Idaho’s moment of silence mandate is all about forced prayer | Opinion

Idaho’s Republican lawmakers are pushing through a bill that would require teachers in all public school classrooms implement a minimum of 60 seconds of silence every morning.

Make no mistake, this is all about forced prayer.

How do we know?

Among those who are pushing for these laws across the country are religious groups that advocate for prayer in schools.

Gateways To Better Education, which also advocates for teaching the Bible in state academic standards, keeps a list of states that have instituted such “moment of silence” (wink, wink) laws.

Gateways To Better Education even offers prayer cards for students to use during moments of silence.

Surprisingly, 34 other states already have moments of silence in schools, which Gateways proudly touts.

“Millions of public school students can begin their day with an opening prayer in the classroom,” Gateways writes on its website. “Shocking, isn’t it? It’s called a moment of silence, and thirty-four states allow it (and some mandate it).”

One state, Indiana, makes it clear that this is all about religion: “the right of each student to the free exercise of religion is guaranteed within the schools,” according to its law.

Of course it is. It’s called the First Amendment.

Any student, any teacher, any staff member of any school at any time can already take a moment of silence and pray to their heart’s content. The Legislature isn’t solving any problem here.

This is another example of unfounded claims of persecution that we see too often particularly among the Christian nationalists.

And of course, in true Idaho Legislature fashion, the law mandates every district do it, whether they want to or not, disregarding local control yet again.

We also find disingenuous the argument by supporters that the bill could save lives.

“If there is one chance in hell that we save one life by doing something like this that’s absolutely harmless, I’m all for it,” Sen. Christy Zito, R-Mountain Home, said.

Please.

How many times have legislators like Zito heard from people who warn that a law would harm lives and then simply dismissed them?

Take, for example, debate over the so-called Parents’ Rights in Medical Decision-Making Act. Legislators were told that, if passed, it would get in the way of providing care for children and that it could cost lives. Those concerns were dismissed, even when legislators like Rep. Marco Erickson, R-Idaho Falls, a youth organization director, knew they were true — but still voted for the harmful bill anyway.

And it turned out that those concerns were founded, limiting the care, for example, that school nurses can provide to students or even emergency room doctors can provide to a pregnant teenager who appeared to be going into labor.

The suicide hotline has been affected because it can’t provide help for children not in imminent crisis without a parent’s consent.

Take the concerns of doctors and pregnant women over Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which has put women’s lives in danger out of fear of prosecution for performing a needed abortion to preserve the health of the mother.

Legislators have dismissed these repeated concerns, so forgive us if we don’t buy the concern for saving lives now.

The people who should be most affronted by this bill are people of faith, who already go to church each week and pray regularly. They don’t need the state government to force a moment of silence at school.

And let’s not forget about the students who don’t pray and how they might feel in a classroom where the majority do.

Keep your moments of silence in your homes and your churches; don’t force it upon others.

Here’s what we propose, instead: a very long, 10-month moment of silence for the Idaho Legislature.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, assistant editor Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.