This particular subset should fire their lawyers, not because they wanted to violate the constitutions, but because they failed to take into account people who respect separation of church abd state.
"And yet there was no public record of those talks before this deal was quickly proposed and approved"
French word du jour : backchich/dessous-de-table
"He said that he underestimated the public's concern."
Those pesky people who dare to ask him to uphold the law he has sworn to follow. Quel toupet !
In the US, the lack of public record may have been as big a state/local legal problem as the violation of the State's Blaine rule. Very often these boards are required by local law to hold most of their business in public (though I don't know the specific situation with this board in this county). So it's not just about underestimating public interest, it's the fact that if the board got sued for making the agreement, they'd have to explain to a judge why they've been violating the law for 13 years running.
Yes, that's right. Arizona has a more stringent church/state separation Constitution than the federal document. One may ask, why does Arizona have a school voucher system, then? The answer is 'the camel's nose'. This group thought that the camel was almost in the tent, and they could get away with this. The Mormon church is in every part of our government here. Just look at the way the Mormon church is referred to, 3 times in that press release: "The Church". That is not them simply referring to 'A' church or the entity they are talking about as 𝑎𝑛𝑦 church; this is how people refer to the LDS. It is THE church. This push back makes my heart feel proud of my fellow Arizonans. But we clearly have a long way to go. The school voucher system has won in the courts despite the obvious constitutional conflict.
This was a terrible idea all the way around, and the elected officials who approved it should be removed from office. It is NEVER the job of our secular government to backstop anyone's religion, and rights are never matters of majority rule. Public schools are a sub division of government.
This is how you do it. Put the spotlight on it and show everyone how one group gets special treatment at the expense of everyone else. The constitutional violation only compounded things. It would still have been an egregious breach of the public trust if it had been a secular organization getting such a sweetheart deal, but adding the religious indoctrination, especially for a belief system that a significant portion of students do not share, made this beyond the pale. I just wonder how many Mor(m)ons were on the school board that called on their church leadership to halt the deal. The fact that they caved so quickly with the depth of their pockets leads me to believe that their local churc really needs to be investigated for other potentially illegal shenanigans. They appear to not want that kind of scrutiny.
To say that this particular proposal for a Mormon school on public school grounds had numerous problems would be to indulge in obvious hyperbole. Take what should have been an obvious State / Church separation issue, add ridiculous property rent / lease conditions, plus the public outcry, and it's pretty clear that the local Mormon church was getting ready to walk into a buzz saw. Frankly it's way past time that secular issues like this were ruled in our favor, and equally past time that the LDS church understood that their penchant for overstepping State / Church boundaries has been tolerated too long.
That said, congrats to the Vail Unified School District. This is indeed a "critical win" and a well deserved one.
#1- Let the church buy their own damned property elsewhere. Then arrange, at their own damned expense, transportation for their kids.
OR
#2- Have moron, I mean, mormon families wake up their kids at some ungodly hour during predawn (say 3 AM) & take them to have their damned moron, I mean mormon, lessons before the kids get into their school bus.
OR, EVEN BETTER
#3- Quit religion. PRESTO!!! The whole problem of predawn religionite lessons, tired/sleepy kids, bad grades, school behavioral issues & complex expensive "seminary" building goes away!
Why am I reminded of Austin Powers and the rocket ship bit. “OMG it’s a huge … Dick, there’s something on the radar, it looks like a big… hot dogs juicy hot dogs, what’s that up in the sky? Is it a giant…”
Of course, the billionaire rockets reminded me of that too.
Maybe it was just on my mind to begin with. I don’t know why Plan B made me think of it. I might just be off my rocker.
Here in Utah, they just carve out that little piece of land on the school property, and the school district sells it to them cheap. Then they build their seminary and voila! They have easy access to the kids, and some seminary teachers even bring cupcakes and other incentives to get kids to not only attend, but to bring their non-Mormon friends.
Another church tried to buy that piece of land when it came up for sale about 15 years ago (I think?) I want to say it was the Summum church? Or Ammon? Anyway, it resulted in a huge lawsuit because the school district tried to accept the LDS Church's bid over the other, despite it being the lower offer. In the end, since the other church wouldn't drop the suit, the school district suddenly decided they weren't going to sell that land after all, and that they needed it for something else.
Seriously though, I hate it here. My teen's high school has the seminary building in the parking lot, although technically the entrance to *their* parking lot is from the street. It's literally surrounded by the school parking lot on 3 sides though, and apartments on the 4th.
There's an easy legal way to do this: buy/rent office space next to the school campus. Just as a perfectly normal business might. So yes they can easily get their released time seminary idea to work. The question is whether they are willing to pay market rate to do it.
All religions rot the mind and make people really stupid and gullible.
