It’s not really about prayer

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday about a case from the small upstate New York town of Greece – where the town has a tradition of opening its town meetings with a prayer. But the prayers tended to be from Christian pastors.

So two residents of Greece brought suit.

Linda Stephens is an atheist, “For years and years and years, the town of Greece had a moment of silence and suddenly, the new supervisor changed all that for the worst.”

Susan Galloway is Jewish, “As a citizen, I felt I was different.”

And I think a lot of us see this case and we think to ourselves, we still haven’t solved this?

Because if you’re an American that’s 60 or older, you’ve been hearing about the public prayer issue since you were in grade school.

But if you listen closely, this isn’t about people praying in public. “Susan and I both got threatening letters telling us to stay away from town board meetings if we did not like what was going on there – to move out of the town of Greece if we didn’t like it,” said Stephens.

This is about people praying in public and being jerks about it.

The answer to the public religion debate is pretty simple. If someone comes up and says, ‘hey, could we say my prayer today,’ or ‘hey, I’m an atheist, could we maybe just have a minute of silence or no prayer today’ – just do it!

And if someone says, ‘hey, could you not send the threatening letters just because I didn’t stand up for your prayer’ – a reasonable person would stop sending the threatening letters on account of it’s 2013, not 1692.