Good Day Humboldt County!
Today we’re going to look at someone who has chosen the path less traveled. Jessica Ahlquist doesn’t believe in God. But when she forced her school to cover up a prayer in the Gym that has been there for nearly 50 years years, the backlash was immediate.
My question to you: is it fair for one person to force their views on the majority? Is that Democracy to you? It’s troubling to me that a minority can overall a majority in a case of beliefs.
I understand the reasoning for separation of church and state, and agree with the policy. Still, isn’t there times when common sense should prevail? Miss Ahlquist didn’t like seeing the prayer on the gym wall, but she wasn’t forced to recite it (no one was). She didn’t even have to look in the direction of the prayer that occupied a tiny spot on a massive wall. Still, she feels her views are more important than the rest of the community and likens her actions to giving a child a shot for their own good.
Why can’t there be a compromise of some kind? It just rankles me to see a minority over rule a majority. Because one young lady lost her belief in God the whole community pays the price. It hardly seems fair. Read the following article and you decide how fair the whole situation is:
“She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.
A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion.
In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion.
State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.
“I was amazed,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation, which is based in Wisconsin and has given Jessica $13,000 from support and scholarship funds. “We haven’t seen a case like this in a long time, with this level of revilement and ostracism and stigmatizing.” (Read the rest here)
Time to walk on down the road…