permission is neither establishment nor endorsement

Available for one group MUST mean available for all.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Another Library and Religion Case:

These keep cropping up around the country and I can't help but wonder who is giving the legal advice. A library in Ohio had a policy allowing their meeting rooms to be used by community groups and non-profits, but not allowing them to be used by any religious group. A federal judge has, yet again, ruled that this is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. And it is.

At some point, the attorneys who advise these government agencies need to be held accountable for their advice. This is not even remotely controversial as a matter of law. The Supreme Court ruling in Lamb's Chapel was unanimous, for crying out loud, and it would still be unanimous if the case was heard today. If a government building is available for use by outside groups, that has to include religious groups. Why that is so difficult for so many schools and libraries and other agencies is beyond me.

It's not just libraries. It's been happening with schools and school systems as well that keep thinking they can't make their rooms available for religious activity, or worse still, will permit Christians yet go out of their way to make draconian rules to keep Muslim, Jewish, and Wiccan groups out.

Worse still is the viewpoint discrimination shown against the students when they'll permit after-school prayer groups but won't permit GSA clubs.

Worst of all is when they'll not permit ANY after-school clubs, including prayer groups, simply because they don't want to have to permit GSA clubs.  To "hate gays" so much as to not permit ANY student activities shows such an insane repression of free thought as to make you wonder why they call themselves "educators".  Indoctrinators, more like.

BTW, they lose every single one of these cases, the precedent so clearly defined, often at the costs of thousands of tax dollars, but it continues over and over again.  As Ed writes, who the hell is advising them on their legal responsibilities.

Or are they so stupid (Dover, PA, anyone?) as to totally ignore the advice of their lawyers...

QotD

Uncertain Principles: Olympic Comments:

In the end, judged sports are rubbish. This is also why I don't like college football.

The Decathlon as example of respect for generalization

Uncertain Principles: Olympic Comments:

I had similar thoughts about the decathlon, but it seems like they are just really good at all ten events, not really really good, or some of them would also be medaling in all ten of the individual events, and some track and field person would have 10 individual golds and would have Phelps beat in the count. I know nothing about the sport, but I suspect the decathletes get beat in the individual events, which they are really good at, by specialists who are really really good at them.

So is it better to be really good at ten things, or really really good at two? Who knows?

That's been a debate in American education for decades. See the story "The Animal School" (lots of variations out there) for a metaphorical view about what happens when all students are forced to show competence at all skills and how they gain mastery in none, including the one they know they're naturally talented at.

In "real life", I find there's still a lack of respect for the "good at all, but best at none" children, including myself as I was growing up, in the educational system.

In athletics? In the general climate, probably not, 'cause you don't get any attention unless, like Bruce Jenner, you win.

As a role-model source, however, I would like the decathlon to have more coverage and respect for the achievement, for showing growing children that one doesn't need to specialize too early or too absolutely, in contrast with the NBC athlete profiles, and in *sharp* contrast with athletics and sports in China and the way the Soviets used to do it.

Not being "the best" at anything can be one hell of an esteem killer if one is not shown how successful and fulfilling a broad, "renaissance man" life can be. The decathlon can be a good example of that in sports terms that kids might be able to relate to.

when pragmatism trumps aesthetics...

Agent Smith? No! Agent Sagan!

At 33, and a mother, she wins silver in *gymnastics*, and her story runs deeper still...

2008 Beijing Summer Olympics | Oksana Chusovitina, Interview Questions | NBC Olympics. A fascinating interview with the 33 year old Women's vault silver medalist, a former Soviet now competing for Germany (and she explains why...).