Is there anything more draining than a multi-hour debate about a charged topic that neither person has any desire to budge on? And it’s interesting enough that you don’t run out of things to talk about, but you just… keep… MISSING each other on key points, so you KNOW there’s never going to be some kind of agreement…
Ugh, if I’m gonna say any more, I better throw up a read more.
There we go. I just got out of a five-hour conversation about this story. An old banner with references to ‘our heavenly father’ and ‘amen’ that was hanging in a school for several decades will be taken down because church and state and all that.
And I argued that I agreed with the judge. The phrasing seemed obviously Christian, and presenting it seemed like an endorsement of faith. I believed that schools should not endorse any religion at all, and so it should come down.
He disagreed. Since the creator of the banner had been a student, the girl requesting it’s removal was infringing on the creator’s right to free speech and expression of religion.
And it just… we could NOT reconcile these arguments. >__< It went from the limits of free speech to how religion should be presented to the role of schools in morality to whether my “Don’t Be A Dick” rule of morality allowed for neutral discussion or conflict over someone’s safety to whether shame can come from an outside source to whether not discussing religion was an endorsement of Atheism to Christian privilege to Tim Tebow AND GOT NOWHERE.
I’m sure it was as frustrating to him as to me. It’s probably a good thing we both like each other, or it really… could have gotten ugly.