{"id":2851,"date":"2009-10-03T11:40:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T19:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=2851"},"modified":"2009-10-03T12:38:05","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T20:38:05","slug":"hail-mary-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/hail-mary-pass\/","title":{"rendered":"Hail Mary Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If there\u2019s any tune likely to turn impressionable young minds away from God, it\u2019s the teeth-grindingly turgid <em>Ave Maria<\/em>. All the more reason therefore that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5gBIgFExJHsHlAUtLlRxrBLJhai3wD9AJDF880\" target=\"_blank\">this <\/a>story is so depressing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>SEATTLE \u2014 Barring an instrumental performance of a Christian hymn at a high school graduation did not violate students&#8217; First Amendment rights and was within the school superintendent&#8217;s discretion, a divided federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday\u2026The case arose a year after a choral performance of the song &#8220;Up Above My Head&#8221; at the 2005 commencement for Henry M. Jackson High School in Everett, 25 miles north of Seattle. The song, with references to God, angels and heaven, drew complaints and protest letters to The Herald, the town&#8217;s daily newspaper. Administrators raised red flags when wind ensemble seniors, who had played Franz Biebl&#8217;s uptempo 1964 rendering of &#8220;Ave Maria&#8221; without controversy at a winter concert, proposed a reprise at their graduation in 2006.School officials said the title alone identified &#8220;Ave Maria&#8221; \u2014 Hail Mary in Latin \u2014 as religious and that graduation should be strictly secular.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While I\u2019m always a touch skeptical about the extent to which the First Amendment should apply in a high school, it\u2019s a sad reflection of our ridiculous times that the school authorities should have acted in the way they did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If there\u2019s any tune likely to turn impressionable young minds away from God, it\u2019s the teeth-grindingly turgid Ave Maria. All the more reason therefore that this story is so depressing: SEATTLE \u2014 Barring an instrumental performance of a Christian hymn &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/hail-mary-pass\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2851"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2851"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2856,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2851\/revisions\/2856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}