Posted on 05/11/2005 9:02:15 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A woman barred from reading the Bible in her son's kindergarten class is suing a suburban Philadelphia district, claiming it is infringing on her right to express her religious beliefs - and discriminating against Christians.
"What Wesley has learned in all of this is that the Bible is bad in school, and they don't like it," Donna Busch said of her 6-year-old son.
With the help of the Rutherford Institute, a Christian-oriented civil liberties group based in Charlottesville, Va., Busch, who attends a Baptist church, filed a federal lawsuit May 3 against the Marple Newtown School District.
Wesley's teacher had invited Busch to her classroom at Culbertson Elementary School on Oct. 18 as part of "Me Week," in which the class would learn more about a featured student, according to the complaint.
One of the activities involves the student's parent reading aloud from a favorite book in class. Busch said her son's favorite book is the Bible.
But before the teacher would let Busch continue, she said she would have to get permission from Principal Thomas Cook. After a meeting in the hall, Cook informed Busch she couldn't read the Bible in class, the lawsuit said.
"He was agitated and upset about it, and felt I should know that, according to him, it was against the law," Busch said.
Busch's complaint alleges the Bible-reading ban is part of a pattern of discrimination against Christians. Students were allowed to read a book about Judaism, learn about the dreidel game, and make Hanukkah decorations - but were prohibited from making Christmas decorations, the lawsuit claimed.
School board president Edward Partridge declined to comment Tuesday, but said the board was investigating.
A similar incident in Medford, N.J., spawned litigation in which the courts sided with a public school teacher who banned a first-grader from reading in class a story from "The Beginner's Bible" in 1996.
In that case, a federal judge and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the teacher was within her rights to restrict access to what the school calls a "captive audience" of 6- and 7-year-olds.
Ted Hoppe, a lawyer representing Busch, said a key difference is that Wesley's school allegedly seems to look more favorably upon Judaism than Christianity.
"We want to get an understanding with the school and the school district that Culbertson will be an environment that's not hostile to Christian beliefs and practices," Hoppe said.
But the children aren't a captive audience when being taught about sex and homosexuality? I gotta wonder where the judge found his ruling in the Constitution. Oh, but he must have been using the "living" Constitution.
Ummm and what law would that be???
I actually own a property, with a deed restriction that says, no jews allowed. Not enforcable, of course, but there is no legal way to remove it.
No we, as christians, are standing up and saying, No CHRISTIAN ALLOWED is equally illegal. Good.
The pendulum swings back.
THe BIBLE is a book, written by men. It is exactly like every other book written by men.
If the school wants to say that the bible is MORE than that, and if the courts want to say that the bible is MORE than that, then they must first rule as to what the bible is.
If the school, government, or courts rule that the Bible is a religious book, then they have established the religion espoused in the bible as a religion.
The government is forbidden by the constitution to establish religion.
The government has no constitutional authority to rule about the bible as anything other than a book written by man. To do any more than that would be to put government in the role of determining what is religious and what is not.
This of course is what judges have been doing for the past 40 years or so -- deciding whether displays are religious or not.
a ruling about whether something is religious is clearly the "establishment" of religion.
Why is this not the argument used in court cases? It seems so obvious -- Government must be neutral with religion, therefore it cannot rule that some books are religious and other are not.
Of course,private citizens can make claims about any book they want being religious, as can churches. Only the government is prohibited from recognising any books as religious, or worthy of greater attention than others.
BTW, next time someone says you can't celebrate christmas, ask why it is wrong to talk about the birth of a historical figure that so changed history that they named the calendar years after his appearance.
Because you see, Jesus was a man, an historical figure who lived on earth like any other man. Sure, some people claim he has religious significance, but surely the government can't "establish" that as a fact, can they?
If we can talk about the birth of Plato, we can talk about the birth of Jesus. If we can learn the teachings of Aristotle, we cannot refuse to allow the study of the teachings of Jesus.
Government can't say that those teachings have any special relevance. Government can't claim the 10 commandments come from God (That is Judge Roy Moore's mistake). Government can't tell children the Bible is God's word.
But they can't prohibit the study of people who lived on earth, judicial historical documents of past civilizations, or the most popular book in the history of mankind.
I heard a judge rule that it was OK to teach some religious books because they weren't "real" religions. I think that more than anything I have said shows the unconstitutionality of having judges rule on religion.
So, what do you think? Anybody want to file a lawsuit?
The Rutherford Institute does a great job. It's a very worthy cause to support.
I hope they can add this to their many victories.
That's a good point. If someone read Hesiod or Ovid would the schools and courts claim it's an illegal establishment of Paganism? Of course not.
The Rutherford Institute does a great job. It's a very worthy cause to support.
I hope they can add this to their many victories.
--
Amen to that.
The Rutherford Institute
http://www.rutherford.org/
Government schools are evil.
is there an example of other "diversity" religion lessons at this school?
