Brittany McComb
Posted on 06/19/2006 11:55:57 AM PDT by Jay777
The valedictorian of Foothill High, Brittany McComb, decided to share her faith voluntarily at her graduation cermony. However, before she could get to the part that meant the most to her, Christ, her microphone went dead. Her speech was in no way endorsed by her school, however the school directly participated in censoring her free speech.
The First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The judicial branch has extended the meaning of this amendment to any government body, not just Congress. However, I still don’t understand how so many ignore the part that says ” or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is exactly what the school did to this young girl, prohibited the free exercize of her religious expression.
From the Review Journal we learn: The decision to cut short McComb’s commencement speech Thursday at The Orleans drew jeers from the nearly 400 graduates and their families that went on for several minutes.
However, Clark County School District officials and an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union said Friday that cutting McComb’s mic was the right call. Graduation ceremonies are school-sponsored events, a stance supported by federal court rulings, and as such may include religious references but not proselytizing, they said.
(Excerpt) Read more at stoptheaclu.com ...
Joseph McCarthy would have known how to deal with this subversive trash!The a.c.l.u.is a threat to the good and patriotic people of this country.All they represent is their own agenda and the people they can use to further it.
Amazing.
I say "pull the plug" on the part of property taxes that go to public schools.
ACLU: Free speech. As long as it's speech we agree with....
BUMP!
Stop the scumbag Democrat athiests of the ACLU.
This is the same group of leftists who used activist judges to overturn any ordinance that limited any kind of obscenity and vile expression that anyone could imagine.
They even support the right to have Kiddie Porn.
These dishonest perverts don't have enough integrity to look a cyclops in the eye as they support Islamic terrorists while denying a high school student the type of free speech that had been free for over 200 years.
Here is a brief, but very readable survey of the extremism of the ACLU
Go to any average law library to find exhaustive details of their track record and compare it to 200 years of U.S. legal history.
You equate Christian prosyletizing with a "How I Lost my Virginity" speech?! That's just assinine.
The point is that it is her speech. Some people in the crowd may be offended by a speech defending capitalism after all they've been taught in the socialist school system. At what point do we say "enough" and allow people to express themselves and their ideas within the bounds of decent discourse? Again, how long until the school simply gives a valedictorian the speech they will give to ensure it is watered down enough for the masses? Whose speech is this anyway?
Besides, the valedictorian earns the right to speak on behalf of her fellow students because of her achievement. The schools think others can learn from them. If their Christian faith is what drives and motivates them, how can that be off limits? In the good ol' U S of A, it sure shouldn't be!
I said it before and will say it again, every alcu member should be hanged from the nearest telephone pole or tree as befits the traitors they are.
Yes, student speech being nongovernmental, it was wrong to cut her off. You might not hear that a lot, though, out of fear it will be used to justify letting some people's religion slither back into public education.
Their other activities are irrelevant here.
"Why would one want to be Jehovah's witness?"
Why would any one want to be religious at all? I suspect a lot of it is similar to how bird mites survive. They are present on momma bird and jump to the hatchlings at birth.
How many churchgoers would there be if children weren't indoctrinated in it before developing the rational facilities to differentiate God from Santa Claus or the tooth fairy?
People have very different ideas about what constitutes "decent discourse", and the law shouldn't distinguish between those. Hence Fred Phelps and his sorry excuse for a church continue to run around the country delivering what they believe is an urgently important religious message. What should a school do if a student with that sort of religious beliefs earns a valedictorian spot? Even with specific recognized obscene words barred, and replaced with respectable synonyms, most people would much rather be subjected to the "How I lost my virginity speech. And what about white supremacists, who certainly have a right to express their political views, and who often practice their beliefs within the context of an organized religious group?
I'm not suggesting that schools should be allowed to apply a different standard to religious speech by valedictorians, than to any other type of speech. But I think it's also acceptable for a public school to apply a standard across the board, limiting valedictorian speeches to material which wouldn't offend any significant number of reasonable people in the community. And while I don't think it's reasonable for anyone to be offended by a student describing his/her own religious faith and the role s/he believes it played in his/her academic success, I do think it's reasonable for anyone who doesn't share the student's specific religious beliefs to be offended by a speech which amounts to aggressive proselytizing. This is why I think we need to know what this student was startig/planning to say, before passing judgement. An auditorium holding many Catholic, Jewish, atheist, agnostic, and other non-evangelical Christian parents who are their to witness their own children's graduation, shouldn't be given a choice between listening to speech which the speaker and the school officials both know will offend them, and getting up and leaving their own child's graduation. Neither should an auditorium full of religious parents be forced to sit through a militant atheist diatribe, in which the speaker admonished them and graduating classmates that they can't aspire to high academic achievement unless they give up their stupid superstitions.
The refusal of courts to allow public schools to set reasonable limits on students' speech, behavior, and dress, has been a huge contributor to descent of public schools into an anti-civilizing force. It's only in very recent years that courts have begun to uphold dress codes. For a long time, if a girl wanted to go to school in a teensy midriff-baring halter top and teensy low-rise "hot pants", the school wasn't allowed to interfere with her right to "free expression". Finally, courts started coming around to the idea that reasonable limits on student attire were appropriate and permissible, and they should come around to that idea about ALL kinds of speech as well.
Was there anyone at the graduation who was offended by her comments besides the school officials and the ACLU?
I agree that if you are compelled by law to attend an event, you should have the right to be free from religious or anti-religious indoctrination. This is why I am suspicious of public schools' values teachings. But no law should prohibit freely expressed opinion in public forums. No one in this free land is so important that they deserve to have constant legal protection from the truth as others see it.
I'm sure it's on their target list. It won't be long.
The ACLU would be extremely busy in the South. Almost every graduation ceremony I attend becomes an altar call.
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