Also fuck you Dagoth, I heard you talking shit. The wall gnomes tell me your boys haven't touched grass in so long that their faces rotted off. Maybe if you got rid of that yee-yee ass golden mask you might get some goddesses on your dick. N'waaaaaah
They will then counter this with "Well if they just shut up and minded their own business instead of telling everybody all about how much cock they suck, it wouldn't matter", completely missing the point that these folks have been minding their own business for centuries and regularly getting murdered for it, and also completely missing the extremely obvious parallels to Jim Crow and the civil rights movement (or maybe not, maybe that's why they hate it so much). It is their opinion that they shouldn't have to know you're gay, and that you should have to live in fear of revealing that fact for your entire lifetime. And that's just the crowd that doesn't believe that homosexuality is a direct affront to God and should be stamped out as a moral imperative.
I've had this conversation before a few times, it always comes back around to the same points. Conservatives become extremely unconformable with the knowledge that The Gays(R) exist and typically wield misunderstood Bible quotation in defense of that. Those who don't, will resort to the argument that they shouldn't have to have it "thrust into their faces", as though the knowledge that gay folks exist is some great personal burden to them. They will happily tell people to "mind their own business" and "keep it to yourself" so long as their lungs have air with which to speak, but when told themselves to mind their own damn business, suddenly this is unacceptable.
Comics that play with the framing like this are one of my very favorite types. I don't know what this trope is called but I want to see more of it. I've only ever seen a couple of them but it seems like it should be popular, it's fun.
The Pledge of Allegiance was first created in 1892 to foster a sense of national unity. It was brainwashy even back then, especially having children recite it every morning, but it wasn't really intentionally malicious. It was intended to instill a sense of national fraternity in a fractured group of people, during a time that political tensions ran high and America was being filled with a large percentage of immigrants. Giving everyone an identity as Americans was important in moving the country forward at the time. That doesn't make it not nationalism, but at the time it was instituted I can understand where they were coming from.
Adding the "Under God" part and requiring it to be recited every morning before class wasn't instituted until 1954 during the Cold War era, when adults were worried that their children were commie spies. Their way of solving this was to shove Christianity and American Nationalism down the throats of everyone within earshot.
2,3,4. Via the Pledge's Wikipedia page:
In 1940, the Supreme Court, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, ruled that students in public schools, including the respondents in that case—Jehovah's Witnesses who considered the flag salute to be idolatry—could be compelled to swear the Pledge. In 1943, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court reversed its decision. Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing for the 6 to 3 majority, went beyond simply ruling in the precise matter presented by the case to say that public school students are not required to say the Pledge on narrow grounds, and asserted that such ideological dogmata are antithetical to the principles of the country, concluding with:
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
So as of current day, no, you cannot be compelled to stand and recite the Pledge. You WILL most likely receive nasty comments from your homeroom teacher, particularly if they are religious and/or older folks, and can be sent out of class to the principals office for basically any reason or no reason including this. It's against the law for the principal to leverage punishment against you for not reciting the pledge, but they can and will make your life very difficult if they feel like it without direct "punishment".
But in general, no, there is no legal punishment or precedent for someone who does not recite the pledge of allegiance. At worst, if you're accused of being a spy or of treason, it will be wielded as evidence that you are "un-American" and act as "proof" that you hate America. But it is not a punishable offense by itself.
Ernest is a Chad for sure. We've exploded in number almost overnight and he's been working his ass off to keep everything not only up and running but improving.