Jack Kingston: “I was debating one of the school prayer debates that we have so often here in Washington with a gentleman named Barry…”

“I was debating one of the school prayer debates that we have so often here in Washington with a gentleman named Barry Lynn who allegedly is a preacher, but one of these preachers who has no church. He heads a group called Americans for Separation of the Church and State, not exactly a grass-roots organization; I think a top-down Washington elitist kind of organization, and he is against any form of school prayer. I said, okay, let us go to Columbine, a horrible tragedy, 12 kids are dead in Colorado. Should the kids in that school be allowed to pray for their fellow students who died? And he said, no. I said, well, should they be allowed to pray immediately when the attack was taking place? There was one group of kids who were clustered, I think, in the back of a biology lab with a teacher. At that moment, gun shots were going up and down the halls, people were screaming, everybody was terrified. Should they have been allowed to have a corporate prayer, that group of clustered kids together? And he said, no, absolutely not.”