There are actually a lot of deeply-closeted Bi people in places like Alabama (I used to run AIDS clinics - trust me, I know). And some among them project the most virulent anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Evilgelical Christianity creates no small amount of the personality disorders in the population. And there are significant numbers of Moslems and Jews. This puts a significant burden on the parents of the exposed children to explain why they are not second-class citizens.
They still believe in mind/body dualism. Since molestation happens to the body, and forced religion happens to the mind, they don't see a connection. They haven't learned that the mind is something a part of the body does.
Do we ALL agree? Clearly not, because the Republican party has gone all in on the idea that some people need to be 'put in their place' and some people deserve to be raised up based solely on their race, gender and belief in the supernatural.
Bullshit. That's exactly what he's trying to do. To suggest that frequently there are children who don't have the option to pray, or even be aware of what prayer is, in Alabama, is absurd.
When I was in music camp more than 60 years ago, they had Sunday services which the camp director claimed were non-denominational. Yes they were, if by non-denominational they referred to Jesus. I said I didn’t want to go because I was Jewish. They allowed me to skip it. No other kids stood up and said they didn’t want to go, even though there were other others Jewish kids there
In 2025-2026, Alabama consistently ranks in the bottom tier nationally for health and education, with U.S. News & World Report placing the state 45th overall. Education is ranked 44th, driven by low educational attainment. Health outcomes are also poor, with rankings of 40th to 47th, influenced by high rates of preventable deaths and low infant/maternal health rankings.
I'm not sure that's what's going through the minds of 15-year olds. However, what I would expect to go through their minds if something like this passes is "I just got out of 4 years of forced prayer...and you want me to come work for the people who did that? Hell no!"
Oh Alabama. I stoped at a restaurant in Alabama once while on a road trip to New Orleans. I had very short hair at the time and was with one of my girlfriends. The entire restaurant stopped talking and eating once we entered and had their eyes on us the entire time. For kicks when we got up to leave, my friend put her arm around me and we walked out heads held high.
I grew up in Alabama and 40 or so years ago a friend of mine’s grandmother told me a not-so-funny story. An older relative’s husband died fighting in the Civil War. He had been drafted into the Confederate army, was captured, and offered the opportunity to change sides and fight for the Union. Which he accepted because he was from northern Alabama (tail end of the Appalachian Mountains) and the Confederate Cause meant nothing to him. He just needed to feed his family and Union Army would pay him while the Confederates had forced him away from his farm and were doing nothing for them. He was killed and after the war his widow applied for and received a Union pension. She and her kids were ostracized by the rest of the family for accepting yankee money.
“A lot of these kids don’t understand what the flag is.”
“A lot of times, kids don’t have the option to pray and they don’t know what prayer means.”
This ass really doesn’t think much of children, does he. “Oh, kids don’t know anything about flags or prayer. We gotta make them genuflect for them to understand.” This also is an admission that the schools aren’t performing, since the flag is part of the curriculum and learning about prayers can be a part of the school experience when done in a secular manner. It’s even an admission that the churches are failing since they are the ones that are supposed to teach about prayer and if kids don’t know about it then the churches are the ones not doing their jobs. And if he’s upset that children aren’t going to church, well that’s just the marketplace of ideas making a statement. Forcing students to listen to prayers in public school isn’t going to make them want to go to church.
One wonders if civics is still being taught in Alabama schools, and one suspects that it isn't. This is been a problem for more years than I care to count, even in my home state of Ohio.
If Alabama school curricula cannot budget time for lessons in civics, I would love to know why.
I honestly take it as a good sign that this guy tried (and failed) to make it compulsory. That says to me that he has no confidence that local boards would choose to implement the prayer time. I know it's Alabama, but we just had that Texas data showing less than 1% of districts adopted the bible lesson crap their state legislators demanded. Maybe we see the same sort of thing happen here.
“While Republicans were quick to say during a committee hearing that both the Pledge and prayer were voluntary, they failed to mention how students would be coerced into participating.”
