New PBS Doc: An Atheist Mom Goes to the Supreme Court - and Wins
From the Secular Coalition for America:
Imagine that you are a religious minority sending your child to public school, only to find out that the school has implemented a “voluntary” program of religious instruction that reaffirms the doctrines and creeds of the largely Christian community. Like most people, you don’t want to make waves by challenging the views of the majority, so you allow your child to participate in this program, hoping that it will emphasize education, not indoctrination. Your child soon comes home with artwork and other materials, however, that indicate that the program is little more than a Christian Sunday school, having nothing to do with objective education and everything to do with instilling Christian beliefs.
Fed up with the blatant proselytizing, you advise the school that you do not want your child to participate in the “voluntary” program. Since it is conducted during ordinary school hours, not after school, and since your child is the only one who is not participating, the school must now decide what to do with your child while everyone else participates. To resolve this dilemma, the school orders your child to sit in the “detention chair,” a highly visible seat outside the principal’s office normally used for disciplining children who have been misbehaving, while all the other children participate in the religious instruction program.
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Rosenstein covers the legal chronology well, but the documentary’s most compelling moments are those that recount the blowback experienced by the family, the senseless hostility directed toward them for standing up for their principles. Hate mail, intimidation, a mutilated pet, threatened careers, and other repercussions all flowed from their simple act of resisting public religiosity. Many of the good Christians of Champaign and America, it seems, weren’t feeling very Christ-like.
The documentary will begin airing on PBS this may.