Recently, I received FW:FW:FW: that was attributed to Paul Harvey, the essence of which is: in a country where there is freedom of religion, people of faith should be granted the time to pray without any legal repercussions. The story behind it is that someone was offended by a 30-second prayer and sued.
I appreciate and support the general sentiment that freedom of religion should be just that, and I am not offended if any faith wants to pray (or not).
From a practical perspective, how should we handle prayers at the start of a game if there are representatives of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths together with Atheists. Should each be allowed 30s of devotional time? Should they pray or whatever simultaneously?
From a legal perspective, I think that distributing a document that was written (predominantly) by someone (Nick Gholson, Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas, September 1999) and attributing that text to someone else (Paul Harvey), may raise issues of plagiarism. Other copyright infringement issues would be related to the general reprinting and distribution without permission. (see http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/prayer.asp for my source)
Also, I don't like FW:FW:FW: chain letters so I try and complain and set the sender on the path to what is Truth, Fairness, Befriendment and Beneficence.
Faithfully yours,
Stephen
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