Even if students went into the halls or chose not to participate, how would they be able to avoid it? The pledge and prayers would most likely be done over the loudspeakers in the schools, rather than done separately in individual classrooms. The loudspeakers reach the entire building, every classroom, every hallway, even the bathrooms. Sure the kids can refuse to stand (ha, we know how that goes, we have plenty of examples of kids getting in trouble with the principal and even examples of physical brutality against students who don’t perform the necessary gestures) or bow their heads, but they still have to hear it no matter what. Sermons in church are all about listening to the religious gobbledygook so that you eventually believe the wild nonsense. Ingram even says the purpose of the bill is to make students hear prayer. There’s nothing constitutional about this, there’s no way to not participate.
These people who want forced prayers over the loudspeaker, saying you can just ignore them if you don't want to listen, are the same people who want books with even the slightest mention of sexuality removed because there's a chance somebody could read it without their parents knowledge.
Apart from the psychological effect it has on the believer, I do not think prayer ever altered the outcome of anything. This is all about getting kids used to rote conformity, and carving out a privileged place for Christians because as we all know, they are the most persecuted people in this country.
When you compare Bible study or Sunday school lessons with public education lessons you will see a huge disparity in the quality of the lessons. Bible study and Sunday school are more shallow focusing on memorization and surface understanding, and anything deeper is more structured with an emphasis on understanding the verses in exactly the way the church wants you to rather than any critical thinking. Public school curriculum spend a lot of time managing different learning styles, looking for deeper understandings of concepts, using scaffolding to build on past knowledge, showing why things are beyond God did it, and memorization is used as a tool only in situations that require it, not as the main source of knowledge. The questions are deeper, more complex and utilize the students’ thought processes than in Sunday schools.
The Christian nationalists are already pushing for Sunday school curriculum in public school classrooms, they start with pushing prayers, but they never stop there. They want rote conformity and they don’t hide their desires very well. That’s what this is. Pure and simple.
At this point, all of those organizations probably have a draft lawsuit tailored to this situation. All they have to do is insert the state name, print, and file.
Between FFRF and AU, I suspect they have seen more prayer-in-school proposals than either of us would care to count, to the point where the response could become boilerplate, perhaps with some tailoring. Also any feigned "We didn't know this was wrong" crap on behalf of Ingram or the bill's other supporters would be a load of horse manure, unless all of them have been living in a cave.
So ... more time and money wasted in court that could be used for far better purposes.
Once again, NatCs show us who the true child groomers are. And there isn't a single drag queen or LGBTQ among them.
"And there isn't a single" open, out of the closet, accepting of who they themselves are "drag queen or LGBTQ among them". Sorry, had to fix that.
There are actually a lot of deeply-closeted Bi people in places like Alabama (I used to run AIDS clinics - trust me, I know). And some among them project the most virulent anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Evilgelical Christianity creates no small amount of the personality disorders in the population. And there are significant numbers of Moslems and Jews. This puts a significant burden on the parents of the exposed children to explain why they are not second-class citizens.
Forcing religion on the most vulnerable. How is that not molestation?
They still believe in mind/body dualism. Since molestation happens to the body, and forced religion happens to the mind, they don't see a connection. They haven't learned that the mind is something a part of the body does.
So the mind bone is connected to the skull bone, skull bone is connected to neck bone, neck is connected to the back bone, and oh look at them bones!
There’s your anatomy lesson, kids.
It is bad when atheists, hindus, muslims and anyone not xian are doing it. Not when THEY does it. Duh.
Jesus said not to take oaths or pray in public, so naturally white Evangelicals insist kids do both every day.
“𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑠 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑑..."
Do we ALL agree? Clearly not, because the Republican party has gone all in on the idea that some people need to be 'put in their place' and some people deserve to be raised up based solely on their race, gender and belief in the supernatural.
Hell, they don't even recognize some people 𝘢𝘴 people, let alone that they should be equally welcome and accepted.
𝐼𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛.
“𝐼𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑒’𝑣𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠,” 𝐼𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑. “𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑛-𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑓 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑎 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦’𝑟𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑜 𝑏𝑦.”
There's the problem. Ingram thinks that all 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 schools are religious by default. As evidenced by this statement:
“𝑊𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑖𝑡,” 𝐼𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑. “𝐴 𝑚𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑠, 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝐼 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑡.”
Then there's this contradictory statement:
“𝐼’𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑟𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦’𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔,” 𝐼𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑. “𝐴 𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠, 𝑘𝑖𝑑𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠.”
Bullshit. That's exactly what he's trying to do. To suggest that frequently there are children who don't have the option to pray, or even be aware of what prayer is, in Alabama, is absurd.
