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Letters: God in school

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Re “Cheering for Jesus,” Opinion, Oct. 23

When asked about the Texas public school cheerleaders who placed Bible verses on large banners displayed at school functions, Gov. Rick Perry averred that students could do likewise with non-Christian religious passages. His response raises other questions.

How about students who don’t believe in God? Could they display passages, say, from the Church of Satan’s scriptures or highlight inspirational quotations from American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair, whose 1962 lawsuit famously squelched mandatory prayers in public schools? Perry probably hopes such constitutionally pertinent questions won’t be posed. After all, many small towns in Texas are notorious for being unfriendly to nonbelievers.

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Let’s hope the courts reject the cheerleaders’ lawsuit, the better to preserve democracy everywhere in America.

Devra Isserman

Santa Monica

The constitutionality of the cheerleaders’ actions seems obvious to me, even though I’m a nonbeliever and would personally prefer not to be bothered with anyone’s religious promotions.

No prayer or religious statements should be allowed on public school property unless the students make the banners and hold them for the duration of the event. A student should be allowed to wave a religious banner at a school event, so long as the banner is not affixed in any way to school property, which is publicly funded. Nor should the student be allowed to use any school supplies to make the banner. Waving your own banner and hanging it on a school fence are two very different things.

Carol Palladini

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Santa Barbara

Jonathan Zimmerman suggested that the appropriate response to the banner displays of biblical quotations at football games would be to allow students to also display such signage citing other “religious” texts, a worthy recommendation. Mixing Confucius with the Koran in this regard, however, is a bit off the mark.

Confucius was a philosopher and social ethicist, not a deity, prophet or religious enthusiast. Hence, those citing quotations from the Analects or the Doctrine of the Mean might not qualify for the heightened privileges and immunities enjoyed by the religious among us.

If one could enter a Confucian quotation into the fray, however, I would recommend: “Respect the spirits, but keep them at a distance.”

Gary R. White

Studio City

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