I noted today that a school official from a district in TX had an official email signature for their department that cited Bible verses... I was curious about this and looked up their handbook as well. I didn't realize that TX state law requires reciting the pledge to the US flag, reciting a pledge to the TX state flag and a minute of silence following.

"Each school day, students will recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States flag and the Pledge of Allegiance to the Texas flag. Parents may submit a written request to the principal to excuse their child from reciting a pledge. State law requires that one minute of silence follow recitation of the pledges. Each student may choose to reflect, pray, meditate, or engage in any other silent activity during that minute so long as the silent activity does not interfere with or distract others."

There is another section following about students rights to prayer and preventing the school from interfering in that right.

They do have a section saying the school will show no bias toward any religion, but then they quote bible verses in their email signatures...

*sigh*

Pledge of alliegence to the Texas flag????

They do love them there Lone Stars down here.

I'm an atheist, a fairly militant atheist at that. I live in Texas, my kids attend a very good public school system in Texas. Everything you say is true and it is kind of annoying, but not really all that annoying. You are a lot more worked up about this than I am.

That's Texas for you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I fully remember citing the Pledge daily when i was in early grade school.

In scouts we opened every meeting with the pledge and the scout oath as well.

I encountered this when I was in high school. My family is of a Lutheran sect forbids allegiance to anything but god. It was literally against my religion to say the pledge. For the most part it wasn't an issue, I explained the circumstances and I was allowed to sit out the pledge. However my junior year I just happened to have a teacher that just wouldn't accept that I wouldn't say the pledge. Time and time again he would send me to the office with a referral. State law allowed me to sit it out without harassment, but he insisted he had the right to force me to say it. Lets just say he didn't stay a teacher for very much longer. Oddly enough when I 'grew up' I ditched religion and kind of laugh at it now.

I am consistently dumbfounded about how folks always dismiss the bible as anything other than a religious tract. It is much, much more than that. There is a LOT of wisdom contained in the Bible and I don't care to even start listing all the items of wisdom are there. Just read proverbs, and then think about it a bit. The truth is there for all to see, and it's useful.

If you haven't read it, then STFU until you do.

I remember the US pledge every day in Ohio/Florida, just didn't know that there is an additional pledge to Texas around here.

you are also apparently dumbfounded by the separation of church and state.

or cherrypicks the U.S. Constitution just as he does his bible.

teaparty wingnut cerberus loves thumping his bible?

who knew? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just gotta realize that the peanut gallery orchestrated by Ford would be out in force. LOL You guys are just pathetic. You have no center, and no commitment to anything. This is why you all SUCK!

the way your logic works is baffling.

i dont need jesus to be committed to something. believing in something other than bible thumping is more noble imo. it means you have to have a mind of your own. weird huh?

oh, and i dont orchestrate fluff. the stupid fluff you say does that for me.

i love how trife espouses federal law, re kim davis, but ignores it for illegal immigrants and smoking pot and sleeping eith his sister.

hypocrite.

Ford, you're a dolt, and that's that. I'm not going to argue the point with you.

I just realize that no matter how innocuous anything I might post might be, you will be on that thread finding a means of picking at me, and you know what. Not a fluff is GIVEN over here. :)

you realize that just because you say something, doesnt make it true right?

im not sure if you are trying to convince me, or yourself.

You figure it out, Ford. :) I know what I think, and it's the absolute truth from my perspective. You are still a dolt.

stop saying stupid fluff and ill stop calling you a flufftard.

maybe jesus can help you decipher that mystery.

No mystery to me, Ford. You're just stupid and that's all there is to that.

If brain power could be converted to gasoline, you couldn't generate enough to power a piss-ant motorcycle halfway around a Cheerio.

lol, if im an idiot, then you are a jar of mayo.

having my intelligence insulted by a tin foil hat wearing bible thumper is a highlight. thanks for that.

Im convinced the only distinction between mrford not being disciplined or banned for being a harassing asshole and my bans/deletes is simply fords willingness to wet nurse the admins lingham.

or because i dont cross the line like you and sswell and braden do.

i havnt been contacted by any mod concerning my behavior.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwvlbJ0h35A

Compulsion and expression are two entirely different things in the eyes of the law. Simply having a bible verse on something doesn't necessarily reflect anything more than expression. But some would argue it implies a preference. Frankly, I think it's much ado about nothing. Some don't believe in any vaccination either, yet their kids bring up health care forms that they're told must be completed. Is there some mass conspiracy or people being people?

