Home > Newsletter > July 2002

OTHER ISSUES BACK AT HOME

Among other issues the Religious Freedom Coalition continues to work on is school prayer. For almost a full year the RFC has been obtaining signed petitions to House Speaker Dennis Hastert asking him to put the School Prayer Amendment offered by Congressman Ernest Istook onto the floor for a vote. The Speaker has been hesitant to call for a vote on the School Prayer Amendment for fear of not having the votes, since most Democrats are against school prayer. Despite collecting tens of thousands of names, we have not been able to move Speaker Hastert on this issue.

We are now asking President George W. Bush to directly intervene and seek a vote on the School Prayer Amendment. We believe that the President has such popularity that he could convince many of the middle of the road Democrats to vote for the School Prayer Amendment.

To reach the President, we have set up an Internet petition. The petition is located at www.conservativepetitions.com along with other petitions by conservative organizations such as ours. I chose not to have the school prayer petition to the President located at our own Internet site because this location can better serve our needs! Tens of thousands of conservatives visit the site for other conservative petitions to lawmakers and then see ours, which they also sign.

The proof that this was the right place to put our petition came very early in June. Within forty-eight hours of having the petition displayed, we had more than 2,000 signers without one word of publicity! By mid June more than 15,000 had signed the School Prayer Petition to President Bush. The White House is receiving hundreds and sometimes thousands of e-mails each day asking the President to support a vote on the School Prayer Amendment.