The Judge RANTS!
Date: 22/05/11
Without A Prayer - Update
The graduation ceremony at Bastrop High duly took place on Friday night. Damon Fowler was there which, if nothing else, shows he's got more guts than most of those who have been scorning and threatening him.
And guess what? One of the graduating class stood up and prayed. And the school must have known she was going to do it.
Oh, and of course the fundy butterball in question started her law-breaking with the words:
"I respect the beliefs of other people, but..."
Yup, that old phony attempt at a get-out. You can not excuse your stupidity and hatred by claiming you are not what you then by your own words and deeds go on to prove that you are. Pathetic, truly pathetic.
And the 'moment of silence for reflection' which the school put in to try to edge away from having their asses sued from there to Albuquerque lasted all of four seconds.
There were more sinister elements to all this. First was this statement (published in the same woeful hack-rag that published the wretched article on the matter shortly before). It comes from school principal Stacey Pullen:
"Principal Stacey Pullen said earlier in the day that additional security officers were requested because of the outcry by atheists from across the country who sided with the student who filed the protest."
See what they all did there? Yep, they had to hire a goon squad to protect all those poor, oppressed fundies from one lone atheist. One supposes that it simply wouldn't have occurred to them to hire anyone to protect Damon Fowler from the fuckwits who had been scorning him and threatening him (which is something which the school should have felt itself obliged to do anyway, but obviously didn't).
The second sinister thing was that the school tried to rearrange the order in which the students went on stage to receive their diplomas so that Damon Fowler was the last student to go up. A letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation seems to have put paid to that nasty little piece of victimisation, but a million shames on the school authorities for even thinking of doing something so pathetically vindictive and puerile.
Add to this the fact that at the ceremony the school gave a special award for 'great service' to 'Mitzi' Quinn, the teacher who publicly trashed Damon Fowler in print earlier in the week, and you have a perfect storm of redneck ignorance and hate.
Damon Fowler is now on his way to live with his elder brother in Texas (and isn't it a measure of how royally fucked-up north-eastern Louisana must be that Texas is seen as liberal?), but not before his fundy asshat parents threw his belongings out onto the front porch and skipped town for 'a vacation'. So that's two sons they've permanently alienated. Well, it may give the fuckers kudos in the 'church of their choice', but the rest of the world will know them for exactly what they are. Cnuts.
Damon, you'll probably never read this, but you and your brother have shown yourselves to be more mature, more honest, more humane and more courageous than anyone else in the wretched buttscuttle town you had the misfortune to grow up in. I wish you strength and ease of conscience for the rest of your lives.
Update update: Given that Damon Fowler has been cut off from any possibility of his parents funding his college career, Hemant Mehta at The Friendly Atheist decided to start a fund to help the lad through the next stage of his education.
Within forty-eight hours it has raised over $11 000, and more money is going in all the time. To be scrupulously fair, some of that money (and moral support) has been donated by people who describe themselves as religious.
So the next time some bod-gotherer tells you that without 'faith' you have no morality and no empathy with others, and that godless commie-loving fag atheists are self-centered nihilists who have no generosity towards others (you know, like me), just point this out to them, would you? 
