Billy Davis editorial
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, November 16, 2010
“We don’t need to be doing no Catholic prayers or Muslim prayers … Most of Batesville is Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, or Pentecostal, and those are the prayers everybody is familiar with…” —Nov. 15 comment on Panolian.com
Kudos to the South Panola teenagers who held the “Pray With Us” signs Friday night, an act that kicked sand in the eyes of the ACLU, and in the eyes of the anonymous Oxford attorney who tattled on South Panola for its five-year-old practice that subverts the U.S. Supreme Court.
This commentary is for those teenagers, who need to hear this: that unpopular decision by the Supreme Court is serving you well. And it will serve your children, too.
No, really. You should thank God everyday that the law is there because its creates a religion-neutral environment for the public school system. That is not the same thing as an anti-religious environment, which most certainly exists in some schools and classrooms.
News flash: the world has changed
I recall, on the eve of Desert Storm, when South Panola High principal Mr. Barton allowed me to read scripture and pray for our troops over the high school’s intercom. I was surprised the request was granted, but that was back in the Dark Ages, in 1991, when boys took girls to the prom and Sharia Law was a girl on the basketball team.
But we ain’t living there anymore, and we’re not going back either.
The culture war is poised to get meaner and more hurtful in our public schools, which is why the Sante Fe case (banning student-led prayer at football games) is important.
Although anti-religious on its face, Sante Fe also protects you sign-carrying students from hearing a Muslim sura over the school intercom every morning.
Or at least it should. What makes me grit my teeth is the agenda-driven ACLU.
It probably had an army of lawyers poised to invade South Panola, but the organization is also warring against the State of Oklahoma, where 70 percent of voters agreed on November 2 that Sharia Law, and international laws, should not be used in deciding case law by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
The ACLU is not a friend of religion, nor does it pretend to be, but its lawsuits are creating case law that could backfire against them. And there are plenty of Bible-toting lawyers ready to do the reminding.
Think “A-Team,” when the bad guys always locked Hannibal, B.A., and the guys in a warehouse, then went and stole the town’s water supply. But Hannibal always had a plan.
So does the Lord. I read the script. He wins. Big time.