Posted on 06/22/2006 10:46:58 AM PDT by UnklGene
High School Valedictorian Refuses to Bow Down; Has Speech Censored
June 21, 2006
Brittany McComb was the valedictorian at Foothill High School recently. She graduated with a 4.7 GPA. She earned the right to address the other graduates at Foothill, located in Henderson, Nevada.
She gave a copy of her graduating speech to the school administrators. It contained some Biblical references and even mentioned (one time) the name “Christ.” The school administrators censored some of the Biblical references. They also censored the single reference to Christ.
Then the school officials handed the speech over to the ACLU for approval and/or more censoring. After getting the OK from the ACLU, Brittany’s speech (minus the censored references to the Bible and Christ) was approved. Brittany was warned that if she deviated from the ACLU approved language, her mike would be cut off.
Then came the moment for the big decision. She would not bow down, she decided. She would go with her original version. She stepped to the mike and began her speech. But just before she could utter the name “Christ,” her mike went dead. School officials silenced her. The crowd of 400 jeered for several minutes, angry at the action of the school officials. The ACLU was happy. They had silenced another Christian.
“I went through four years of school at Foothill and they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech. God’s the biggest part of my life. Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my lord and savior,” Brittany said.
Because she refused to bow down to the ACLU’s idol of gold, she did not get her wish. She was censored.
This young heroine deserves praise and a thank you from those who believe in free speech.
You are not supposed to question Big Brother nor teach your children values that contradict those taught by Big Brother in Big Brothers class room. Did I say how wise Big Brother is? Oh how I protect Big Brother because I love Big Government. Big Brother helps bring me cheap labor. I love Big Brother. You know why? Because Big Brother is like a Big Brother to me and when you love Big Brother for all things nothing is better than a Big Brother overseen world... /Sarcasm off but I think you get the idea.. LOL :>}
You had better read up on the mental reservation principle. By allowing the authorities to stop her from expressing her free exercise of her protected speech rights by refusing to speak because of their censorship gives them the win. An agreement coerced is no agreement at all.
I kind of like the following post that said she should have proposed a bland speech and then delivered the real text, so they could not be ready to cut off the mike. Devious, but perfectly acceptable.
So, you've never had a child? Apparently not, or at least you've not dealt with teens.
You make a few assumptions there, and in addition there's a lot of evidentiary matters to get that 'win.'
Wait and see. I have no doubt she won't prevail.
How was the agreement coerced? She had a choice: give the edited speech, or don't give a speech at all. If her integrity and faith were the most important thing here, she would have simply walked away from speaking.
Once again, students in schools do not have protected speech rights! Court decision after court decision has backed school administrators when they regulate the speech or expression of students.
I've had two. And they would not have given the speech Brittany gave anyway because they would not have focused it on themselves.
Who were apparently never in a situation where they were intimidated by adults, or at least, they never told you about it.
"And they would not have given the speech Brittany gave anyway because they would not have focused it on themselves."
Where does the article say the speech was focused on the speaker?
Isn't the controversy about her wanting to mention that God was behind all her academic success? If she's not talking about herself, then why the need to mention that?
Nonsense.
Your opinion but I must say that I am surprised a person on this conservative website would say that. Don't you think the most selfless act could be getting a descent christian education. Although, I value your opinion on this, I do disagree with you.
I am not sure what conservatism has to do with a perceived connection between Christianity and Christian education. The world is literally filled with Christians of every denomination who accept Christ as their lord and savior who neither have the opportunity or the means to be enrolled in any formal Christian education.
Don't you think the most selfless act could be getting a descent christian education.
I think that being able to receive a Christian education is a privilege, not a selfless act.
Although, I value your opinion on this, I do disagree
Perfectly acceptable to disagree. I disagreed with you and feel confident it was acceptable to do so.
Read what you wrote. LOL Oh my. You'll do absolutely anything to defend government authority over all. To whom did she give the glory of her success? Herself or GOD there is you answer. Now keep in mind this woman is the most successful academic achiever of her class.
