Recently, Louie Fromm, the assistant coach of a pee wee football team in Vernon, Fla., raised complaints about the voluntary prayer led by the young athletes. The coach is also the father of one of the players on the team. He complained that his son was the victim of ridicule based on his decision not to participate in the prayers.
Fromm claimed that because his son’s other teammates decided to pray before their games, his son’s First Amendment rights were being violated. Because of this, he started a movement to bring the government into the picture and ban this prayer. As of today, the government has not gotten involved because the pee wee football program is a private organization and receives no government money.
Logically, in claiming that this violates his son’s First Amendment rights, Fromm is completely wrong. The son is not being forced to pray. Instead, he has practiced his right to refrain from praying. In fact, to ban this prayer would be a violation of all the other children’s First Amendment rights.
Debbie Gunter, the president of the league, stated in an interview that a petition created in support of the prayer already has nearly 500 signatures. This shows that plenty of people have no problem with prayer led by the players.
In my high school, prayer could not be led by faculty or staff, but there was no problem with student-led prayer. This is just like the pee wee football team in Florida. No one in authority demanded the team to pray, but a few children decided it was a good thing to do.
Fromm spoke at a meeting of the City Council. During his speech, he stated people might believe one individual is trying to take away everyone’s First Amendment rights, but it is really a small group of religious people that have already taken away everyone else’s.
Any time I hear about someone getting defensive when it comes to religion, I think about a story forwarded to me in an e-mail. The story was about a graduating high school class from Washington Community High School in Peoria, Ill.
The night before graduation, a court order was issued due to a complaint from the school’s valedictorian that banned any prayer or mentioning of God at the graduation ceremonies.
The valedictorian was booed, but the last speaker received a standing ovation and thundering applause.
He approached the microphone, said a silent prayer to himself and then sneezed. This small sneeze prompted every student behind him, except the valedictorian, to stand and say, “God bless you.” They proved that not even a court order could stop them from bringing God into their ceremony.
This past summer, an e-mail circulated in which Christians were urged not to buy Pepsi products. This boycott was initiated when Pepsi decided to print the Pledge of Allegiance on its cans and omit the phrase “Under God.” They did this in an attempt not to offend anyone. The e-mail ended by saying that people should not give them their money, that proudly bears the phrase, “In God We Trust,” as it might offend someone at the Pepsi company.
Before I go any further, let me set it straight that I am not saying the only way to live in this world is as a Christian. Just because this is the way of life I chose, I am not saying that other people should be ashamed because they chose a different path. I must not have been clear in stating that I do accept other people’s ways of life in one of my last articles. As in that article, I just want people to respect other people’s choices.
By not requiring this young boy to pray, the rest of the team proved that they respect his way of life. Unfortunately, by trying to bring the government into the picture, Fromm proved that he does not respect the Christian way of life. It also seems as if he has never heard of a little thing called the separation of church and state.
The phrase, “This world ain’t big enough for the two of us,” is false in this sense.
There are plenty of chances for believers and nonbelievers to live together happily.
This can only happen, however, if we respect each other’s ways of life and do not attempt to take away each other’s rights.
Jay Ballard is a freshman majoring in chemistry. He can be contacted at
[email protected].