Now, if she was forcing kids to read the bible aloud in class from memory and cite allegiance to it, then I would that's a different story.

Of note, I'm no legal scholar so only offering my two cents with a grain of salt. This is the type of spot where Assassin will randomly show up citing about 20 different cases. (And correcting all of our grammar.)

As the #1 obnoxious Texan, this is the first I have ever heard of any pledge of allegiance associated to with my home state. I blame my Texas public school education for not teaching me everything I need to know for life.

Kind of like gods commitment to keeping you married? You keep your fairy tale book and your sad bitter misogynistic salty bigotry Cerb, I'll keep my atheism and happy home.

you seem to think this makes you, like, i don't know, cool?

it makes you a coward. pick a side, or call yourself a coward fence sitter. one of three, son. one of three.

I guess the best solution to the religious verse in their signature would be to label it as being from "-Someone, Somewhere, Sometime". There, all solved, now we can go back to our un-offended lives (except for the people that I just offended, **** **).

You should be able to decipher that I never said it made me cool, it is why I havnt been banned.

I moved to the US in 1964 from Australia and did grades to 1 to 4 in Phoenix, Boston and Minneapolis. I remember deciding not to pledge allegiance because at that time I was a Canadian. Then I finally became naturalized as a US citizen. For that I had to pass a citizenship course and swear an oath of allegiance in which I swore to defend the US. I swore that oath in front of Vice President Walter Mondale, who was from Minnesota. Thats a very serious oath to swear when you are 9 and I took it very seriously. I still have the document, and it allows me to work and live in the US or Canada. And I did defend the US when I was a teenager in Europe, did they ever hate yanks!

because you skirt the line between being offensive and being a coward and not wanting to offend.

this does not a man make you, however, a coward it certainly does.

shoot somebody on your property and then talk to us about whatever it is you think you're manly enough dun to talk of still.

my being cool or uncool.. neither have any caslling towards my bans.. you shot a deer? wow, soo cool. shoot a man and talk to me.

Here is the oath. Its a lot more serious than the oath taken in schools or scouts:


Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America

Oath

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

Oh, and by the way braden, if you are going to burst into tears every time someone leaves your tag, you should consider an oath like that for weedylar

You know when Ford's ancestors founded this country they were actually Christian as hard as that is to believe!!

i was an idiot just now, and i was an idiot then, getafix.

i apologize. i am a fool.

I fear braden has devolved into just as much of a lost cause as cerb.

don't ever, and I mean ever, count braden out.

Its ok braden. We've been playing the game together for a long time, and I'm glad you're here buddy

In order to win 'comeback player of the year', he needs something to come back from. It's all part of his diabolical master plan.

see, this really is such a loving community

shut up, idiot

I'm sure I'll get skewered for saying this, but Cerberus actually has a very good, valid point in his first post in this thread.

There is some critical information missing in the original post here: What was the bible verse(s) cited?

If it was the first commandment, then I'd say you have a legitimate gripe. But if its something like "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", then I wonder why you have a problem with it. If the quote is not something specifically religious, does the fact that it comes from The Bible immediately disqualify it as an acceptable motto for a public official?

I hope it was 2 Kings 2:23-25!

or 1 Corinth 14:34-36!

or 1 Timothy 2:9!

Alright, being serious here. I hope it was Leviticus 19:18.

I see trife liking Psalm 137:9

I do not mean to disrespect you or the lutheran beliefs. Yet I just find that odd. Pledging allegiance to a nation/country or in other words to specific group of people is just not quite the same thing as honouring and praising a god. It is only saying that you pledge your duty and loyality to that country over another. It is not like you are praising your nation or praying to it (well ok I guess some extreme people might actually praise it that way, but not most). I find it even more odd that this in regards to a nation that does have so many phrases of "God" written everywhere (even in the US pledges). Now if it was in regards to a nation that specifically worshipped some other god or gods, I could understand it. Idk, just guess I interpret things in bible differently, but just seems all kinda contradictory. If anything I would more understand someone having issue with it if they believed or worshipped some other god or gods.

Hi Sam!
This isn't meant as a skewer, at all. I mean no malice, just trying to illuminate another POV.

What we know as the golden rule did not "come from" the bible, it's a guiding principle that has arisen across many cultures over many centuries.

