Oh, hallelujah. School prayer is back in the spotlight. And who's surprised? It's one of those nauseating, repetitive issues like flag burning--one of those issues that the right wing keeps bringing up again and again, like so much regurgitated food.

This time, some geeks got nailed for praying at high school football games. All together, now--let's wring our hands for the poor little shits. Wise up, people. These teenage rodents are more concerned with their zits than their Constitutional rights. They're pushing the school prayer issue because it gets them attention. And the more attention people lavish on these sanctified runts, the more they'll keep right on doing their one-trick pony act. They'll milk it for all it's worth, until it's obvious that nobody cares anymore. Then they'll crawl back into their trailers and be justifiably forgotten again.

On the other hand, perhaps these "people" really should be praying before school athletic events. Perhaps they should be asking God Almighty to reveal a great mystery to mankind--like why so much public school funding is being dumped into meaningless crap like football, instead of into actual education. Perhaps they should ask the Good Lord why any sane adult would be attending a high school football game in the first place, or why a prayer is even remotely needed at an athletic event:

"O God, Thou almighty and omnipotent Creator of the Universe, Thou divine Alpha and Omega, Thou Divine Presence who is served by vast legions of angels and archangels, please see to it immediately that the Mighty Fighting Snotwads win the homecoming game. We know it's so terribly important to You. And if the other team wins, we'll act like three-year-olds and whine about it all year long. Amen."

Allow me to inject a brief personal note here. In my youth, I was adopted by an extremely religious Christian family--a family that NEVER prayed in public. Not at football games, restaurants or anywhere else. Would you like to know why?

Because it's against the Bible.

Not as if two out a thousand Christians have ever actually bothered to read it.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
--Matthew 6: 5-6.

See? These school prayer advocates don't even read their own Scripture. But they sure do love jamming it down your throat when it happens to be convenient to their agenda.

This Biblical passage also effectively shuts down all those freaks who make a big show out of praying in public restaurants. Doubtless, you've seen these clowns. You know, the ones with eight filthy kids who just have to make a carnival sideshow out of praying over those unsanctified Denney's cheeseburgers. These people claim that they're doing all of this for their kids (as if they had any business breeding in the first place). These people are doing something for their kids, all right--they're making them look like complete raving geeks. They're also making them look like illiterate morons who can't even follow the simplest of Biblical mandates.

At any rate, back to the school prayer issue. If anyone ever bothers telling these prayer-happy ninnies that it's a spiritual atrocity to drag their god's name through the mud by blasting it through loudspeakers at a public football game, watch them start crying like pre-schoolers. And have you ever heard one of those football prayers? They contain all the spirituality of pigs screwing in the mud. Truthfully, the prayer is usually the point in the game when most folks go wandering down to the concession stand to order a hot dog. And the presence of God will be more embodied in the aforementioned hot dog than in one of those mealy-mouthed, half-assed prayers. These poor praying creatures think they're going to impress God by boring the ass off of Him. If I were God, I'd smite the little bastards for failing to even once say anything remotely interesting.

Even the tiniest criticism of the school prayer crowd will be treated as a heinous offense. They'll turn into paranoid, whining freaks at the drop of a hat. Watch how fast they shift from being mighty soldiers of the Lord to being instant victims. It just slays me when the mainstream Christian crowd tries to paint itself as some kind of tiny, cowering little victim. They've got millions of followers. Literally. No joke, there are MILLIONS of Christians. Hell, there are millions of Baptists--just to name one single denomination alone. And we're all aware that nice, upstanding Christians, like VISA cards, are accepted everywhere they go. They are the mainstream. They are the standard of so-called "normalcy". Yet, they bleat on about how they're sooooo abused by the "liberal media" (nice fairy tale, that one--I WISH the media were liberal). Poor little hand-wringing things. They're so maligned. Yeah, they're victims, all right. And if you don't give in to their demands right fucking NOW, they'll come out of the woodwork like flesh-gnawing termites. They want their rights, but they'll be the first ones to fuck yours over--because to them, of course, you don't have any.

School prayer enthusiasts keep insisting that America would be so much better off if we just had prayer in the public school system. Yeah, right. Doubtless, this country will really be missing something noteworthy if some yammering, dumpy, pasty-faced little nerd can't mumble a bogus half-assed prayer at a football game. And people want to portray these sanctimonious, praying school kids as victims, instead of what they really are--dupes being manipulated by single-agenda adults (who should damn well be ashamed of themselves). You can just bet that various adults are pulling the strings in the background. They're pulling the strings, just as sure as the Lord made scorpions.

What cracks me up is the obvious bullshit that these school prayer gurus have been spouting lately about how they support equal-opportunity prayer at athletic events.

Well, here's an open invitation: if any public school administration in America will invite me over to lead a Satanic prayer before a football game, I'll do it. Until then, they can shut their fucking mouths. They no more believe in true religious freedom than I believe in accepting Kermit the Frog as my personal Lord and Saviour.

Listen, nobody's telling these people not to pray. They're just being asked not to impose their prayers upon others in a public state-funded forum. If the law of the land didn't suggest this as proper protocol, then the laws of good taste should. The only step lower than praying at a public sporting event is to scrawl the holy name of God on a shithouse wall. It's that public and vulgar.

Then again, maybe these two-ton hypocrites are so shallow that their spirituality can be summed up on T-shirts, bumperstickers and in canned one-minute prayers. And of course, these goody-two-shoes religious sentiments have to be made as public as possible, so that folks can feel good about themselves. They can beat their kids, scream at their spouses and screw people over on the job, but by God, they're good Christians, because they bowed their head in public during a brief, mumbled prayer.

School prayer is in the news again. And it'll keep coming back, like a monster that just won't die. This geek show will roll on year after year, as people insist upon displaying their cartoonish religious beliefs like some cheap and tacky bumpersticker. And you can bet that the most blatantly public of these folks--the ones hustling God and school prayer on the talk-show circuit--are likely not doing it out of the slightest bit of religious concern, but to simply get their name in the press. They've never succeeded at anything in their pathetic lives, but now, they can bask in the glory of press coverage. Even if it's minimal coverage, that's enough for these glory-hounds. Most of them have probably never had a single honest motive in their God-forsaken life.

Anyhow, one thing's for certain: those of us who want to put an end to this ridiculous and never-ending issue haven't got a prayer.