Montana College Still Holds State-Sponsored Prayers

Montana State University-North doesn't get it. I thought colleges were supposed to be places of higher learning. Don't they teach history and constitutional law there? Don't they read newspapers?

Court after court has ruled that state-funded schools can't sponsor prayers, Montana State University-North wants to hold school-sponsored prayer. They want to keep their Christian prayer (yes, they say it's non-denominational, but we all know it's Christian) in their graduation ceremony, and never mind that many of their students are atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists.

Why, in this day and age, do Christians feel they can use the state or federal government to force their prayers on other people? Is there some reason that their private prayers and their prayers in church are ineffective? Doesn't God listen during their private prayers? Do they have to pray at the event in order for God to listen? Or is God sort of deaf, and only listens when thousands pray?

And why do they insist on wasting the taxpayer's money on a "cause" that they will surely lose?

More importantly, why don't they have any respect for the non-religious students who are graduating? I suffered this indignity all of my life, and although I wouldn't say it harmed me, it was a damned nuisance. I remember way back in the first grade while memorizing the Pledge of Allegiance how I felt left out. When I got to the "under God" part, my little six-year-old brain figured out that rather than make an issue of it, I'd just not say those two words, and that's what I've been doing all my life.

Why can't the Christians just pray at their own functions and let this be a country that's truly for everyone? Then we could truly be one nation, indivisible.