Pubescent brownshirt suffers prayer-panic in Rhode Island

Prayer sparks atheist’s fight

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, October 11, 2011

By Paul Davis

Journal Staff Write

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

CRANSTON

As a high school freshman, Jessica Ahlquist wore shiny braces, read books and never missed an episode of “Dr. Who,” a TV show about a time-traveling alien who saves civilizations, helps people and rights wrongs.

She bakes cookies shaped like Charles Darwin, too.

“I was very shy,” says the 5-foot-tall student.

At her press conference.

Hardly anyone noticed her — until she spotted a school prayer affixed to a wall in the auditorium of her new school, Cranston High School West.

When she regained consciousness, she told paramedics: "Take me to the ACLU!"

The prayer, still on display, begins “Our Heavenly Father,” and urges students to “grow mentally and morally.” Amen, it ends.

It was the 'mental and moral growth' that really ticked her off.   

That’s illegal, thought Ahlquist, who began speaking up about the prayer at school meetings.

A mundane prayer on a plaque on a wall in a school is "illegal". If we only had a Constitution that guaranteed freedom of speech....

Now, more than a year later, the 16-year-old junior is at t

he center of a U.S. District Court suit that alleges the prayer — on display in the school for nearly 50 years — violates the First Amendment.

The courts have plenty of time on their hands.

The Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on Ahlquist’s behalf in April, alleging the prayer makes Ahlquist feel “excluded, ostracized and devalued as a member of the school community” because she does not share the religious beliefs on display. Ahlquist is an atheist.

Atheists have diaphanous egos. They're paragons of courage, reason, and logic. But with a brief glance at a prayer they collapse in exclusion, ostracism, and devaluation.

What a horrendous assault on her shy fragile soul spirit whatever.

To recover from her exclusion, ostracism and devaluation, she calls the police and sues her school district. Her complaint: 'I saw a prayer in my school'.

Her lawyers are seeking a court order to force officials to remove the prayer, which they claim violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which bars the government from promoting religious messages.

Censorship. Atheist boilerplate. Can you think of a single atheist lawsuit that protected freedom of speech?

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux is scheduled to consider the injunction and Ahlquist’s suit against the City of Cranston and the School Committee.

Federal judges are the prefect folks to be deciding what the people of Cranston put on the walls of their schools for their children.

“It’s a cutting-edge case that raises some important issues,” says Joseph V. Cavanagh Jr., one of several lawyers representing the school and city.

“Both sides,” he adds, “are passionate about the issue.”

One side (the people of Cranston) are passionate about freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The other side (the publicity-seeking little brownshirt and the ACLU) are passionate about censorship and suppression of religion.

In addition to Cavanagh — who frequently represents The Providence Journal –– the school is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a conservative legal group in Washington, D.C. All of the lawyers are working pro bono for the school.

According to Cavanagh and the other attorneys, the case centers on preserving the past.

It's about preserving the Constitution, which guarantees free exercise of religion and freedom of speech, which is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

In March, the School Committee voted to keep the prayer because it is a historic document created more than 50 years ago — along with a school creed, school colors and a mascot — to give the new school an identity and tradition, they say.

The vote was “based not upon some desire to inject religion into the public schools,” but on a belief “that school history and tradition should be maintained,” they argue.

No one, including the little victim, is required to assent to, read, or even look at the prayer.

In the last five decades, thousands of students, teachers, parents and residents have attended events in the auditorium, say Cavanagh and others.

“Except for the complaint that is the subject of this case, the record is devoid of any complaints about the mural.”

Thats because everyone else is sane and respects the rights of others.

Ahlquist’s attorneys –– Thomas R. Bender and Lynette Labinger, a Providence Housing Court judge –– disagree.

They say a similar prayer mural at the Bain Middle School “was quietly removed” after the ACLU filed its suit.

"Remove the prayer, or we'll destroy you financially. "  What to do...?

And before their vote to keep the prayer, School Committee members spoke about their religious beliefs — proof that their reasons are religious and not historic, they say.

Religious speech police, on the job.

In their arguments, both sides invoke New England’s early religious leaders — from the pious Puritans to Rhode Island founder Roger Williams, an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

A prayer isn't the church, and a school isn't the state. And 'separation of church and state' appears nowhere in the Constitution, which was ratified in a Congress in which prayers were invoked often.

“This is a state with a long tradition of religious freedom,” say the lawyers for the school and city. But it is a state with an “equally long tradition of religious expression in public.”

The issue surfaced in summer 2010, when a parent complained about the prayer to the ACLU.

"9-11. Can I help you?"

