Word: florey
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...number of aggressive atheists is small, probably no larger than the 65,000 claimed for Archatheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair's mailing list. The number of atheists willing to go to court about religion is smaller still. One of these is a South Dakota laborer named Roger Florey...
Imagine Atheist Florey's dismay, two years ago, when he walked into the holiday assembly program in the Hayward Elementary School in Sioux Falls, S. Dak., and found youngsters, including his kindergarten-age son Justin, giving out with O Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night. Then a teacher quizzed them on the religious theme. "They had just gone overboard," Florey recalls. The result is the first federal court test of whether performance of religious Christmas music, a perennial issue in many cities, should be banished from public schools on grounds of church-state separation...
...Florey decided to sue the Sioux Falls school board, but earlier this year a South Dakota federal judge rejected the Florey case, declaring that religious music and art have "become integrated into our national culture and heritage." The school board, meanwhile, had worked out a guideline policy, permitting the use of religious music, Jewish as well as Christian, in "a prudent and objective manner" in programs balancing religious and secular aspects of any holiday...
...Florey was not appeased. He took his case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, where it is awaiting judgment. But on the way to St. Louis the suit acquired a major new supporter. The American Civil Liberties Union, national Jewish organizations and the Unitarian Universalists were joined last June by Lawyer William P. Thompson, chief executive of the 2.6 million-member United Presbyterian Church and former president of the National Council of Churches. The Presbyterian brief seeks to banish the singing of Christmas music in public schools, not because it is too religious (Florey...
...approved by the high courts, Thompson's policy would further secularize American life. In Sioux Falls this Christmas, pending the forthcoming federal ruling from St. Louis, youngsters in some assemblies will be singing Christmas music as usual, perhaps for the last time. But for Justin Florey and his classmates it will be Suzy Snowflake and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town...