As I said before: All religions are the festering oozing pus filled boil on the ass of humanity; until humanity stops believing in deities that are going to solve/save humanity from the world’s problems, humanity will never progress.
Humanity can be very creative and innovative when it comes to solving the world’s problems if humanity can unite and willing to make great changes to our lifestyle and thinking.
Congrats to the parents and students who spent the time to make their positions known to the Superintendent and board, and saw results because of it.
If the Mormon church wants the (Mormon) kids to have easy access to their services during the school day, let them do it the exact same way a McDonald's or bookstore would and and buy and develop a property nearby.
Geez around my area, $100/month may not even cover the rental cost of one parking space, let alone four + building.
My kid's middle school actually as a mixed use community center attached to it. Private organizations rent space in it....and when they do, their patrons can use the allocated parking to go there.
IOW there are plenty of easy and legal ways for the church to do this...if they simply avoid the corrupt sweetheart deal-making. Though we don't have a Blaine amendment, I don't think...for AZ that might complicate an otherwise simple rental agreement.
Asking them to avoid corrupt deal-making is a big ask. The corruption is baked into the religion: asking them to avoid corruption is like asking them to not breathe.
This actually makes the whole debacle soooooo funny. If the Mormons had a good PR guy they would've just sponsored a shiny new assembly building for the school to use with anyone. Legal because anyone can use it for anything; good PR because they're providing something also useful to the school. If people express discomfort, Mormons can more plausibly claim they're being treated differently......LDS Church hire me, I have more ideas, I'm only billing $750/hr. Call me.
Having grown up in the Mormon church, in Utah, this kind of thing was a given. EVERY high school had a seminary on campus, separation of church and state be damned! Not surprised at all that the church was completely tone deaf as to why this was an issue and unconstitutional and tried to still ram rod their will in the community.
If they had done this, I would have written to these bigshots to request they add
1. A Jewish school
2. A school for worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
3. A school for Satanists
Fun fact: When you clip out and send in that ad in magazines for the free "Book of Mormon," it is NOT delivered in the mail. A Mormon "elder," often a 21-year-old kid, hand-delivers it, along with the conversion pitch.
You can always recognize them on the streets of cities: they look too dumb to be business people, and too well-dressed to be homeless people.
I also subscribed to you. New Zealand rules! (So does His Majesty, Charles III, by Grace of God, King of New Zealand and His Other Realms. I'm a fanatical monarchist)
The "Jews for Jesus" are the same way. They are a conversion arm of one of the large Baptist Churches.
They are actually banned from operating in Israel, under a law that nation has against "conversion under false pretenses."
I only know of one "Jew for Jesus," and he is the husband of a Playmate of the Month I admired (for obvious reasons). She had a blog for a while, called "Trophy Mom," about her adventures as a wife and mother, and her husband's alleged faith came up. The website is gone, and I don't feel like giving her name...obviously, she's living a more private life, and I respect that.
Honestly, it's probably for the better that there was no apology. It'd have been either of the "sorry we got caught" or "sorry you were offended" variety, anyhow.
The problem for me wasn't really that the Church was going to spend its billions to build a building for a public school and lease it part time, but it wasn't part-time. It was all day every day, so the school got no benefit from the deal. Even the "revenue" from the rent was pathetic. And I'm pretty sure I've made my not-so-humble opinion about "release time" clear. If the church was leasing it before and after the after school programs for its indoctrination-fests that would be one thing, but the school would have gotten no practical use out of it.
Rent a house a couple of blocks from campus for your bullshit, mormons.
This particular subset should fire their lawyers, not because they wanted to violate the constitutions, but because they failed to take into account people who respect separation of church abd state.
"And yet there was no public record of those talks before this deal was quickly proposed and approved"
French word du jour : backchich/dessous-de-table
"He said that he underestimated the public's concern."
Those pesky people who dare to ask him to uphold the law he has sworn to follow. Quel toupet !
In the US, the lack of public record may have been as big a state/local legal problem as the violation of the State's Blaine rule. Very often these boards are required by local law to hold most of their business in public (though I don't know the specific situation with this board in this county). So it's not just about underestimating public interest, it's the fact that if the board got sued for making the agreement, they'd have to explain to a judge why they've been violating the law for 13 years running.
Wonder if anyone's made a FOIA request...
If they haven't yet, they definitely should.
As the Klingons say: qa'meH quv
“Replacers of honor with dishonor.”
