Balance is restored . . .

. . . as the ACLU returns to form in Louisiana. That chapter has filed a federal complaint seeking to have school board officials held in criminal contempt because a substitute public address announcer said a two-sentence prayer before a high school baseball game. Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana ACLU, claims that the school officials "should be fined or go to jail 'for their calculated un-American and immoral conduct. . . ." The ACLU says that the school board's actions send "a message of religious intolerance," and that it is "protect[ing] religious liberty" by seeking to have the officials held in criminal contempt.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council stated that, "While our high school campuses have become virtual battle grounds, the ACLU has fixed its sights not on the perpetrators of violence but on those who would allow prayer. When the latest school shooting took place yesterday in Texas the students and dazed administrators didn't turn to the ACLU or the courts to be consoled but to local ministers who were summoned to the school to pray and counsel with the students."

We live in a topsy-turvy world if prayer can be called "immoral," and permitting prayer can be named a criminal action -- in the name of religious freedom.