Centuries before any trace of abrahamic faith in China, Confucius is attributed with the similar "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others".

It's no different with the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". No one needs an ancient text to come to the realization that it is a mutually beneficial moral principle. Not only for yourself, but for your offspring. It helps to guarantee your reproductive success, a strong genetic motivator in us all.

I don't mind any and all good moral principles appearing in the bible. What I do mind, however, is any religion claiming ownership of those principles. In doing so, the implication is that only due to your specific religion do we have anything resembling a civil society, and only by taking your religious text as my own can I have a chance at being a member of your civil society.
I find that to be quite insulting to human intellect. We can figure this fluff out for ourselves w/out wading through all the BS written by ancient, relatively ignorant peoples.

Sam, you cherry picked too, deciding to ignore the first amendment in your post. I'll wager you would have even more visceral disagreements with some of the other laws in the bible, as would Cerberus and any other sane human being.

***NEXT DAY EDIT: That^ was meant to read: "..deciding to ignore the first commandment.."***
sorry 'bout that! /edit

If there are in fact parts of the bible you do not agree with, are you not disturbed by their presence there?

There's a reason that you don't want every one of the ten commandments and other laws in the bible to be the law of the land, or even held as cultural norms. You understand their imperfections and hypocrisies and dangers to a global civilized society, and you have a well functioning human mind that allows you to make those distinctions between the good and the inane in those ancient texts. You choose what you like, and dislike, in the bible. You make moral judgements about different parts of the bible, from a source outside the bible.

If you were a teacher or a role model to my children and discussed moral principles with them, I would want them presented in a secular manner. And if you were to bring up religion with them I would insist it be in the context of the religions of the world, without bias toward one religion or another and without hijacking basic human intellect, psychology, empathy and morality as a construct of your particular faith.

So in the context of religious tracts or quotes in schools, it's a slippery slope that I think should be avoided. It's much better to explore the reasons for the validity of those moral principles so that our children are better able to think for themselves and develop the critical thinking skills needed to recognize bullfluff should a dangerous 'bible' or 'quran' literalist/zealot try to fill their heads with destructive nonsense.

The last thing I would ever want to hear from my children is "cuz my teacher says god says so" and if you truly want to live in the land of the free instead of an implied theocracy then when I send my children to a public school you must respect the freedom of my choice for my children, that being freedom of religion, and freedom from religion.

cuz, Matthew 6:6

As a Lutheran myself, I can tell you that not all branches of the Lutheran church hold this particular belief. My guess is that Frybert was raised in a Missouri Synod (LCMS) church. That's one of the more conservative / fundamentalist branches of Lutheranism. I remember going to a funeral at a Missouri Synod church when I was in my early 20's and getting a mild talking-to from my father for smoking where congregation members could see me. (The body is a temple to God, and all that)

Depending on how literally you interpret scripture, it can indeed make sense to object to saying the pledge of allegiance. The first two commandments; "You shall have no other gods before Me", and "You shall not make/worship idols" both could be seen as prohibiting the recitation of the pledge of allegiance.

cyref, thanks for the rational and well though out reply. I like these kinds of discussions when people are able to state their opinions/positions without belittling or attacking others.

Your point about "do unto others" not coming from The Bible is actually something I was going to touch on tangentially, depending on the answer to the question "which scripture was cited".

I brought up that particular verse because it is a basic fundamental of every major organized religion (and even secular justice systems, really) So if someone objected to The Bible's version of it, it would make me question their motives. "The Golden Rule" is something that I would think everybody can agree is a good rule to follow. Does it really matter whether the person espousing is it quoting Jesus or Confucius or Gandhi? I don't think so, personally.

I'm not sure how I ignored the first amendment....

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Again, this all depends a lot on context. If the school employee in question *wanted* a reasonable bible verse in his/her email signature, then wouldn't a prohibition on that signature be "prohibiting the free exercise" of his/her religion? I don't know.. I understand the concept of the separation of church and state, but I don't think that means the absolute prohibition of religious speech/belief for anyone who is employed by the government.

I agree with you 100% that I don't want government run schools teaching kids religion... But I think a bible quote in the signature of an email (again, depending on what verse it is) is a far cry from that.

can we get some damn memes in here now?

http://i2.wp.com/...nd-m.jpg?resize=599%2C924