Yes, that's right. Arizona has a more stringent church/state separation Constitution than the federal document. One may ask, why does Arizona have a school voucher system, then? The answer is 'the camel's nose'. This group thought that the camel was almost in the tent, and they could get away with this. The Mormon church is in every part of our government here. Just look at the way the Mormon church is referred to, 3 times in that press release: "The Church". That is not them simply referring to 'A' church or the entity they are talking about as 𝑎𝑛𝑦 church; this is how people refer to the LDS. It is THE church. This push back makes my heart feel proud of my fellow Arizonans. But we clearly have a long way to go. The school voucher system has won in the courts despite the obvious constitutional conflict.
This was a terrible idea all the way around, and the elected officials who approved it should be removed from office. It is NEVER the job of our secular government to backstop anyone's religion, and rights are never matters of majority rule. Public schools are a sub division of government.
𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑡. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑘𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑡 𝑎 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦.
This is how you do it. Put the spotlight on it and show everyone how one group gets special treatment at the expense of everyone else. The constitutional violation only compounded things. It would still have been an egregious breach of the public trust if it had been a secular organization getting such a sweetheart deal, but adding the religious indoctrination, especially for a belief system that a significant portion of students do not share, made this beyond the pale. I just wonder how many Mor(m)ons were on the school board that called on their church leadership to halt the deal. The fact that they caved so quickly with the depth of their pockets leads me to believe that their local churc really needs to be investigated for other potentially illegal shenanigans. They appear to not want that kind of scrutiny.
Church/state separation goooood.
so goood!
Vail failed then bailed.
Hip-hip-hooray! Common sense prevails!
To say that this particular proposal for a Mormon school on public school grounds had numerous problems would be to indulge in obvious hyperbole. Take what should have been an obvious State / Church separation issue, add ridiculous property rent / lease conditions, plus the public outcry, and it's pretty clear that the local Mormon church was getting ready to walk into a buzz saw. Frankly it's way past time that secular issues like this were ruled in our favor, and equally past time that the LDS church understood that their penchant for overstepping State / Church boundaries has been tolerated too long.
That said, congrats to the Vail Unified School District. This is indeed a "critical win" and a well deserved one.
The school district backed the proposal.
A simple solution to a simple problem:
#1- Let the church buy their own damned property elsewhere. Then arrange, at their own damned expense, transportation for their kids.
OR
#2- Have moron, I mean, mormon families wake up their kids at some ungodly hour during predawn (say 3 AM) & take them to have their damned moron, I mean mormon, lessons before the kids get into their school bus.
OR, EVEN BETTER
#3- Quit religion. PRESTO!!! The whole problem of predawn religionite lessons, tired/sleepy kids, bad grades, school behavioral issues & complex expensive "seminary" building goes away!
Small wins.
I wonder if the Mormons have some other plan to get into the school. I feel like they gave up a little too quickly. Kind of like Loki in Avengers.
I think Mormons are against Plan B. /s
Why am I reminded of Austin Powers and the rocket ship bit. “OMG it’s a huge … Dick, there’s something on the radar, it looks like a big… hot dogs juicy hot dogs, what’s that up in the sky? Is it a giant…”
Of course, the billionaire rockets reminded me of that too.
Maybe it was just on my mind to begin with. I don’t know why Plan B made me think of it. I might just be off my rocker.
You're too young for a rocker.
Off your rocket. : )
Here in Utah, they just carve out that little piece of land on the school property, and the school district sells it to them cheap. Then they build their seminary and voila! They have easy access to the kids, and some seminary teachers even bring cupcakes and other incentives to get kids to not only attend, but to bring their non-Mormon friends.
Another church tried to buy that piece of land when it came up for sale about 15 years ago (I think?) I want to say it was the Summum church? Or Ammon? Anyway, it resulted in a huge lawsuit because the school district tried to accept the LDS Church's bid over the other, despite it being the lower offer. In the end, since the other church wouldn't drop the suit, the school district suddenly decided they weren't going to sell that land after all, and that they needed it for something else.
Seriously though, I hate it here. My teen's high school has the seminary building in the parking lot, although technically the entrance to *their* parking lot is from the street. It's literally surrounded by the school parking lot on 3 sides though, and apartments on the 4th.
There's an easy legal way to do this: buy/rent office space next to the school campus. Just as a perfectly normal business might. So yes they can easily get their released time seminary idea to work. The question is whether they are willing to pay market rate to do it.
OT - Almost everything over Bag End
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250423.html
Mouseover for labels.
Smaug's Egg
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250424.html
Don't let these Tolkien references become a Hobbit. :)
Oh, you shouldn't let that go Sour, man! 😁
Shire-ly you jest. :D
Sauce for the Gandalf.
Don't Rhûn this before it gets started.
Oeil ! Ça fait mal. Vous Sauron que je n'apprécie pas 😝
Punfests are too Precious to be stopped.
Ce commentaire n'est pas très bien Comté.
1) GS will brag as soon as he gets up.
