John Danforth: “I would be happy to stop short of riot, and I will posit another situation short of a riot. Let us suppose a community…”

“I would be happy to stop short of riot, and I will posit another situation short of a riot. Let us suppose a community is 90 percent Christian and 10-percent Jewish. And let us suppose that the Christian kids are very enthusiastic, very much into their religion, very much into forming prayer groups, very much into leading prayers and offering prayers and seeking opportunities to have prayers. Let us say that the Jewish kids are humiliated by this; that they feel they are being excluded and left out and that the parents of the Jewish kids go to the school board and say, ``My children are coming home in tears every night because of what they believe is kind of an in-group mentality of the school,'' and the school says we believe as a matter of educational policy that this is something that is disruptive and we would like to exercise our local responsibility and say we are going to have a little oasis in this school where people are not going to be divided on religious lines. I believe that the school district should be able to do that on their own without Uncle Sam coming in and saying, ``I am sorry, we're going to mandate that you do this or you lose your Federal educational money.''”