Meditation: Will Florida Protect the Lives and Speech of Christians?

Muslims who convert from Islam to Christianity face a death sentence under Shari'ah law, and one young convert, a seventeen-year-old woman, Rifqa Bary, is pleading for her life in Florida. A Florida judge has allowed her to stay in protective custody until September 3, when a Court will hear her case.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Florida, Santa Rosa County prevented another young woman, the Pace High School class president, from addressing her high school graduation class because officials feared she might mention her Christian faith.

In other words, the school system profiled this student as a Christian and preemptively suppressed her freedom of speech based on her religion.

It's hard to imagine that the school system would have felt comfortable providing such a public display of discrimination based on any other distinguishing characteristic. Try to imagine a school worrying that a student might discuss the influence of his Kenyan father, the grandparents who raised him, or his early years in Indonesia, for example. Yet, the possibility that a student might mention the influence on her life of exposure to Christianity is so horrifying that this was the first time any Pace student has been prevented from addressing classmates at graduation ceremonies in 30 years.

At the graduation, a number of graduating students stood in solidarity with fellow student and, in unison, recited the Lord's Prayer. The ACLU was appalled.

According to the ACLU, religious freedom is guaranteed only if your beliefs are "silently held"?

In other words, Christians, Shut up! The rest of us have important things to say.

For example, the president of the United States might want to give a speech explaining and praising some of the religious tenets of Islam.

Some of us still remember this little piece of American history called the First Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Start petitioning! Give Florida Governor Charlie Crist a call at (850) 488-7146 or send him a fax at (850) 487-0801, or an email at Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com

It's more than we can do for Maryam and Marzieh, two young Iranian women facing the death sentence in Iran for converting from Islam to Christianity.

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