2) https://youtu.be/_oNpmSAvpGQ?si=ztpzg7MnA4rpGN7t
https://youtu.be/eXwEMf26hmg?si=85TG3vywfnYdSPkg
Florida's own:
https://www.youtube.com/@sevenkingdoms
Good, because Mormonism is DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM!
A religion made up by a con man, while he was in jail, because he liked to bone teenage, (and younger) girls is required to be ridiculous.
What was Hubbard's excuse? AFAIK he wasn't into little girls (or boys)
Failed science fiction writer who made a bet.
Money.
youtu.be/RaRsv1xNT3A
All religions rot the mind and make people really stupid and gullible.
As I said before: All religions are the festering oozing pus filled boil on the ass of humanity; until humanity stops believing in deities that are going to solve/save humanity from the world’s problems, humanity will never progress.
Humanity can be very creative and innovative when it comes to solving the world’s problems if humanity can unite and willing to make great changes to our lifestyle and thinking.
B B B B B
Congrats to the parents and students who spent the time to make their positions known to the Superintendent and board, and saw results because of it.
If the Mormon church wants the (Mormon) kids to have easy access to their services during the school day, let them do it the exact same way a McDonald's or bookstore would and and buy and develop a property nearby.
Geez around my area, $100/month may not even cover the rental cost of one parking space, let alone four + building.
And what would have been the district's response when the RCC, the Baptists, the JWs. etc asked for their own building and parking spaces?
I asked my sister how much a temporary stall at the market cost for half a day.
My kid's middle school actually as a mixed use community center attached to it. Private organizations rent space in it....and when they do, their patrons can use the allocated parking to go there.
IOW there are plenty of easy and legal ways for the church to do this...if they simply avoid the corrupt sweetheart deal-making. Though we don't have a Blaine amendment, I don't think...for AZ that might complicate an otherwise simple rental agreement.
Asking them to avoid corrupt deal-making is a big ask. The corruption is baked into the religion: asking them to avoid corruption is like asking them to not breathe.
Well, they are on a mission from their god.
We've got to go visit the penguin.
👆🎯They didn't get to be the largest land owner in Florida by paying market price.
This actually makes the whole debacle soooooo funny. If the Mormons had a good PR guy they would've just sponsored a shiny new assembly building for the school to use with anyone. Legal because anyone can use it for anything; good PR because they're providing something also useful to the school. If people express discomfort, Mormons can more plausibly claim they're being treated differently......LDS Church hire me, I have more ideas, I'm only billing $750/hr. Call me.
A temporary stall at a market cost between 60 and 80 € (68,20 >...> 90,93 $) for a day, in an area not especially expensive.
Having grown up in the Mormon church, in Utah, this kind of thing was a given. EVERY high school had a seminary on campus, separation of church and state be damned! Not surprised at all that the church was completely tone deaf as to why this was an issue and unconstitutional and tried to still ram rod their will in the community.
If they had done this, I would have written to these bigshots to request they add
1. A Jewish school
2. A school for worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
3. A school for Satanists
Fun fact: When you clip out and send in that ad in magazines for the free "Book of Mormon," it is NOT delivered in the mail. A Mormon "elder," often a 21-year-old kid, hand-delivers it, along with the conversion pitch.
You can always recognize them on the streets of cities: they look too dumb to be business people, and too well-dressed to be homeless people.
They also apparently cheat a lot by pretending to try to convert people, while doing something else. I must say that evokes some admiration in me.
I also subscribed to you. New Zealand rules! (So does His Majesty, Charles III, by Grace of God, King of New Zealand and His Other Realms. I'm a fanatical monarchist)
The "Jews for Jesus" are the same way. They are a conversion arm of one of the large Baptist Churches.
They are actually banned from operating in Israel, under a law that nation has against "conversion under false pretenses."
I only know of one "Jew for Jesus," and he is the husband of a Playmate of the Month I admired (for obvious reasons). She had a blog for a while, called "Trophy Mom," about her adventures as a wife and mother, and her husband's alleged faith came up. The website is gone, and I don't feel like giving her name...obviously, she's living a more private life, and I respect that.
Honestly, it's probably for the better that there was no apology. It'd have been either of the "sorry we got caught" or "sorry you were offended" variety, anyhow.
The problem for me wasn't really that the Church was going to spend its billions to build a building for a public school and lease it part time, but it wasn't part-time. It was all day every day, so the school got no benefit from the deal. Even the "revenue" from the rent was pathetic. And I'm pretty sure I've made my not-so-humble opinion about "release time" clear. If the church was leasing it before and after the after school programs for its indoctrination-fests that would be one thing, but the school would have gotten no practical use out of it.
Rent a house a couple of blocks from campus for your bullshit, mormons.