{"id":4077,"date":"2012-01-17T10:15:40","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T15:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=4077"},"modified":"2012-01-17T10:15:41","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T15:15:41","slug":"cranston-west-the-school-where-christianity-went-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2012\/01\/cranston-west-the-school-where-christianity-went-to-die.html","title":{"rendered":"Cranston West: The school where Christianity went to die"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jessica<\/a>
16-year old Cranston West student Jessica Ahlquist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To quote a favorite young lady of mine, “People suck.”<\/p>\n

At Rhode Island’s Cranston High School West, student Jessica Ahlquist took issue with the banner hanging in the school labeled “School Prayer.”\u00a0 She successfully sued her state-funded public school to have a it removed.\u00a0 This was a classic textbook case of separation of church and state, and U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux even praised her for her courage in his written decision.<\/p>\n

This was hardly judicial activism. Any high school civics student should have recognized that this was the inescapable outcome were this issue heard in any court in the land.\u00a0 Some might argue the law is wrong, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being surprised that it’s the law.<\/p>\n

\"Cranston<\/a>It might even be argued that had the school had the good sense to label the banner “School Pledge” and drop the Heavenly Father reference and the Amen that it would have been a completely legal banner.\u00a0 But they didn’t, and so it isn’t.<\/p>\n

Yet it isn’t the loss of this banner that diminishes Christianity. It is the violent threats of retaliation against Ahlquist from other students. In what appears to be a woefully misguided sense of defending their religion, classmates are not only verbally insulting the young activist, but physically threatening her with assault and rape, both in this life and the next. Just a few of the things posted to Facebook and Twitter<\/a> are listed below.<\/p>\n

\u201cMay that little, evil athiest teenage girl and that judge BURN IN HELL!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope there\u2019s lots of banners in hell when your rotting in there you atheist fuck #TeamJesus\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf this banner comes down, hell i hope the school burns down with it!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cU little brainless idiot, hope u will be punished, you have not win sh..t! Stupid little brainless skunk!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFuck Jessica alquist I\u2019ll drop anchor on her face\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cdefinetly laying it down on this athiest tommorow anyone else?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNothing bad better happen tomorrow #justsaying #fridaythe13th\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s all jump that girl who did the banner #fuckthatho\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c\u201dBut for real somebody should jump this girl\u201d lmao let\u2019s do it!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHmm jess is in my bio class, she\u2019s gonna get some shit thrown at her\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201chail Mary full of grace @jessicaahlquist is gonna get punched in the face\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I take over the world I\u2019m going to do a holocaust to all the atheists\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cgods going to fuck your ass with that banner you scumbag\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cif I wasn\u2019t 18 and wouldn\u2019t go to jail I\u2019d beat the shit out of her idk how she got away with not getting beat up yet\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cnail her to a cross\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe can make so many jokes about this dumb bitch, but who cares #thatbitchisgointohell and Satan is gonna rape her.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know kids can be stupid and cruel, but I can’t fathom that somehow this level of malevolence is being wielded in the defense of Christianity.\u00a0 Even assuming that somehow this was well intentioned, in so trying to save their religion they have made it considerably less.\u00a0 Ironically, atheists are often accused of unfairly conflating religion and violence<\/a>.\u00a0 Yet these allegedly Christian students make a compelling case all on their own.<\/p>\n

Young Jessica Ahlquist returns to school<\/a> today for the first time since the ruling on the banner.\u00a0 Her morning Tweet suggests a high degree of optimism, or maybe hope. \u201ctime for school. Woot. #bestdayever,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 I hope she’s right.<\/p>\n

WWJD, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christian classmates threaten a 16-year old girl with eternal rape in Hell for forcing removal of a prayer banner from the school… just like Jesus would have done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[131,76,148,98,125,149,91,90],"class_list":["post-4077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","tag-atheism","tag-christians","tag-first-amendment","tag-school-policy","tag-schools","tag-separation-of-church-and-state","tag-violent-rhetoric","tag-words-matter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4077"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4099,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions\/4099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}