Danny Reneau, Publisher
Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 4:44 pm

My daughter-in-law, who is an attorney and has a lot of family connections to the Palestine area, recently sent me a copy of an article that appeared in the Palestine Herald-Press. I must give this disclaimer for those who are unaware – I was born in Palestine. I guess my roots are there but I can't remember anything about the place.

My folks moved away when I was about three or so.

The article written by Gary Connor states:

In a small town in East Texas, an atheist filed a case against East and Passover Holy days. He hired an attorney from up North to bring a discrimination case against Christians and Jews and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.

The case was brought before a judge, a lifelong resident of East Texas. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, “Case dismissed!”

The lawyer immediately stood and objecting to the ruling said, “Your honor! How can you possibly dismiss this case?” The Christians have Christmas, Easter and other religious holidays.

“The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and other atheists have no such holidays,” the attorney argued.

The judge leaned forward in his chair and slowly said, “But you do: your client, counselor is woefully ignorant.”

The lawyer said, “Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists.”

The judge said, “Psalms 14:1 states, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”

“This, it is the opinion of this court, that, if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool.”

“Therefore, April 1st is his holiday. Court adjourned.”

You gotta love an East Texas judge who knows his scripture.

I will not attempt to attest to the correctness of this article but it appeared in the Palestine Herald-Press in mid October.

I thought the article was appropriate in light of the recent stories about the Kountze cheerleaders.

I have to defend school administrators, and school boards who have to make decisions that are sometimes unpopular concerning prayer in school, and religious activities by students.

I appreciate the prayers at football games, and prayers by students. I also realize that school administrators are tasked with operating schools in a fashion that gets the most out of the dollars they have for education and they don't want to use that money to fight legal cases that are brought against them.

 I don't doubt for a minute that the Kountze school board and administrators may have agreed that it was alright and may have even supported the religious activiites of their students, but they had to take the advice of their attorneys and avoid as many legal hassles as possible.

Thank goodness the discussion in Kountze concerned who could put Bible verses on a fence and not a different kind of controversial scene.