That's a very reasonable and astute argument. I wonder if anyone will take it up?
"So, what do you think? Anybody want to file a lawsuit?"
I think you'd win with your argument. Fax it to the Rutherford Institute--they might start using it in court.
If this is so, the district would be foolish not to settle immediately and let Busch read her Bible passage/s.
Better read your Constitution more carefully...
It says nothing about the states and local school districts. The reason this sort of thing is occuring is twofold: 1) activist judges, 2) federal control of local school districts through funding and through questionable legislation.
And that "justification" would be...?
The Feminist, Homosexuals are evil.
That is ridiculous. Recognizing that a religion exists is not "establishing" it.
You missed the point. In order to rule that the bible violates the (false) "separation of church and state", the court must first find as fact that the bible is an item of religious significance, and then find as fact that reading the bible meets the test of "establishing religion".
To find those two facts, the court (an agent of the federal government) must "establish" the religious nature of the bible. To do that it must "establish" what is an is not a religion.
I would much rather just go back to the original intent of the constitution, maybe that is what is confusing. I don't think the courts SHOULD HAVE gone down this road, I think their arguments were wrong. BUT, what I am trying to show is that APPLYING THEIR OWN STANDARD, they should reject their results because of this argument.
To those who correctly pointed out that I used government in place of congress; yes, I did. But the 14th amendment has been used to dictate against the states the rights of the 1st amendment. And the courts only have authority to rule based on the law and the constutition.
I suppose an activist judge would simply state that it is OK for the judiciary to establish religion as part of its oversight of making sure that congress does NOT establish religion.
But if they ruled that way, they would end up in another paradox, becuase the school system isn't congress either.
Plus the federal courts are already on record (in the Roy Moore Case) that the prohibition on "congress" applied to the courts (or at least the justices of the court) as well.
In fact, I'm surprised the Judge Roy Moore didn't try to argue that as a judge, he was free to post the 10 commandments, because only Congress was prohibited from establishing religion, and congress didn't pass a law to have him put the 10 commandments in his court.
(Having read his book, I don't think Judge Moore would have used that argument, he wanted to prove that he was allowed to acknowledge the God of Christianity as a real actor in our jurisprudence -- he didn't like the "historical context" arguments).
BTW, to those who would argue that government's acknowledgment of religion is separate from "establishing" religion, think about these facts:
In order to qualify for tax exempt status, a new religion must prove to the government that they are a "real" religion. The government in effect gets to decide what religions are real and which ones are not. If you were a member of a religion the government refused to recognise, you would feel that the government was discriminating against your religion.
IN order to rule on what people of a religious faith can do, government weighs the impact to society against the importance of the act to those people. For example, in order to claim religious conscientious objector status, you must prove to the government that your religious faith is real, and that your religion itself has a tenet which truly forbids your participation. To do that the government makes judgments on the religious precepts of individual religions, granting some as valid and others as not.
This is extended further for things like blood transfusions, animal sacrifice, and the use of psychotropic drugs, and the clothes you wear. In each case the government is essentially dictating what religious precepts make "sense" and which are just silly or outmoded.
Then there is the involvemend of government in determining the appropriate sermons for a church. The government has established that a real religion wouldn't tell people who to vote for, so if you do they want to pull your church tax exemption, because now you are a political organization.
Of course, the original intent of the constitution was to keep the federal government, through an act of congress, with designating a specific denomination as the "official church of the United States". None of what I said above is related to that, but neither is any of the bans the courts have placed. The founding fathers would certainly never have thought that the 1st amendment would be used to ban reading the bible.
Sometimes you win an argument against a bad hypothesis by proving that the hypothesis leads to contraditions. So far that has not worked with this separation argument, the court has a myriad of confusing and contradictory rulings but they haven't put two and two together yet and determined that they have to start over.
Last point. TO show how this SHOULD work. There is a city in Michigan where they publicly broadcast (I believe a private group does it, but it is in the public streets) the Muslim calls to prayer. The court ruled that since there was a significan Muslim population, this was acceptable. Now, this means that non-Muslims have to put up with hearing things they don't agree with. But the founders would have no problem with that, because they believed we were strong and tolerant people who could be confronted by opposing views without being sullied by them.
At some point a judge somewhere decided that HEARING something was itself so offensive that it had to be restricted. The mere VIEWING of a plaque with the 10 commandments on it would hopelessly violate a person's right to his own religion. That is of course an absurd notion, just as is the notion that being allowed to not participate in a moment of silence, or having to listen to a prayer at a football game, or stand silently for a pledge that includes "Under God" (which you have a right to not say, in whole or in part) is somehow too odius a thing for a person to bear.
Maybe I am still missing the point. They don't have to rule that the bible is the word of God to recognize it as a religious book. I recognize that the koran is a religious book, even though I don't believe in it. I think there is a difference between recognition and establishment.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.