OK, I didn't want to post earlier because I hadn't the time to read the whole thing through, which I have now done. So first, bully for all keeping this from getting nasty.

We have to be sure we maintain freedom FROM religion, if that is our choice for our children, was said very early on, but I haven't seen a lot of that aspect. That is for me the main reason I'm so rabid about the Separation of Church and State (SCS). Many o fyou know my background, but I'll summarize again: Mom was liberated the day before her 16th birthday from Auschwitz, while most of her family died for being affiliated with a religion they didn't practice. Dad was a Quaker by background (half Russian, but I don't know what granny was before becoming a Quaker too) who was killed by radical Moslem fundamentalists the month before my college graduation. So I have no, shall we say, inherent respect or regard for religion per se, but I wasn't raised to anyway. I grew up in a nonreligious family in a country about half Moslem and half ancient non-monotheistic animisms, before being colonized by the French (Catholics). I went to French school in West Africa, we had Catholic (French) and Moslem (local) holidays, but nobody I knew went to any churches, that I know of. Moslems everywhere tended just to pray when it was prayer time, but otherwise I didn't see religion, really, anywhere, growing up. My sisters and I sometimes notice, as adults many years later, that we are the only people we know who were raised without religion.

OK, so coming from there, my basic take is that even in very small towns where "there really is no other place to meet" has been said, there is a coffeeshop or truck stop or something with tables and chairs, I don't see the need to use the school. What should meet on school grounds is groups like Students Against Violence For Personal Reasons, where teens from any religious background, or none, could meet with adult and peer counselors to combat the problem of violence in the schools. Or Students Against Bigotry, where ditto, basically. Now the teachers and parents and even kids might be approaching the problem from a religious point of view (anger is a deadly sin, thou shalt not kill, or whatever other religions including paganism "preach" about the problem), but the instruction should be firmly rooted in reality. Ethics before Morals in the Schools, say I.

Recently I noticed on a city park bulletin board The Ten Commandments for Teenagers. I thought it would be a top-ten list, like Be Respectful to Adults, but no, it was the 10 commandments, saying things like You should worship only God, not a rock star, not your parents. On a CITY bulletin board. I marched in and asked to whom to write to ask if it were OK to post anything there or if it were city-sponsored, and explained politely that I didn't want the City to be telling my kids how to worship, so the guy took it down but he said something that showed that he just thought I was anti-Christian (forgetting, of course, that the Jews share that part of the bible), rather than protecting what I still think are my rights. Was I out of line?

Then shortly thereafter my firm, a huge global corporation with parts in many places even across the US, started holding "non-denominational" Bible studies on one of the main campuses. I have emailed HR (no idea whom else to go to) to put my strenuous objections on the record, even though I know that as a private enterprise it can be as Christian (which is what they meant - so nondenominationnal it even includes the Catholics, I guess) as it wants, but I don't want to work for a Christian firm, or even one that wasn't but is now becoming so. Is there anything I can do there?