Life imitates satire: ACLU threatens school district because principal says 'God bless you'

When I was an 18-year-old columnist for Western Michigan University's Western Herald, I wrote a column featuring a dream sequence in which a public official - I think it was supposed to be Jesse Helms - goes up to a random guy and blurts out "Merry Christmas." Immediately, the ACLU shows up and tells him he can't say that because it's unconstitutional for a government employee to endorse a particular religion. The liberal editors of the paper ran the column, but criticized it pretty harshly for the use of the dream sequence to make the ACLU look so reactionary. They did not, in real life, just go after individuals for saying things like "Merry Christmas" or "God bless you."

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And in truth, I knew the criticism was valid. The ACLU went after nativity scenes and such, but did not go after individuals for saying such things. I felt like I had sort of phoned that one in and resolved to do better work. Well. It turned out that in 1984 I was simply ahead of my time:

The ACLU of Louisiana is accusing a high school of promoting Christianity in an open letter on Friday because a student group hung prayer boxes and the principal ended an online letter with “May God Bless You All.” Louisiana ACLU Executive Director Marjorie Esman said in a letter published by the Shreveport Times that Airline High School violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by allowing the Fellowship of Christian Athletes to set up prayer boxes that feature “Christian Symbols.” Esman’s letter also noted Principal Jason Rowland closed a September 2015 message to the school’s website with “The Future Starts Today – May God Bless You All.” “The United States Constitution requires public schools to ensure that state-supported activity is not used for religious indoctrination,” the letter, which was addressed to superintendent D.C. Machen, states. It alleges that Rowland also “encouraged students to ‘pray to the Almighty God.’”

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The Constitution actually requires no such thing. It requires that Congress pass no law respecting the establishment of religion. It also requires that Congress pass no law prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Principal Rowland is freely exercising his faith by saying "God bless you" to students. And even if he did encourage them to "pray to the Almighty God," they still have every freedom not to. He has neither the authority nor, I'm sure, the inclination to establish a religious authority that forces them to do so. The ACLU is actually 100 percent opposed to the Constitution on this issue. What it wants is for the courts to prohibit anyone who is a public employee from open expressions of their faith on the flimsy premise that simply because they are public employees their doing so constitutes the use of the state for religious indoctrination. Bolshevik. Individual who work for public institutions have as much freedom as anyone else to express their opinions about anything, including at work - at least to the extent that the Constitution speaks on the issue. If their individual employees want to make work rules about such conduct, that's one thing, although even there you'd have to be careful not to step on either the free exercise of religion or the freedom of speech in general. Freedom of speech is generally something the ACLU will defend, as long as it's not Christian speech by someone on the public payroll. And now they've made my twisted (and completely made up) dream come true. They really are going after people just for saying "God bless you."

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