WASHBURN, Maine — Freshmen at Washburn High School dressed up as gods and goddesses for the school’s second annual Gods/Goddesses Day on Oct. 27.

According to a press release on the Maine Department of Education (DOE) website, “Gods/Goddesses Day, the culmination of a study of Greek and Roman mythology by freshman-year English students, involved the books of author Rick Riordan. Each student selected a Greek or Roman God or Goddess, or a Titan of the Earth, researched his or her life and legacy, wrote a paper and developed an era-appropriate invitation to a festival.”

“The project was the result of a collaboration among English and history classes and the school library,” said English teacher April Flagg in the Maine DOE press release. She explained the teachers and students involved worked for weeks to generate excitement for ‘gods/goddesses’ Day. The dressed-up students spent most of the day discussing their gods and goddesses with upperclassmen.

Some groups, such as Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, et. al., may not wish to financially support the indoctrination of public school students with other religions’ ‘gods’ by way of their property tax payments. With that in mind, this writer asked Maine Department of Education Commissioner, Stephen Bowen to describe the process by which one may apply for and receive either a full or partial waiver of the public school portion of their property taxes if they are either religiously or philosophically opposed to financially contributing to such public school-funded religious education programs.

It seems the Maine DOE believes it is justified in using coercively-collected tax monies to fund various pagan religious education programs in Maine’s public schools that some taxpayers may not be in agreement with, or choose not to support. There also doesn’t appear to be any “fair time” maxim extant in Maine’s public schools with regard to presenting other religions’ icons. For example: equal time is not given to the presentation of the God of the Holy Bible that is given to the pagan gods depicted in the classroom exercise at Washburn High School; and equal time is not given throughout Maine’s schools to the Creationists’ view of Intelligent Design for the origin of life, versus the evolutionists’ unscientific, unproven belief that life originated by random chance.

By default, paganism is the only religion endorsed, funded and promoted by the Maine DOE. Anti-religionists who have hi-jacked public schools in Maine under the banner of “separation of church and state” (of which there is no such law in the United States) did so only to ban the mention of Christianity, or the God of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Paradoxically, they are endorsing one religion by outright banning another.