Kevin (McGrath) says, "I think there is much more danger that a ban on public prayer is likely to generate fundamantalism than the reverse. If people laugh at you for praying in public and you go ahead and pray in public anyway, that's very brave – but you could be well on the way towards becoming vulnerable to fanaticism. Whatever your religion." Boy, ain't that the truth. But that fanaticism would be generated by the church of that person's faith, not by a school that refrained from choosing one faith's god to pray to over another faith's god.

Kevin also says: "Profane? I can't see profanity in that thread title. 'To treat sacred objects with irreverence, violence or disrespect.' I suppose you could say that sexual activity is in some sense a sacred object, and that in some way the thread title is treating it with disprespect. At a pinch." My take on it is that some people consider prayer to be sacred, and more people consider the deity to whom (or which) they pray to be sacred. To make the spurious statement that prayer has "fuck-all" to do with music is not only profane, but in many cases untrue! Many people who pray, pray in song!!! (In fact, some schools get around the prayer issue by having their choirs sing some classical-music piece that is actually a prayer.)

John P (re your post of 26-Mar-02, 10:09 PM): Right on!! No one's outlawing or banning individual prayer.

ljc: Y'mean this whole teenager-poem thing was e-mail spam???? So we don't really know who wrote that poem, or how old (s)he really is. Sorry, but that poem's credibility has just plummeted to zero in my mind.