"....(noise, screaming, panic)... I've...I've... seen a...a...a... prayer... "

"Relax, Sir. Psychiatrists are on the way. Are you breathing ok...?"

In response, Executive Director Steven Brown asked Cranston School Supt. Peter L. Nero to remove the prayer mural, a 1963 gift from the school’s first graduating class.

"Remove it, and no one gets hurt, except for my usual and customary legal fees, damages, pain and suffering..."

“I understand that this prayer may have been posted in the auditorium for a long time. However, the crucial protections of the Bill of Rights have been around even longer,” Brown wrote.

The Bill of Rights was enacted to prevent public expression of religious belief... wasn't it?

Officials reviewed Brown’s request in 2010 and 2011.

Ahlquist, then a sophomore, remembers speaking at the first meeting.

Her "shyness" had remissions.  

“I didn’t want to talk. I was terrified of saying I was an atheist.

So don't say it.

When I spoke, I heard a gasp.

It was laughter.

I knew then that people didn’t share my beliefs. It was an unwelcoming atmosphere. People belittled me and treated me like a little kid.”

You are a little kid. A litigious closed-minded atheist little kid.

In March, after a heated debate, the School Committee voted 4 to 3 to continue to display the prayer.

But that's democracy! That's not in the Constitution!

“We don’t want to erase our schools’ history because one person in the history of the school objects,” said School Committee member Frank S. Lombardi in a news release.

An atheist is an army of 1.

A banner near the main entrance to the school explains what the school expects of its students.

A Cranston West graduate, it says, should be “an informed, involved citizen who advocates for positive changes ...”

Censorship, litigation and anti-Christian bigotry is so... positive.

Jessica Ahlquist grew up in Warwick and Coventry, the daughter of an atheist firefighter father and a “spiritual” mother. She was baptized in a Catholic church in Providence, bur rarely went to church.

“My parents encouraged me to ask questions and think for myself,” she says.

Unless she sees a prayer, in which case she collapses.  

She began questioning religion at 10, after her mother became ill. “I was praying and it wasn’t helping.”

In the fifth grade, she cried when she learned about American slavery. A few years later, she reacted in the same way to the Holocaust.

Such a sensitive soul. She'd never sue anyone, or try to censor a little prayer....

When a friend showed her the school prayer at Cranston West, she told her father, who said, “What do you want to do?”

“I wanted to say something, but I was busy with my final exams, and I didn’t know who to talk to,” she says.

"Hello, ACLU, this is Jessica. Can you help me censor the people in my school district?"

Later, when a school board subcommittee met to discuss the issue, Ahlquist spoke up.

Free speech is important to Jess. Not to others, though.

Since then, she says, students and adults have called her a “stupid atheist,” an ACLU tool, a witch and a “media whore.” They’ve also threatened her through e-mails or at school, she says.

What a terrible thing to say. She's not a witch.

A former classmate told her that, if she knew what he really thought of her, she would kill herself, she says.

That's sooo not nice. She's considering suing.

After the school prayer complaint, Ahlquist create d a Facebook group to support the prayer’s removal. She’s appeared on TV and radio, been a speaker for the Secular Student Alliance and has appeared on YouTube videos.

She's overcoming her shyness.

Next month, the ACLU will present her with the William G. McLoughlin First Amendment Award, named after a Brown University history professor and liberal activist.

She's also a finalist for the annual Stalin award, named after a fellow atheist who also got testy about free expression of religion. Here's hoping...

Her frequent appearances, say the lawyers for the city and school, show that she does not fear harassment, as she claims in her suit. “These are not the actions of a frightened student, but of a zealous advocate.”

She struggles so with shyness. The press conferences are so therapeutic.

The lawyers also question her delay in addressing the school prayer issue. And they note that in some interviews, Ahlquist calls the prayer’s message a positive one.

The prayer invokes mental and moral growth. She needs it.

Ahlquist says she made the statement to stop future threats and insults. She says she never imagined the issue would become so public — and so overwhelming.

Right. Censoring your friends and neighbors and dragging them into federal court to gag them usually goes unnoticed.

“At first, I saw this as a legal issue. But people on the other side have turned this into a religious war against atheists.”

Right. She sues her friends and neighbors in federal court to deprive them of the right to free expression of religion and freedom of speech. 

They don't like that.

That's proof that they are attacking her.

The proper court ruling on this farce will be to tell her that she can ignore the prayer, if she wants to. It's a free country. For everyone. And she and the ACLU can reimburse the good people of Cranston for all of their legal fees incurred in their defense against this pubescent totalitarian and her atheist enablers.