When I was in music camp more than 60 years ago, they had Sunday services which the camp director claimed were non-denominational. Yes they were, if by non-denominational they referred to Jesus. I said I didn’t want to go because I was Jewish. They allowed me to skip it. No other kids stood up and said they didn’t want to go, even though there were other others Jewish kids there
"Conform or be cast out" - N. Peart
In 2025-2026, Alabama consistently ranks in the bottom tier nationally for health and education, with U.S. News & World Report placing the state 45th overall. Education is ranked 44th, driven by low educational attainment. Health outcomes are also poor, with rankings of 40th to 47th, influenced by high rates of preventable deaths and low infant/maternal health rankings.
“𝑂𝑢𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐺𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑑,” 𝐼𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑. “𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑦. 𝐴 𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑘𝑖𝑑𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑔 𝑖𝑠.”
Maybe these kids don't want to die in a far away place, stealing oil resources for a few oligarchs to help them getting even richer than they are now.
🎶And it's 1-2-3
What are we fightin' for?
Don't ask me I don't give a damn
Next stop is in Tehran 🎶
With apologies to the late Country Joe McDonald
Gimme an F...
Gimme a U...
I can't sing it, but speaking it rythmic is easy.
I'm not sure that's what's going through the minds of 15-year olds. However, what I would expect to go through their minds if something like this passes is "I just got out of 4 years of forced prayer...and you want me to come work for the people who did that? Hell no!"
Oh Alabama. I stoped at a restaurant in Alabama once while on a road trip to New Orleans. I had very short hair at the time and was with one of my girlfriends. The entire restaurant stopped talking and eating once we entered and had their eyes on us the entire time. For kicks when we got up to leave, my friend put her arm around me and we walked out heads held high.
In the words of Vinny "Bag O' Doughnuts" Gambini, "You're in Ala-fucking-bama"
Fly your flag HIGH, Linda!
😂 It took me s few minutes to realize they thought we were gay because I wasn’t used to being judged so harshly as a yankee.
The nerve of you! Having short hair like that! Harrumph harrumph!
Yes, very unladylike!
Honestly, yankee might have been the worser offense lol.
Probably, though I’m not sure how they would have known I was a yankee other than my short hair and futuristic clothing 😂
In Georgia a gas station attendant took my ID and said “What the hell you doin down here yankee” once…He didn’t laugh or smile after either.
I grew up in Alabama and 40 or so years ago a friend of mine’s grandmother told me a not-so-funny story. An older relative’s husband died fighting in the Civil War. He had been drafted into the Confederate army, was captured, and offered the opportunity to change sides and fight for the Union. Which he accepted because he was from northern Alabama (tail end of the Appalachian Mountains) and the Confederate Cause meant nothing to him. He just needed to feed his family and Union Army would pay him while the Confederates had forced him away from his farm and were doing nothing for them. He was killed and after the war his widow applied for and received a Union pension. She and her kids were ostracized by the rest of the family for accepting yankee money.
“A lot of these kids don’t understand what the flag is.”
“A lot of times, kids don’t have the option to pray and they don’t know what prayer means.”
This ass really doesn’t think much of children, does he. “Oh, kids don’t know anything about flags or prayer. We gotta make them genuflect for them to understand.” This also is an admission that the schools aren’t performing, since the flag is part of the curriculum and learning about prayers can be a part of the school experience when done in a secular manner. It’s even an admission that the churches are failing since they are the ones that are supposed to teach about prayer and if kids don’t know about it then the churches are the ones not doing their jobs. And if he’s upset that children aren’t going to church, well that’s just the marketplace of ideas making a statement. Forcing students to listen to prayers in public school isn’t going to make them want to go to church.
And Tommy doesn't know what day it is
He doesn't know who Jesus was or what praying is
How can he be saved
From the eternal grave?
"......picks his nose and smiles and pokes his tongue at everything."
I didn't realize that Tommy was from Alabama.
"who Jesus is" Agreed, his Jesus is no different than the one that works today in landscaping.
Praise Jesus!😆
One wonders if civics is still being taught in Alabama schools, and one suspects that it isn't. This is been a problem for more years than I care to count, even in my home state of Ohio.
If Alabama school curricula cannot budget time for lessons in civics, I would love to know why.