Her personal achievements earned her that place at the podium. An honor of achievement {which is what her position actually was} most of the times involves a speech from the achiever to basically give the people insight as to what drove them or their secret of success so to speak. It also involves most of the time naming persons who inspired them thanking them. GOD and Christ to many of us is a Living Person a Divine Being. This type of speech is true in high school as well as company award dinners etc.
What speech isn't about her? The speech she did not make? What, exactly, is it that you suppose I don't know?
She started talking about the role of God and Jesus in her life, and her path to Salvation. Nice topic, but the speech isn't about her.
Good grief. She said like many graduates want to thank their parents, she wants to thank her Lord and Savior. That doesn't make her speech all about herself.
If she's not talking about herself, then why the need to mention that?
If you have consistent standards, then you'd have to say that a student who thanks his/her parents for helping him/her, then he/she is being 'focused on the speaker.'
So tell me, are your standards consistent?
If they didn't want to hear what she had to say, why did they pick her to speak?
I started school right as one woman decided that since she didn't want the name of GOD mentioned in the class room. She would trample all over the U.S. Constitution and others rights using a court system ran by upcoming Marxist to end the mentioning of GOD's name. The year was 1963.
In elementary schools I attended it was ignored. As a matter of fast {Gasp} a preacher came by about once a month to talk to kids in the gym no one was forced to attend. The Bible and prayer was said before class every morning No One DIED. Next came high graduation school in the mid 70's. Our Valedictorian chose the song "Because He Lives" {Oh the nerve of her}. The principal knew us all by first and last name. He himself was also a Baptist preacher. {call the ACLU}
Many of his graduates called upon him to officiate their marriages as well. He was highly thought of loved and respected by all who knew him. It was called community. No drugs, no teen pregnancy, very few fights, no vandalism to school property. The worse event was some boys pulling down the gym shorts of another in a shared gym. That was the event of the year.
Let's address the record of the ACLU loving secularist who insisted GOD's name be prohibited from schools and other venues and see what they have accomplished shall we?
I came back home after a hitch in the Navy and three years after that took a temporary job with the school system. The old high school was a Middle School and a new one built combining two high schools and of course a new principal. In my three weeks as a maintenance man I saw the school set on fire, vandalism faster than I could repair it, and a complete lack of control by the principal or the teachers. Today the Middle School has sexually active children pregnant. Teacher can take them for abortions without parents consent but can not say what you are doing is sin.
So before you go condemning this young woman think about these facts. Nature fills voids. GOD Lord of all representing good and Satan being evil. GOD despite being the creator and ruler of heaven and earth will not be where he isn't asked to be. Either something is there or nature fills the void. The absence {void} of the freedom to worship in class has been filled by the opposite of good and has taken over our schools. Think about it. Even many most devout atheist understand how the benefits Christian values taught at home and enforced in school have a positive outcome for society as a whole.
She was an example for other students. No Gothic, no teen pregnancy, hard work to achieve a goal in life, and a lot more guts than the overseer's of her school system. Of course to some family values was watching Ozzy Osborne or South Park together. It shows too.
I'll take the America I grew up in over what the ACLU and Marxist infested courts have turned it into any day. My guess is so would many others over the age of 45 who remember it. I remember when taking a gun to school was to refinish the stock in wood shop.
Think about these people. Madalyn Murray was one of the most self centered, vulgar, and foul mouth woman, in the modern age. Her lone lawsuit changed the course of the nation in national morality. Tim Leary the king of Acid. How many did he kill? Dr. Ben Spock who's teachings were spanking was wrong.there are others and you know the names. You tell me their positive contributions to our society? I can't find any but I see the damage they did. Yet some think this woman taking a stand for what was once considered a standard of conduct among our nations youth is a scandal? Even Madalyn Murray now knows the truth. But then again the sad irony so does her son which she used as a tool for destruction. He is a Christian and a minister despite his mom.
