People of good will can disagree, but if disputes are to be productive (that is, if they are to present us with opportunities to clarify positions and understand issues) there need to be some ground rules. I suggest at least two:
People of good will can disagree, but if disputes are to be productive (that is, if they are to present us with opportunities to clarify positions and understand issues) there need to be some ground rules. I suggest at least two:
Tell the truth. Argue about real differences – don’t create "strawmen" just because those issues you manufacture are easier to refute than the opinions the other guy actually holds.
Begin with the assumption that even people with whom you disagree may be (gasp!) good
people. Don’t "demonize" others just because they don’t agree with you.
How would these rules apply to the current controversy over prayer at graduation? At a
minimum, they would require us to define the real issues. What does the First Amendment say?
What has the Supreme Court said the First Amendment says? If the Supreme Court is wrong,
why? And what is appropriate action to take if one disagrees with the law?
In Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court said that public schools are a part of government and that government cannot make you pray. The Court also said that a majority cannot vote to overrule the Constitution. The reason the Bill of Rights was enacted was to protect individuals from the ‘tyranny of the majority." So your neighbors can’t vote to make you an Episcopalian and high schools students cannot vote to ignore the First Amendment.
The Court did not say that graduation speakers cannot refer to God or that seniors cannot sing a song that mentions God. The Court did not say that a privately-sponsored prayer service before or after graduation would be improper.The Court also didn’t say anything about students’ "free speech" rights because "free speech" is not the issue. The issue is government endorsement of religion. When a school has the right to select graduation speakers and approve their speeches, that is considered an
o"endorsement" of what they say. If the speaker then offers a prayer, the school has legally endorsed that prayer.In Indiana there has been a lot of media "spin" on the role of the ICLU in all of this. We have been accused of ‘threatening" school corporations and school children, of placing "spies" at school graduations and generally contributing to the decline of western civilization.
The truth – inconvenient as it may be – is that a legal foundation funded by Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition sent a "legal memo" to every school board in the United States, urging those boards to include prayer in their graduation ceremonies. The ICLU was deluged with questions from schools that received the memorandum, and because we believed that it was factually and legally wrong, we sent Indiana schools a letter setting out what we believe the law to be.
In our letter we urged schools to teach students the importance of obeying all laws, not just those with which they may agree. We also pointed out that intentional violation of the law would probably lead to a lawsuit against the school corporation and that such suits are costly. (Only a school corporation can violate the First Amendment because only government endorsement of religion is unconstitutional.) We concluded our letter by suggesting a constitutionally appropriate alternative to accommodate those who wished to pray: a privately sponsored baccalaureate either immediately before or immediately following the school sponsored ceremony. Such a baccalaureate allows those who wish to pray to do so in a meaningful way. Because such a service is private, the prayer need not be "watered down" and generic. Because it is voluntary, it avoids imposing prayer on those whose beliefs may differ. Such a service would appear to accommodate everyone and it is difficult to understand the opposition to this simple alternative.
Would the Republic have crumbled if the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of prayer at graduation? Of course not. Will crime rates rise if students can no longer say a generic prayer during their graduation ceremonies? Of course not. People of good will can differ over the meaning of Supreme Court precedents or the actual intent of the founding fathers as applied to cases like these. But that is not the issue. The issue is whether we will obey the law. It speaks well for Indiana that – despite enormous pressure in some areas of the state – the vast majority of our schools intend to do just that.
We have an opportunity to teach our high school students two very important lessons: respect for the law, and respect for those who may hold opinions different from our own. Those are lessons that can help them build a civil, and civilized, society. How we handle our disputes may ultimately be more important than who won. In a society which respects law, it really isn’t who wins or loses. It really is how we play the game.