Because they’re too busy making Ten Commandments displays and forcing kids to pray all the time.
I honestly take it as a good sign that this guy tried (and failed) to make it compulsory. That says to me that he has no confidence that local boards would choose to implement the prayer time. I know it's Alabama, but we just had that Texas data showing less than 1% of districts adopted the bible lesson crap their state legislators demanded. Maybe we see the same sort of thing happen here.
“While Republicans were quick to say during a committee hearing that both the Pledge and prayer were voluntary, they failed to mention how students would be coerced into participating.”
Even if students went into the halls or chose not to participate, how would they be able to avoid it? The pledge and prayers would most likely be done over the loudspeakers in the schools, rather than done separately in individual classrooms. The loudspeakers reach the entire building, every classroom, every hallway, even the bathrooms. Sure the kids can refuse to stand (ha, we know how that goes, we have plenty of examples of kids getting in trouble with the principal and even examples of physical brutality against students who don’t perform the necessary gestures) or bow their heads, but they still have to hear it no matter what. Sermons in church are all about listening to the religious gobbledygook so that you eventually believe the wild nonsense. Ingram even says the purpose of the bill is to make students hear prayer. There’s nothing constitutional about this, there’s no way to not participate.
The only way for a student to not participate is if that student is hearing impaired and turns off their hearing aids during the prayer.
Ahh, there are advantages to that particular malady.
These people who want forced prayers over the loudspeaker, saying you can just ignore them if you don't want to listen, are the same people who want books with even the slightest mention of sexuality removed because there's a chance somebody could read it without their parents knowledge.
Apart from the psychological effect it has on the believer, I do not think prayer ever altered the outcome of anything. This is all about getting kids used to rote conformity, and carving out a privileged place for Christians because as we all know, they are the most persecuted people in this country.
When you compare Bible study or Sunday school lessons with public education lessons you will see a huge disparity in the quality of the lessons. Bible study and Sunday school are more shallow focusing on memorization and surface understanding, and anything deeper is more structured with an emphasis on understanding the verses in exactly the way the church wants you to rather than any critical thinking. Public school curriculum spend a lot of time managing different learning styles, looking for deeper understandings of concepts, using scaffolding to build on past knowledge, showing why things are beyond God did it, and memorization is used as a tool only in situations that require it, not as the main source of knowledge. The questions are deeper, more complex and utilize the students’ thought processes than in Sunday schools.
The Christian nationalists are already pushing for Sunday school curriculum in public school classrooms, they start with pushing prayers, but they never stop there. They want rote conformity and they don’t hide their desires very well. That’s what this is. Pure and simple.
Now Oraxx, when I was a Theist, prayer helped me find my keys every time!
So, religion. Yup.
Hope FFRF, AU and others have already gotten wind of this misbegotten, blatantly unconstitutional bill and have popped their claws ala Wolverine.
*SNIKT!*
At this point, all of those organizations probably have a draft lawsuit tailored to this situation. All they have to do is insert the state name, print, and file.
Between FFRF and AU, I suspect they have seen more prayer-in-school proposals than either of us would care to count, to the point where the response could become boilerplate, perhaps with some tailoring. Also any feigned "We didn't know this was wrong" crap on behalf of Ingram or the bill's other supporters would be a load of horse manure, unless all of them have been living in a cave.
So ... more time and money wasted in court that could be used for far better purposes.
"what prayer means.” - Trying to get an all knowing (and imaginary) god to change its mind.
I seriously doubt that the Southern Baptists in Alabama foisting this silly law on schools would want me to lead that morning prayer.
It could sound an awful lot like the opening Surah of the Qur’an.
In ARABIC.
Because I’ve done just that in places where I volunteered to “lead” prayer, among strongly evangelical groups.
(Sometimes I recite the Wiccan Rede.)
I've never had the opportunity but I damn sure would be tempted.
For us Western English speakers, Arabic is HARD to pronounce.
I thought their evangelical heads would explode when I recited the Wiccan Rede!
I wonder if he agrees with Congressman Ogles that Muslims have no place in American society.
I absolutely would not put it past him.
Can't have people in USA that don't believe in Ogles idea of the Constitution. Get rid of the no religion rule. Right?
Diversity might as well be kryptonite to that schmuck.
One can but only hope.