> For example, if I decided that killing you was the best way to worship my god, I still wouldn't be allowed to do it because it violates your rights. Similarly, them praying over a loudspeaker violates the rights of anyone who doesn't believe in that.

Please. There's nothing similar about it. Nowhere in the rights granted by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, nor by the inalienable rights spoken of in the Declaration of Independence does it say anything about your right not to hear things you don't want to hear. You don't have to listen, agree, or participate. Praying over a loudspeaker does not violate those rights.

This issue isn't so very different from the 'Redneck Culture' thread. One's a legal issue, and one's a social issue, but both cases involve somebody taking offense at something spoken and thinking that they somehow have a right (legal, moral, or ethical) not to hear it.

I am disturbed by a line in Fobulis' otherwise excellent post -- that she "doesn't want to hear it," referring to someone praying over a school's loudspeaker. Why? Is it so terribly offensive to be exposed to someone else's religious practices?\

You doubt that it would be different if it were not someone praying to the Christian God but some other. No, it wouldn't. I would be content to hear it. In fact, I would go beyond that and *listen*. I just would not participate but sit quietly in my seat. Were I in possession of the opportunity to pray within earshot, over a loudspeaker or not, I would expect, and have a right to expect, the same courtesy from you.

Again, I ask why public prayer must be an offense to anyone. Do you also take offense when someone of a different race speaks of his race's heritage? How about if a man speaks of manhood or a woman speaks of womanhood?

It is absurd to take offense at religious expression and more absurd to compare hearing religious expression with being murdered.

The key here is, the school did not instruct the student to pray over the loudspeaker. The school gave him access to the loudspeaker because he was chosen by the student body to speak. What was appropriate to speak was whatever means of expression were most personal and accurate in representing his own beliefs and feelings for the moment. If he chose to use that time to address other members of his own religion and to pray with them, that is fine. The school did NOT sponsor it, because they did not tell him to; on the contrary, had the school instructed him NOT to pray, it would be guilty of the opposite extreme: school sponsored non-prayer or school sponsored suppression of individuality or however you'd like to put it.

It is downright arrogant to demand that any speaker addressing a mixed public audience be required never to say anything that doesn't bear immediate personal relevance to every member of the audience. And when a speaker does that, and you're not one of the ones being addressed, yet the message is not prejudicial in nature, it is downright arrogant, brittle, and petty to take offense.