What a witness for God *rolleyes*

[JesusFightClub]

/therebelution.com/blog/2013/06/roy-costner-iv-age-18-rips-up-approved-speech-recites-lords-prayer-instead

(Christian News Network) – A high school valedictorian from South Carolina ripped up his approved speech on stage this past weekend, and minutes later, delivered the Lord’s Prayer in defiance of the school district’s decision to no longer include prayer at graduation ceremonies.

Roy Costner IV drew loud applause and cheers when he surprised attendees of the Liberty High School graduation at Clemson’s Littlejohn Colliseum on Saturday.

“From the ACLU sending FOIA requests to every district in the state this year after the Chesterfield County case, then the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent us a complaint about religion at board meetings and some other issues as well,†Pickens County School District spokesman John Eby said, the district has been under fire.

Therefore, officials decided to end invocations at all school functions and replace prayer at high school ™

Read the comments, they're amusing. Preaching Christianity to a majority Christian audience is the BRAVEST THING ANYONE'S DONE EVAR, don't you get it?

[FeministShrew]

This happened about 50 miles from me, but I could just as easily see it happening at our high school. I've been biting my tongue & sitting on my fingers to keep from letting all my friends & family know what bullshit it was, cause I still have to live in this hell hole.

The sad fact is he was probably just show-boating because he knew he'd get his name in the news. Most of the high schoolers around here (hell, their parents too) only go to church because it's expected. It's all about appearances here.

Get in trouble, you can get out of it by publicly repenting in church & tearfully confessing what a sinner you are, get re-baptized for good measure. I've seen it happen several times.

Slightly OT, but indicative of how things are here in good ol' SC: one of my kids' friends is gay & starting a career as a drag queen. He was a star student, drum major for the marching band three years in a row, from a prominent family. He told me last week that when he first started to come out as a sophomore in our high school, the principal (a Good Christian Man - puke) called him into the office, and said, "I've been hearing rumors about you. You better keep your nose clean. You have a reputation to uphold at this school."

For the rest of high school he & my kid pretended to be boyfriend & girlfriend, & he didn't try to come out again until he left for college.

[laura oz]

Ugh. I'm from Darlington county, not too far from there. I'm not surprised in the least by this boy's showboating for "Gauwad and Jaysusah"( that's how the country preachers say it ;) ). :sighs: Persecution seems to be something that many a church goer aspires to experience, especially if they suffer no real, ya know, repercussions or suffering involved. It's hard to be a warrior for Christ in a country that has "In God WE Trust" on the currency in this day and age :roll:

[lizziesmom]

You folks have a beautiful state but you could not pay me enough money to live in a red state. How do you stand it? Do most people who are going against the grain keep quiet and go along to get along?

[laura oz]

You folks have a beautiful state but you could not pay me enough money to live in a red state. How do you stand it? Do most people who are going against the grain keep quiet and go along to get along?

I love my home state, and I miss seeing the azaleas bloom, and taking trips to Myrtle Beach and Charleston, but I wouldn't move back home for anything now. I'm used to Atlanta now, and there aint no keeping this kid on the farm. I really don't think things are going to change, at least in my area, for a long, long time. Two cases in point: 1) There are still some elderly black men in my home town that step off the sidewalk and look down when they see a white woman coming. Yes, that generation will soon die out, but that it's still happening is a sign of how far behind the rest of the country we are. High school cafeterias still seem to be separated with white kids on one side and black kids on the other. It's not an unwritten rule or anything, it's just the way things are. 2) I remember when Passion of the Christ came out. You couldn't go to the pharmacy or the car wash without having someone either witnessing and citing the suffering they saw in that movie as sign that Christ loved us and we needed to be redeemed, or telling you that if you didn't get a blessing from watching it there was something wrong with you. To answer how do we stand it? I moved the hell away, and the friends I have there who think like me, just keep quiet and go with the flow. I don't want to give the impression that all South Carolinians are backwards or ignorant, but in the rural parts things move a lot slower and the people are just different from the areas like Columbia or Charleston. A friend of mine told me that he wasn't voting Republican and knew he was wasting his vote, but if enough people would just vote how they wanted without worrying about making their vote count, one day things would change. I just love that he can still be hopeful, and his hope gives me hope.

[EyeQueue]

I posted about this last week (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17777&hilit=valedictorian), but thanks for bringing it up again. Since then, there has been at least one other such incident:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/1 ... 16113.html

Who knows what this other kid was going to say, but he straightaway deviated from his "approved" speech by starting some blather about how the school threatened to cut off his mike if he deviated from his "approved" speech. :lol: :lol:

I'm sure he styled himself a freedom' fightin' heeeero too. What BS. I hardly call going with the dominant culture an act of bravery.

If you sift out the overwhelming fundie support comments on these threads, you can often find some gems, like this one:

"Religion is sort of like a penis. Lots of people have one, and it's OK to be proud of it, but you don't whip it out in public and start waving it in other people's faces."

Someone pointed out in the other thread that this kind of thing happens every year in American schools. :?

[lizziesmom]

.

If you sift out the overwhelming fundie support comments on these threads, you can often find some gems, like this one:

"Religion is sort of like a penis. Lots of people have one, and it's OK to be proud of it, but you don't whip it out in public and start waving it in other people's faces."