I wonder if I’ll find a horse head in my blog in the morning.

I don’t like to disagree with Charlie Sykes ‚Äì AKA the “blogfather.”

(It makes me twitch.)

But I think he was a little off with his assessment of today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial about resident assistants at UW leading bible studies on the campus.

On the whole, viagra generic seek I agree with the conlusions of both Charlie and the Journal Sentinel: RAs should be able to lead bible studies on their own time.

Where I part ways with Mr. Sykes is when he lists the rights enumerated in the First Amendment and appends rights that are NOT protected:

There’s a right to free speech. There is no right not to be offended.
There is freedom of the press. There is no right not to hear or read ideas you don’t like.
There is a right to worship. There is no right not to be around people who worship.
There is a right of assembly. There is no right to feel coerced by the assembly of others.

I think Charlie gave short thrift to the the very beginning of the First Amendment where it says, buy viagra “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

It’s the one part of the amendment where a “no” right is mentioned.

I think that can be reasonably read as protecting a person’s right not to worship (and by extension a right not to be forced to be around people who are worshipping).

If the university (a government entity) had ordered its RAs to teach Christian bible groups, I think it would have been a violation of the establishment clause.

Because that was not the case, I believe there was no problem.

But I think Charlie was a little too forceful in his statement.

I’m off now to sleep with the fishes.

9 comments March 6th, 2006