WND EXCLUSIVE

WND AUTHOR TESTIFIES ON BEHALF OF SCHOOL-PRAYER BILL

'A road back to true liberty for Maryland and the nation'

In what may be one of the more startling about-faces within a single generation, William J. Murray, whose new book “Utopian Road to Hell” is published by WND Books, has testified in the Maryland State House on behalf of a bill that would allow voluntary prayer at school-sponsored student events.

“The removal of prayer from public places has hindered free speech in Maryland and the nation,” Murray read as part of his statement. “As President Thomas Jefferson believed, religious liberty is the first freedom. If expression of religious speech can be hindered, then any speech can be hindered and the same is true for press and assembly.”

The stunning change is because it was Murray’s mother, noted atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who led the charge in the early 1960s to get prayer and Bible reading banned from public schools.

In fact, O’Hair filed a lawsuit in 1960 on behalf of 14-year-old William that ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to decide compulsory prayer and Bible reading were unconstitutional. Murray wrote about his upbringing in his first book, “My Life Without God.”

Today, Murray is a Christian who chairs the Religious Freedom Coalition. He told WND he has testified before various state legislatures and the U.S. Congress many times throughout his life on a wide variety of subjects, so the experience was not new to him. He only regretted this particular hearing was not more combative.

“I wished it would have been a little more lively and we would have been able to perhaps generate something more out of it in order to have a little bit of controversy, but the opposition just wasn’t very controversial,” Murray said. “This was one of the least contentious hearings that I have ever been a part of.”

The bill in question, HB-0955, would require specified county boards of education “to allow nonsectarian student-initiated voluntary prayer during mandatory and voluntary school-sponsored student events,” as long as the prayers do not interfere with anyone’s religious freedom.

Delegate Ric Metzgar, R-Baltimore County, sponsored the bill.

“Basically what [Metzgar] was trying to do is to reinforce the existing Maryland Constitution,” Murray explained. “The existing Maryland Constitution does allow voluntary prayer to be led by individuals in public settings, but this is constantly violated by school districts, and this was an attempt by him to clarify and codify.”

Murray believes the Democratic leadership in the Maryland House of Delegates was comfortable enough with their majority that they didn’t feel the need to fight the bill tooth and nail. Currently, Democrats outnumber Republicans 91 to 50 in the House of Delegates. Murray added that Maryland is gerrymandered in such a way that it’s nearly impossible for Republicans to win a majority in the legislature.

“When a legislature is so lopsided like that, they tend not to fight things; they just tend to ignore them,” he said.

Murray said Metzgar called up four witnesses in favor of the bill, including Murray. The opposition only called one witness, an ACLU member who argued the bill was unnecessary. Murray said the hearing never became hostile because committee members who opposed the bill largely agreed with the ACLU witness that the bill was pointless.

However, Murray recounted that one delegate argued some people would be offended by this bill. The delegate expressed concern for people of “minority religions,” meaning non-Christian faiths. Murray told WND if he had been in Metzgar’s position, he would have responded, “What do you mean? Christians are a minority in Maryland.”

Since the Feb. 26 hearing at which Murray participated, no further action has been taken on the bill.

Here is the full text of Murray’s statement, as provided to WND:

“My name is William J. Murray and the original case to remove prayer from public schools in Maryland was filed in my name when I was a fourteen-year-old boy raised in a Marxist home in Baltimore, Maryland. The lawsuit was brought in Baltimore shortly after my family’s failed attempt to defect to our imagined utopian paradise – the Soviet Union – in the fall of 1960 which I detailed in my first book, ‘My Life Without God.’

“While the stated reason for the lawsuit was separation of church and state, my family believed public religion was an opiate used to suppress the proletariat from revolt. In addition, as do many on campuses today, my family held that we had the right ‘not to be offended,’ and that the public free speech of others should be suppressed so as not to offend our atheist and Marxist beliefs. Today this suppression of free speech on campuses is referred to as having a ‘safe zone’and anyone practicing free speech is guilty of ‘micro-aggression.’

“The removal of prayer from public places has hindered free speech in Maryland and the nation. As President Thomas Jefferson believed, religious liberty is the first freedom. If expression of religious speech can be hindered, then any speech can be hindered and the same is true for press and assembly.

“Any society that does not allow individuals to offend others does not have free speech and cannot call itself a free nation. If I am not allowed to offend anyone with my beliefs today, then I do not live in a free nation.

“Democracy is a process of picking leadership in an institution or nation; it is not a form of government unless mob rule is the goal. In theory a monarchy could have greater individual freedom than a democratically elected government. A couple being arrested for defending their Christian beliefs in public in a hotel lobby is an example of democracy without freedom. In my latest book, ‘Utopian Road to Hell,’ I use noted Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek’s term of ‘totalitarian democracy’ to define many of the attitudes toward true individual liberty in Western so-called democracies.

“A nation that operates as a sort of crony democratic state that defines some speech as free and some as forbidden is neither democratic nor free. A road back to true liberty for Maryland and the nation would be HB-0955 which would allow those who hold religious beliefs to once again practice them openly during public gatherings.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/03/wnd-author-testifies-on-behalf-of-school-prayer-bill/#0ShXhfFVgxfT8KgY.99

My comments: Christians will come to understand that the godless Hate Free Speech--As they Hate God and His Word--As they Hate America as Founded. The only speech they want is that which supports their godless, Socialist, Secular Humanist Religion, where Everyone does what is right in their own eyes as long as the STATE approves.