ACLU Sues Over Prayer In Rhode Island School

The ACLU is attacking the Christian religion again. This time the leftist’s Rhode Island chapter has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Jessica Ahlquist, a sophomore at Cranston West High School, in Cranston, R.I., claims to believe, via her trumped up lawsuit, that any reference to religion on public school property violates her constitutional rights. Young Ahlquist objects to a prayer banner that has been hanging in the school auditorum for 50 years.

The banner was first put up by the first graduating class of the school, to remind students to seek God’s guidance “so that they bring credit to the school.” The banner went up in 1963. The banner reads:

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER,

GRANT US EACH DAY THE DESIRE

TO DO OUR BEST, TO GROW MENTALLY

AND MORALLY AS WELL AS PHYSICALLY,

TO BE KIND AND HELPFUL TO OUR

CLASSMATES AND TEACHERS, TO BE

HONEST WITH OURSELVES AS WELL AS

WITH OTHERS, HELP US TO BE GOOD

SPORTS AND SMILE WHEN WE LOSE AS

WELL AS WHEN WE WIN, TEACH US THE

VALUE OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP, HELP US

ALWAYS TO CONDUCT OURSELVES SO AS

TO BRING CREDIT TO CRANSTON HIGH

SCHOOL WEST.

AMEN

New American

According to the lawsuit, the banner, which has aroused Miss Ahlquist’s ire, made her feel excluded. The lawsuit says Ahlquist has suffered all manner of terrible psychological torment because of the prayer. Moreover, according to the suit, she does not subscribe to the religious expression conveyed by the prayer and objects to being subjected to it as a requirement of attending school and a condition of attending school programs in the auditorium.

Also, by observing the prayers, she feels excluded ostracized and devalued by her school because she does not share or agree with the religious expression conveyed by the prayer. Ahlquist and the ACLU therefore state that the prayer is constituting and conveying government endorsement of religion and government endorsement of a particular religious viewpoint with which she does not agree.

So the banner trespasses her constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. And her father is also involved and said that does not believe his daughter should be subjected to a religious communication and display with which she does not agree as a condition of attending public school.

Anderson and Rabbi Peter Stein of Temple Sinai in Cranston — who sat by Jessica during a Monday afternoon news conference to announce the suit — said the prayer banner has an “exclusionary effect” on those who are either not religious or hold different religious beliefs than those expressed on the banner. Anderson said it “crosses the line to state-sponsored religion,” the very reason that brought Baptists, Quakers and other “religious dissidents” to Rhode Island in the first place, Anderson said.

The state’s Catholic bishop said the banner, itself, doesn’t mean much. Writing in Rhode Island Catholic, his diocesan paper, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin said the winning the fight over the banner should not become the sole objective of its supporters. “On one hand … I see absolutely no harm in having the banner remain in the school,” he wrote. “The banner certainly doesn’t promote the establishment of any particular church or faith.”

New American

If the city loses the case, a similar banner at another school might also have to come down. The ACLU has long been a legal torpedo for the radical left and communists in their quest to erase religion from public life in the United States.