By Letitia Stein

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida high school told a student this week to stop adding the phrase "God bless America" when reading scripted morning announcements, drawing protests and irate phone calls from around the nation, school officials said on Friday.

The principal at Yulee High School, located in north Florida near Jacksonville, asked the student to stick to the script after receiving a six-page letter on Monday from the American Humanist Association, a group that describes itself as advocating for humanists, atheists and secular governance.

The letter said two Yulee students who are atheists had complained about the use over the past several weeks of the phrase.

"Don’t ad-lib. Just read what's on the script, and don’t put anything else on it," was the message given to the student announcer, said Sharyl Wood, a spokeswoman for the school district in Nassau County, just north of Jacksonville.

The student, who was not identified by the school district, was not punished, she said.

Yet reports that he had been disciplined received national attention in an opinion piece by Todd Starnes, host of the radio show "Fox News & Commentary."

Yulee High subsequently was flooded with phone calls, Wood said, and in recent days some people have waved signs in protest near the school, located in a conservative region of Florida.

The legal center of the Humanist Association called the phrase "God bless America" a religious message that "is invidious toward atheists and other nonbelievers" and said it violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment requirement for separation of church and state, according to the group's letter.

"Students are certainly free to say 'God bless America' in their own personal context any time they want to," said David Niose, the association's legal director. "But when we are talking about morning announcements, it is not a free speech forum."

Niose added that many people would be upset if school announcements featured an endorsement of Islam, atheism or another minority religious view in the United States.

The superintendent in Nassau County has been researching the issue and plans to respond to the controversy, according to the school district spokeswoman.

"People have the right to express their opinions," Wood said. "We are not trying to hurt or suppress any student. This is not over yet."

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Leslie Adler and Will Dunham)


liberals at it again, don't offend the foreigners...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_deism

Ceremonial deism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ceremonial deism is a legal term used in the United States for nominally religious statements and practices deemed to be merely ritual and non-religious through long customary usage. Proposed examples of ceremonial deism include the reference to God introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, the phrase "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, and the Ohio state motto, "With God, all things are possible".

The term was coined in 1962 by the then-dean of Yale Law School, Eugene Rostow, and has been used since 1984 by the Supreme Court of the United States to assess exemptions from the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Usage by the Supreme Court

The first use of the term in a Supreme Court opinion is in Justice Brennan's dissenting opinion in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984).

...I would suggest that such practices as the designation of "In God We Trust" as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag can best be understood, in Dean Rostow's apt phrase, as a form a "ceremonial deism," protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content. [emphasis added, citations omitted]

In Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004). Justice O'Connor, concurring in the opinion, invoked the term in her analysis of the nature of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, saying in part

There are no de minimis violations of the Constitution – no constitutional harms so slight that the courts are obliged to ignore them. Given the values that the Establishment Clause was meant to serve, however, I believe that government can, in a discrete category of cases, acknowledge or refer to the divine without offending the Constitution. This category of "ceremonial deism" most clearly encompasses such things as the national motto ("In God We Trust"), religious references in traditional patriotic songs such as "The Star-Spangled Banner", and the words with which the Marshal of this Court opens each of its sessions ("God save the United States and this honorable Court"). These references are not minor trespasses upon the Establishment Clause to which I turn a blind eye. Instead, their history, character, and context prevent them from being constitutional violations at all. [emphasis added, citations omitted]

I appreciate you calling me a "foreigner" because I agree with the point of the Humanist Association, and have been mildly offended by phrases like "God Bless America" since forever. It's not like an actual citizen of the United States could have a contrary opinion on the matter. We certainly don't care about offending organizations which have a legal and ethical right to complain about a violation of one of the basic tenets of the United States Constitution.

But because the squeakiest wheel gets the grease, I don't expect anything to be done about this in my lifetime. The phrase "under God" is still in the Pledge of Allegiance, after all, and that hasn't changed, even though it is a required part of many schools' morning schedule. (Last time I checked, we were pledging allegiance to a political state, not a religious outlook.)

