Religious freedom?

So a majority of football players at Lahser high school, who wish to pray following the game, and have been doing so for 11 years, are no longer allowed  to do so because one student objected and went to the ACLU. What a sad commentary on where our country finds itself in 2013. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Our country also has historically allowed the will of the majority to prevail.  

"No praying allowed on school property" we are told.   I was told last year that Muslim students, who are supposed to pray five times during the day, are excused from class for a few minutes several times per day to go to a quiet room in the building in order to conduct the prayers required by their religion. So if no prayers are allowed on school property, how can this be so?   In the case of the football players, no one is forcing any of them to stay after the game and pray. Those who wished to do so, did so, until it was noted the coach didn't leave the room, and so therefore  this now somehow becomes illegal.

 I know I'm showing my age, but let me go back to when I was a student in a Bloomfield Township public elementary school, where we started every morning, I kid you not, by reciting the Lord's Prayer. I am not advocating that we go back to that by any means, but I see no reason why students who wish to pray in school cannot do so.  It wasn't that long ago that public school senior graduating classes had  baccalaureate services  in local churches as part of graduation week activities. Such was the case when I graduated from Birmingham high school.  And it wasn't that long ago that every commencement in every public school began with an invocation and a benediction. I do remember in 1984, the Lahser high school graduation ceremony had a very nonsectarian offering, hardly recognizable as a benediction, given by Ed Fleischman, who was a Board of Education trustee.
  
I've heard all the opinions about the fact that we are now a  multicultural, multiracial society, with people from many different religions as well as those with no religion at all in our midst, and therefore we cannot offend anyone in the minority by allowing those in the majority to practice their religion in public.  No one is being forced to join in a religious practice that is offensive to their beliefs.  But by catering to every individual who feels uncomfortable by being in a group that prays to God, the rest of the group loses its right to exercise the religious freedom guaranteed by our Constitution.  

Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no prohibitions against prayer when the children of Sandy Hook or Columbine are faced with the barrel of a gun in the hands of a madman.  God must wonder why He is welcome and needed in the public sector when great evil occurs, but is denied a place in the school or public arena in the course of a normal day.  

Our Constitution protects citizens from a religion imposed by the government; that's what the first amendment is all about.  Until recent times we understood that the first amendment protected the rights of citizens to practice their religion in the public sector, including in the halls of government buildings and in the classrooms of our schools.  The so-called separation clause has been turned upside down and inside out, making it now mean just the opposite of what the Bill of Rights intended.   It's a sad time in America.