Continuing the separation debate today, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals -- once again -- struck down a Louisiana law explicitly designed to permit organized prayer in classrooms. A 1976 law allowed a "moment of silence," which invokes the same uncomfortable "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" questions of two days ago, it was amended in 1992 to explicitly allow "silent prayer," and again in 1999 to remove the word "silent." The law therefore explicitly allows students to pray out loud together in classrooms, something the legislature knew the courts would not allow.

Why kick it? CNN says:

The mother of a ninth-grader sued the Ouachita Parish School Board because students had made fun of her son and another boy who did not participate in prayer, calling them "atheist" and "devil worshipper."

Kids must go to school. Once there, kids must not be captive audiences to someone else's idea of the proper religion nor ostracized for their beliefs. It really, truly amazes me that so many people clamoring for more prayer and similar activities in public school classrooms have not stopped to think about how they'd feel if their kids were told in school that God wouldn't love them if they didn't keep kosher, or pray five times a day pointed to Mecca, or shave their heads every few months to eliminate the vanity the Buddha warned against.