EDIT
Conrad_73's point is well-taken, however. All you have to do is prove that the student said it as part of a rote, obligatory part of the script - which I think it mentions in the article, it wasn't. The student was going off-script to promote their own religious viewpoint.

Okay... Nobody else will say it, so I will!

GOD BLESS AMERICA DAMN IT...!

(Because Nobody Else Will)

I actually didn't read all your post Moe but if someone told me to stop singing 'God save the Queen' I would sing it even louder and say ---- you.

I should think Americans should bless America. Seems even more patriotic that way. But if you insist...

God, indeed, bless America.
Allah bless America.
The-Jewish-name-for-God-which-I-can-never-remember-how-to-spell bless America.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster bless America.
Mother Earth bless America.
Cthulhu bless America.
The God-Emperor of Mankind bless America.
Satan bless America. (Or if Satan's blessing comes with bad things, then Satan curse America.)
Baron Samedi bless America.
Buddha bless America. (Y'know, if Buddha lays down the blessings.)
Odin bless America.
Grandmother Spider bless America.
Osiris bless America.
The Jade Emperor bless America.
The Fairy Queen of Summer Court bless America.
Sigmar bless America.
Paladine bless America.
Ao bless America.

You know what all these benedictions have in common? The United States of America. So long as America gets blessed, why does it always have to be the Christian God who does the blessing?

And the thought now occurs, in response to Conrad_73's point: If the words you are saying have no practical significance, and you do not actually intend anything by saying them... why say them at all?

your offended... who cares? these kids should have every right to say/bless whatever they want without your or anyone elses input about how they are offended... be offended, but be quiet about it, no one cares...

this is why liberals "OFFEND" me, lack of any kind of reasoning skills... when do you have to go to school to hear it and be offended?

don't forget david, i'm also an atheist, but i also believe that peoples beliefs are what made our country what it is... so if someone wants to "god bless it", it hurts no one or nothing at all for them to do so...

i couldn't agree with you more...

this stupid "i'm offended" crud is just out of control, one of the many reasons liberals just piss me off...

lol, nothing wrong with being proud of your nation...

who said it was a christian god???? they are all "GOD"

Then go ahead and refer to Satan as "God". I'm sure he'd appreciate it.

depends on what the definition of a "god" is... but yes, it would be in the godlike category... it has powers, it's eternal, it controls it's realm... is that the Qualifiers of a god?

btw, it is a recognized religion..

The definition works for me.
So why don't you worship Satan as a god? (As you mention, some people do.) Why not say "Satan bless America**", so people know who you're talking about? To the best of my knowledge, only those in the Judeo-Christian tradition refer to their god as "God" (as opposed to an actual name or description).
And to get to the heart of the matter, if you're not clear which "God" you're referring to, and all these could qualify as gods, so you couldn't legally intend any specific god, why bother saying it at all?

**with the same caveat as above with regards to "blessing" or "cursing"

that would be glorifying one religion out of many... "god" covers them all...again, they are all gods

god means the god you believe in...

remember, it was a stupid atheist that made the problem out of it...

The "stupid atheist" who wrote that clause of the Constitution?

no, the stupid atheist that complains about saying "god bless America"

there were not very many atheists back then...

Nope. Just a bunch of people who wanted freedom of religion, including having no religion. The people who wrote that the state should be separate from any church. The ones who wanted to be free from an oppressive society who did not listen to their concerns.
Those were some pretty good people.

your kinda right, they wanted a more "less religion" controlled society, the catholic rule of the British was to much for what they seemed necessary... they saw how the church in England at that time had more control and didn't want those problems in a democracy rather than a dictatorship with the kings and queens... they were very smart to word it the way they did...

i don't think the real separation of church and state came about until the 70's-80's... same as slaves, they didn't get any real freedom until about the same time...