[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 71 (Thursday, June 4, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H4066-H4067]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
                   VOTE AGAINST THE ISTOOK AMENDMENT

  (Mr. EDWARDS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. EDWARDS. Parents, beware, Mr. Speaker. If the gentleman from 
Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) in the next 5 hours is successful in beginning 
the process to amend the Bill of Rights for the first time in our 
Nation's history, public schools across America will begin to look like 
public airports, where religious groups, cults and fanatics can go to 
our public school grounds and try to convert small children to their 
particular religious beliefs.
  I do not think the parents of America want to send their children to 
school to be proselytized. They send their children to school to be 
educated.

[[Page H4067]]

  I am grateful, Mr. Speaker, that just outside the halls of this 
historic Chamber, religious leaders of great faith from all over this 
country, Baptists, Methodists, Jews, Episcopalians and many other 
faiths will speak out against the Istook amendment, because they 
believe as Jefferson and Madison did that the best way to ruin religion 
is to politicize it. That is what the Istook amendment will do.
  I urge parents, people and Members across this body and America to 
oppose the Istook amendment.

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