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Hey, thank goodness for small favors. At least she didn't admit to being heterosexual. |
Posted on 06/22/2006 3:46:06 PM PDT by NYer
LAS VEGAS, June 22, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The name of Christ is so offensive to modern secular ears that Clark County School District officials, who knew it was coming, cut off the microphone during a valedictorian address before they or anyone else could hear it.
Brittany McComb is a Christian and a top student graduating from Foothill High. She knew that her valedictorian address would probably be cut short, but was determined to go ahead and mention the one name that is for her above every other name.
"I went through four years of school at Foothill and they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech," McComb stated. "God's the biggest part of my life. Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my lord and saviour."
The 400 plus graduates and guests gathered at a Las Vegas casino for the ceremony booed and jeered after McComb’s speech was cut short.
McComb was required to vet her speech before the graduation ceremony with Foothill administrators. This, says the school, is standard practice before speeches are read. The school officials then removed all Biblical references and the single mention of the name of Jesus Christ.
McComb, who graduated with a 4.7 grade point average, was warned that if she deviated from the approved text, she could be cut off; but she saw it as a matter of freedom of speech.
“People aren't stupid and they know we have freedom of speech and the district wasn't advocating my ideas,” McComb said. “Those are my opinions.”
“It's what I believe.”
The school district’s legal counsel, Bill Hoffman, said that McComb's words counted as preaching. He told media, “We review the speeches and tell them they may not proselytize.”
McComb said she was not surprised by the censorship. “Even in the Bible it says that the name of Jesus will be hated.”
“But the thing is, it is freedom of speech, so I was upset,” McComb said on the “Jay Sekulow Live!” radio program on June 20. “I was really leery about having to defy authority.... It took me a while, but I answer to a higher authority and it's my freedom of speech, and I had to come to terms with that.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, becoming notorious for its secularist zealotry in cases of public expression of religious belief, praised the school’s decision saying, “It's important for people to understand that a student was given a school-sponsored forum by a school, and therefore, in essence, it was a school-sponsored speech.”
Not so, says a Constitutional lawyer and freedom of speech activist. Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Florida-based pro-family legal organization Liberty Counsel, said McComb should take the school district to court.
“I think this is one of the most outrageous examples of censorship at graduation that I've seen,” Staver said to Agape Press. “For school officials to literally be standing by the switch at the mixing board and cut the microphone on a student, simply because that student mentions God or Jesus, is just unbelievable.”
A writer in the Conservative Voice, Ben Shapiro, responded, “Let's assume the school district, by allowing McComb's speech, would have been promoting her message. Here's the question: So what?”
“There is no right to be free from public expression of religion,” Ben Shapiro wrote, “but there is a Constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion … it is none of the school district's business whether she chooses to invoke God, Jesus or Zeus (though history indicates that the ACLU would fight for her right to invoke Zeus).”
The Constitution of the US, says Shapiro, prohibits the establishment of a state religion such as the Anglican Church in Britain, but was never intended to suppress the right to freedom of religious expression.
See MSNBC's interview with Brittany McComb:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13461308/
"If goverment schools are in conflict with the First Amendment, then governmnet schools have to go, not the First Amendment."
Well first of all, learn how to spell "government." I just realized you misspelled it twice. I believe freedom of speech is to be respected as long as it doesn't interfere with the education of the students or is counterproductive to it. I don't think this did at all. And yes, I say that on good authority.
The ACLU are not traitors, per se, they are marxists who use the 2nd Amendment, along with many of our elected officials in the house and senate, to undermine this Republic.
The one thing I see as most important in this battle against the ACLU is pulling all taxpayers money away from them........Do that, and see how far they get. (Of course to do that, you have to convince the marxists in our gubbmint to pull such funds...and that ain't gonna happen)
FMCDH(BITS)
If it weren't for people like you she wouldn't have to use deceit, your kind just keeps crapping on the constitution. Natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed
Been a while since you've been in high school.....or had high school aged children, eh? :)
You get such GPA's by taking Honors or AP (advanced placement) classes; they are more heavily 'weighted'. Hence, one can easily have a GPA above 4.0.
Oops. Is my age showing? Let me start over.
4.7 GPA? KEWL!
You disagree with the content of the post but instead of expressing the disagreement you make a lame attempt to ridicule me. My response was perhaps too tempered.
She knew it was coming.
The administrators knew it was coming.
Some fathers should have known it was coming, gotten on stage when it happened, and defended her right to say it.
Caving in only gives way to more evil. It was her moment to say what she, as top scholar, felt needed to be said. If the administrators would not stand to have something good said, they must be stopped on the spot - not her.
Jay Sekulow had her on his live show. She had every right to make that speech.
Did she originally say that she would give the edited version of the speech, or was that just assumed?
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Hey, thank goodness for small favors. At least she didn't admit to being heterosexual. |
Beautiful! Christ's own words explain it all.
I don't believe she did, actually. Nowhere is that stated that I can find.
The only argument against her right freedom of speech and freedom of religion has been that "She agreed to give the edited speech, therefor she lied." Looks like that statement is the lie. I've been badgering people left and right, trying to get someone, anyone to confirm that she said that. Nobody can provide confirmation. I don't believe she said it.
Let me or McVey know if you want on or off this new combined list.
I may have to come up with a new graphic; let me know if you have suggestions.
Thank you for bringing support to my position
Grade weighting with AP and advanced classes, most likely.
Good for her, trying to speak what was important even in the face of persecution.
Not necessarily.
Even if she said it, it isn't a lie to change one's mind.
It is a lie to presently represent a fact as true when one knows at the time one utters it, it is not true. That test fails on many levels in the present instance.
But the atheist howler monkeys have with some success avoided the issue by hijacking the thread and turning it into a classic strawman thrashing.
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