Jessica Ahlquist is a typical teenager. She has a Twitter, worries about the prom and is an atheist, which doesn’t always work out so well in strongly catholic Rhode Island. The reason? The prominently displayed School Prayer that hung in the hall of Cranston High School West, her public high school.
The prayer, which begins with “Our Father” and ends with “Amen,” was placed there by the class of 1963.
“When I saw it there, I knew it didn’t belong,” Ahlquist said. “And every time that I saw it, it was a reminder that my school wasn’t doing the right thing and that my school didn’t necessarily support me and my views.”
Ahlquist first went to the administration and asked that the prayer be taken down. The administration ignored her request. She then got the American Civil Liberties Union to call, pleading with them to not engage school funds to fight a battle they would lose. The administration wouldn’t budge.
And thus, Ahlquist, at age 16, became the plaintiff in a lawsuit, represented by the ACLU, against the school in an open-and-shut constitutional violation.
When the judge (rightly) concluded that the banner needed to be taken down immediately, the town erupted in a new fanfare of hatred, directed at the 16-year-old.
A state House representative, Peter Palumbo, called Ahlquist an “evil little thing” and a “pawn star” of the ACLU. Her classmates and fellow students joined in on Twitter throughout the day, as news of the ACLU win spread. Twitter user @jvezina022 wrote, “I hope there’s lots of banners in hell when your rotting in there you atheist f--- #TeamJesus,” while another aggravated user @zombiecamera said, “i cant wait to hear about you getting curb stomped you f---ing worthless c---.”
Threats from adults and youth alike poured in; dozens of Twitter users and Facebook members made direct threats of violence to Ahlquist, over a clear win for the separation of church and state. Students are still free to pray as much as they like, but under court order, the banner must be removed from the wall where it once stood.
It continues to astonish me, though it should not be by now, that the many people who claim to know peace, love and forgiveness better than the entirety of the world would be so offended when others work to stop infringing upon the constitutional rights of others.
Christianity holds a majority position in America, and I see its members throwing around its privileged weight every opportunity it gets. These threats against the life of a 16-year-old girl who was excluded by the nature of a school prayer show what this privileged majority is made of.
One would hope that the men and women of faith really want to be the meek and mild servants that Jesus supposedly requested them to be.
But the evidence constantly suggests they would much rather live their life of entitlement, say whatever they feel like and threaten anyone who would bother to challenge their status as the selfish majority with death and hell.
