontaneous. The school administrator can claim plausible deniability by saying that he had no idea that the student was going to lead other students in prayer, even though the whole purpose for giving the student to floor was so that the student could do that very thing.
When I send my child to a public school, it is for the purpose of having the administration deliver to my child, by a person of the administration's choosing, the curriculum selected by the school board. I do not send my child to a public school for the purpose of having any person that the administration chooses deliver to my child whatever religious message the person chosen by the administrator decides to communicate.
Clearly, the purpose of HB 4117 is to create the opportunity for Christian proselytizing that is the result of planned spontaneity. Sarah Watson expressed a clear understanding of my perspective and promised to communicate that perspective to the Governor.
Rob Sherman Advocacy urges Governor George Ryan, through his senior policy advisor Sarah Watson, to veto HB 4117. I expect that a decision by Governor Ryan on whether to sign or veto the bill will be made soon.
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