[Issaquah] Resident asks school board to remove Pledge of Allegiance from meetings

The Issaquah School Board may consider eliminating the Pledge of Allegiance at its regular business meetings.

At their Dec. 9 meeting, school board members were asked to eliminate the pledge from their meetings by parent Matthew Barry.

“The words ‘under God’ in the pledge are offensive to your atheist residents in this school district,” Barry said at the meeting. “A study from last year, The American Religious Identification Survey, indicates that 15 percent of Americans aren’t religious. In Washington, which is one of the most nonreligious states, 25 percent aren’t religious. So, I think it is safe to assume there are atheist taxpayers, parents, students and maybe even a few teachers in this school district.”

School board members couldn’t take action or discuss the item since it wasn’t on their regular meeting agenda, but they said they would take the item under consideration for a future agenda topic.

“It is inappropriate for the school board to ask atheists to stand and proclaim they are ‘under God,’” said Barry, a self-proclaimed atheist. “Atheists don’t believe in gods, so they certainly don’t think they or the nation are under a god.”

Barry said other residents with different religious beliefs might also find the pledge offensive.

“If the school board were asking Jews, Hindus and other non-Christians to stand and proclaim that Jesus Christ is the messiah, I’m pretty sure we’d all agree that’s inappropriate,” he said.

“It’s none of the government’s business what our private religious beliefs are, if any, and certainly none of the government’s business to ask us to stand and publicly proclaim what those beliefs are,” he added. “Most would agree it’s even worse if the government asks someone to stand and say something that contradicts their belief system.”

“If I understand his logic correctly, simply because something is offensive and unnecessary, it should be removed,” said Jared Spataro, a parent and Boy Scout Leader whose Scouts presented the colors that night. “I’m very proud to see us stand up and very proud to see my Scouts lead us in the pledge tonight and talk about God.

“We don’t necessarily say that everyone needs to believe in the same God, I think he referenced Jews and Hindus and others, but we do teach our boys, especially in the Scout program, that belief in a higher authority is important as an aspect of our community, and as an aspect of who we become in the community and how we contribute there.”

Barry said he wouldn’t have a problem with board members asking meeting participants to cite the original version of the Pledge of Allegiance, which didn’t include the words “under God” and was recited from 1892-1954. The words “under God” were added in 1954, Barry said.

Right now, schools within the state are required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and hold flag salute exercises at the beginning of each school day under the state’s revised code No. 28A.230.140.

However, the law recognizes that students can’t be forced to participate: “Students not reciting the pledge shall maintain a respectful silence.”

School districts aren’t required to recite the pledge for school board meetings. In fact, the Lake Washington School District doesn’t require the pledge at board meetings, Barry said.

Since the pledge is irrelevant to the board’s work and is offensive, even if it is voluntary, it should be eliminated from the board meetings, he added.

“I understand many things we do are offensive to people,” Spataro added. “But just because a small group of people, or even a large group of people, are offended it doesn’t mean they are right.”

>> “The words ‘under God’ in the pledge are offensive to your atheist residents in this school district,” Barry said at the meeting. “A study from last year, The American Religious Identification Survey, indicates that 15 percent of Americans aren’t religious. In Washington, which is one of the most nonreligious states, 25 percent aren’t religious. So, I think it is safe to assume there are atheist taxpayers, parents, students and maybe even a few teachers in this school district.”

Oh barf... <<

Here is what I would tell this jerk:

I though Socialist craps like this atheist jerk LOVE Majority Mob Rule, Guess what, you sniveling asshat atheist 25% is less than 75%. Majority rules, Under God stays until Atheists make up 51% of the population. Sit and rotate on it. Oh and maybe pick a Math book because you have no concept what are!

Until the pledge is restored to its inclusive pre-1954 verbiage, I would like to see the Issaquah School District remove the pledge from any school activities including board meetings and classroom recitation. The pledge of allegiance is an oath of loyalty to the United States of America, a country. It is NOT an oath of allegiance to any god or religion. The words “under God” were added to the pledge during the McCarthy era when people were freaked out about communism and adding the words “under God” was considered a method to distinguish the US from the “commie-lovers” in Russia. Those two words should never have been added to the pledge.

A pledge of loyalty to one’s country should be inclusive to everyone living in that country. There are many in the United States who do not believe in the existence of a god. Asking them to acknowledge the existence of a god as a prerequisite to pledging loyalty to their country is highly inappropriate.

Welcome to FR.

The words “under God” were added to the pledge during the McCarthy era when people were freaked out about communism and adding the words “under God” was considered a method to distinguish the US from the “commie-lovers” in Russia. Those two words should never have been added to the pledge.

Ah, so you've fallen for the usual "Shooting the Fifties in a Barrel/Red Scare" leftspew. This trope would have us believe that America was going along as a utopia of "inclusiveness" where atheists ran as free as the wild mustang, were as popular as John Wayne and regarded as Yankee Doodle Dandy paragons of patriotism. But then the eeeeeeeeeeeeevil Joe McCarthy strode onto the scene and persecuted them, and ever since we have forgotten our atheist-loving heritage, and also tend to buy shopping carts filled with butter and smoke pipes, or something like that.

Horse hockey!

Though I'm sure the rise of the Cold War had a part to play in this, the bottom line is that the pledge was changed because a country where everyone had universally accepted the idea that we are a nation that owes allegiance to God was seeing rejection of God and a push for secularization. Fear was not the motivator, but a desire to remind people what the Founders had put in place.

Oh, and BTW..."freaked out" about Communism? Yeah, gee, why would anybody worry about a system whose flagship nation was building a large nuclear arsenal and huge conventional army and air force and had slaughtered tens of millions of innocent people within its own borders in a few short decades? And if a couple of years after the pledge was changed the commander-in-chief of that large new nuclear arsenal was pledging to bury us? No problem there....guess people were just uptight because they weren't having enough sex.

A pledge of loyalty to one’s country should be inclusive to everyone living in that country.

A pledge of loyalty to a country should be a pledge to the purpose for which that country was founded. Multiculti shinola is not what a loyalty pledge is about.

There are many in the United States who do not believe in the existence of a god.

Yes, and therefore they live in a country where the first President spent a portion of his farewell address warning the people that morality could not be separated from religion, and neither could be separated from good government. A country where the third President, a Deist, gave money right out of the Treasury to Christian missionaries with Congressional approval. A country whose sixteenth President called it a nation "under God," a country whose Civil War was described by that same President in his Second Inaugural Address as an obvious judgment from God for mistreatment of humans He had created.

There is nothing in our national character or practice that will, or should, hold you back from believing there is no God or gods, from believing something "by reason" that would require omniscience, but to expect the rest of us to dance to that tune is to expect us to deny the national character in a profound fingers-in-ears-LA-LA-LA-I-CAN'T-HEAR-YOU fashion. It would be like being an Israeli citizen and expecting people to pretend there's no connection between Israel and Judaism. It would be like being born an Englishman and expecting to ban tea, or a native Frenchman campaigning to ban wine.

Asking them to acknowledge the existence of a god as a prerequisite to pledging loyalty to their country is highly inappropriate.

So is expecting you to spend money marked "In God We Trust," I suppose. Mount a protest...refuse to take any more of that tainted cash. Show us the moral superiority of your ways.

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