There are plenty out there to make Christians look bad but that young woman is not one of them. To be exact several who happen to call themselves Reverend and lead the crusades against Christianity now that makes Christianity look bad because their churches like the United Church of Christ refuse to defrock them yet have the nerve to call themselves Christians.
Are you really so blind? Of course the school can restrict students. But this is where you should be able to think it through and understand where the battle is raging and why.
It was not until quite recently that a complete rewrite of the traditional meaning of the First Amendment was coerced into the Constitution. This is the battle. As a conservative who actually supports the Constitution and rejects all improper and political assaults to the Constitution, I still reject the leftist revolutionary deconstruction and rewrite of the original understanding of the Constitution.
I hope that sinks in, even into all the irrational and close minded Jacobins who still think anything a leftist court wants to force into the Constitution is progress.
In order to overturn two centuries of understanding and precedent, the liberal judges changed the meaning of the first amendment and then forced it upon America against their will. This is the battle, do you understand yet.
The battle is against the liberal and radical revisers who intimidate any and all school districts to ignore American history and the Constitution and instead obey the modern radical viewpoint of the first amendment which stemmed from anti-American radicals such as inhabit left wing cesspools like the ACLU.
Before the radical humanistic rewrite of the First Amendment, children could have voluntary group prayer in school, voluntary Bible readings, a view of reality that included a creator God , and the textbooks often referred to the faith of some of our greatest citizens and leaders. Also, before the humanist rewrite, teachers never promoted the acceptance of abominations such homosexuality, abortion and other vile depravities.
Once the incredibly biased and treasoness rewrite of the First Amendment was driven home by social engineering collectives like the ACLU and others, they can and do fanatically enslave all public school children and the parents who pay for it, to accept the revision as if it were fair and just. It has become the leftist's hammer.
Some of us were alive when the ACLU view was so far left that they only whispered it in their drug parties and whore houses. Their view is still insane, but now the American people have undergone quite a few years of radical reconditioning. You are ignorant of American history and the methods and lies of the ACLU and the Constitution breaking court. I will never accept their nonsense, but the left has the power to indoctrinate by law, and they use it by force every day of the week, just like the old Soviet Union.
Parents have had their influence taken away, unless they have bought the perverse views of the radicals. Radicals are the ones who say what goes in the modern public school, not parents.
If parents have bought the politically correct view that you push, that only means that they have been pushed to accept a radical unConstitutional rewrite.
If the school in question were a private Jewish school, IMO, they would have the right which this school is claiming. They would teach that Jesus was NOT the Messiah of Israel, and that he either did not exist at all, or was a fraud. They would have the right to proscribe speech which tended to impugn or discredit the religious purpose of the school.
But this was not a yeshiva, this was a US public school, open to all including Christians.
And the right this girl was trying to use is guaranteed by the First Amendment, as expanded to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, and that right is the Free Exercise of Religion.
You are right that Everson and its progeny have, by using a blatently false definition of "Establishment of Religion", succeeded in extinguishing Free Exercise.
But the Constitution cannot contradict itself in this way.
If a new definition of "establishment" bans "free exercise", then the problem is not with either disestablishment OR free exercise, but with the new definition.
Anyone with any sanity left knows that the fourteenth amendment was never intended to be the tool for revolution that the left expanded it to be.
Well placed liberals have done their damage and now they pretend it was all on the up and up. It wasn't and it isn't. The men who gave us the fourteeth did not intend for it to outlaw Christianity from school and public life. That was always the radical's goal and they had to find the necessary tool as a pretense for their revolution, the fourteenth amendment was handy and made a good cover story to hide their radical activism from the bench.
After decades of denial that they ignored truth, now they openly admit that truth, history and precedent is not needed since we don't need approval by the American people and the necessary amendments. Afterall, to the radical left, the Constitution is living, breathing, and really has no connection with what it ever meant before. In fact all it really means now is whatever activist liberals want it to mean.
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