-By Warner Todd Huston
A coach for a prep school in Arizona has been suspended for praying with his team during last week’s homecoming game. He was told it was “against the law.”
Tom Brittain, the head varsity coach for Tempe Preparatory Academy–a state-funded charter school–found himself suspended after the “offensive” praying.
The coach was told to keep the praying off the field, but apparently he didn’t feel disposed to have his constitutional right trod upon by school administrators.
His boss, headmaster David Baum told the media, “He is a man who likes to pray and I don’t object to that. Just, he can’t do that with our students. That’s the only prohibition.”
Then Baum claimed it was he, rather than the coach, who was trying to “protect” the Constitution.
“He (Brittain) directed students to lead a prayer and he joined the students in that prayer and did so in view of everyone,” Baum claimed. “I think I preserved the religious freedom of our students, who have to have the liberty to be able to practice or not practice their religion on our campus, without interference by adults.”
So, how did the coach somehow force people to pray? He didn’t of course.
Some of the students and their parents were not appreciative of Baum’s lame claims to being a protector of the Constitution, though.
“I think it’s outrageous,” parent Keith Wibel said. “Ray Rice gets two games for cold-cocking his fiancé and Tom Brittain gets two games for praying.”
Naturally, some parents support the suspension. But it seems that those criticizing the coach are distinctly in the minority.
The fact is, it is “freedom of religion,” not freedom from it.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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