Good news for secularists in Anchorage, Jerry Prevo's church will no longer host high school wrestling event due to public prayer.

Prevo on the left.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

The Anchorage Baptist Temple’s school will not host this year's state wrestling tournament for small high schools, as it has in the past, after the Alaska School Activities Association asked it to stop its practice of including a public prayer in the event. 

An attendee of the 2013 event had complained to a national church-state separation watchdog group, which told the ASAA that as a public entity it couldn't sanction prayer at a school extracurricular event. 

Removing the prayer "was a show stopper for us,” said Tom Cobaugh, the administrator of the private Anchorage Christian Schools, the Anchorage Baptist Temple's education ministry. “That’s who we are.” 

The prayer issue made its way to the pulpit of the Anchorage Baptist Temple Sunday morning, when pastor Jerry Prevo used it in his sermon as an example of what he described as a “battle against prayer” in public schools. 

For seven years, Anchorage Christian Schools hosted the wrestling championship for small schools in its gymnasiums, Cobaugh said. The school, which shares an East Anchorage campus with the Baptist temple, serves about 650 students from preschool to high school.

This is yet another victory for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They have been advocating on the side of secularists and Atheists for a number of years now and have managed to achieve some rather impressive wins.

I particularly like this one as Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple is an especially disruptive and dangerous member of our community. He has almost single-handedly manged to oppress our LGBT community, and has had very unfortunate and pernicious influence on our politics.

Seeing him lose in this way does nothing but fill my heart with joy. And I hope it is only the first of many defeats that are coming his way.