School bans pro-life T-shirts, fliers - Officials fear other students will object

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | November 18, 2006

[cpforlife.org]

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Saturday, November 18, 2006

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MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
School bans pro-life T-shirts, fliers
Officials fear other students will object, consider message religious

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Posted: November 18, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

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© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A Virginia high school barred a Christian student from distributing materials and wearing a T-shirt that declared opposition to abortion, prompting a legal response.

Andrew Raker, a student at Millbrook High School in Winchester, Va., participated in a national pro-life event Oct. 24 called the "Day of Silent Solidarity" in which he distributed postcard-sized fliers with information about abortion, the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund said.

The next day, school officials pulled Raker from class and told him he could no longer distribute the materials because other students might object or consider them to be religious in nature.

(Story continues below)

ADF said Millbrook's principal, Joseph Swack, also threatened to force Raker to remove or cover his pro-life clothing if other students complained.

In addition, Swack deferred a decision on Raker's request to form a pro-life club, expressing doubt about its acceptability.

The Alliance Defense Fund responded with a letter to Swack contending the high school's refusal to allow a student to present pro-life speech violates the Constitution.

"Christian students cannot be treated as second-class citizens," said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. "Expressing a pro-life point of view, whether it is considered to be 'popular' or not, does not disqualify an individual from the right to free speech."

As WND reported in September, a California school changed its T-shirt policy after two students were reprimanded for wearing the "inappropriate" Christian message that life is valuable.

One of the messages, according to the Pacific Justice Institute, read on the back: "Help Cure Abortion" on the front, and "Abortion: The leading cause of death in America 1,200,000 every year."

One student was pulled from class by two instructors who told her she was not allowed to wear the shirt to school because it was "inappropriate." The situation quickly was reversed when the Pacific Justice Institute sent a letter to school officials expressing concern over the First Amendment implications of the school's demands.

In March 2004, another Virginia high school student was barred from wearing a shirt with a pro-life message because it violated the school's policy against profane or obscene language.

The shirt said: "Abortion is Homicide. You will not silence my message. You will not mock my God. You will stop killing my generation. Rock for Life."

As WND reported in 2003, a student in Cleveland was given two days of Saturday detention after two students in his 1,200-member high school complained about a sweatshirt with the same message.

In Pennsylvania, a junior high school principal barred a T-shirt with that message, arguing it was the equivalent of wearing a swastika to school. The principal later reversed his decision after the Thomas More Law Center explained the student's First Amendment rights and threatened a lawsuit.

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Previous stories:

School fixes policy to allow pro-life T-shirts

Pro-life shirt barred as 'obscene'

Another student penalized
for pro-life shirt

Pro-life shirt equated with swastika

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[cpforlife.org]

Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

[cpforlife.org]

"Officials fear other students will object, consider message religious"

This is so pathetically pathetic. I want to wretch.

RELIGIOUS?!

Abortion is the HIGH SACRAMENT of the RELIGION of Godless Liberalism.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Conclusion of the letter:

You are on notice that our client wishes to exercise his clearly established First Amendment rights. As such, any further action taken by you or other school officials to infringe his rights will be action taken in deliberate indifference to those rights. Please notify my office by close of business on Wednesday, November 22, 2006, that Millbrook will permit Mr. Raker to distribute flyers, wear expressive clothing, and organize a pro-life club with equal access to school resources. If we fail to hear from you by that date, we will advise our client of his options for relief in Federal Court. Please contact me if you have any questions regarding the above.

[jude24]

School is not the place for political protests of any sort. School is only a place to learn the material presented.

Frankly, I want to go to school uniforms. Solves all these stupid problems.

[mockingbyrd]

I'm with you on school uniforms. But until then, right to life messages totally belong in school. That's where the indoctrination begins.

Protesting abortion is not political, this issue trancends politics. It is protesting the degradation of humanity.

[oyez]

"Religious" will be the term to be used when "hate crime" won't cover what is unpopular with the liberals.

[pray4liberty]

Good golly, did they suspend or expel those kids? A lot of kids have been thrown out for a whole lot less.

[Dick Bachert]

Political Correctness:

”A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”

By spreading this definition around, perhaps we can employ one of the more effective methods of deflating and defeating the fools who practice and promote it: RIDICULE.

Unless stopped – and soon – PC will DESTROY Western Civilization -- if it hasn’t already.

PASS IT ON!!

[Neidermeyer]

School is not the place for political protests of any sort. School is only a place to learn the material presented.

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I would agree with you if schools haven't been used as a tool of the Secular Humanist religion (as epitimozed in the RATS agenda) to promote their religon and squelch dissent and rational discussion.

[MSSC6644]

School is only a place to learn the material presented.

As a former high school teacher, I need to respond to this statement. First, your sentence is a bit awkward. Do you mean to say that "school" is the only place to learn? Or did you mean to say that "school" is a place to learn only the material presented?

Second, some "material" that is being presented is not worth learning, and is presented to evoke thought and questions.

School is a place where learning takes place. We hope that learning can be directed and focused. But we also hope that a student might actually learn more than any teacher could have foreseen.

The tee-shirt and pamphlets presented a wonderful opportunity for learning. What a shame that no one in that "school" saw all the benefits of free speech as related to our founding documents, of controversy, of science, of psychology, of sociology, of all the many writings and debates possible because of this young man's point of view.

The place seems to have been taken over by uninformed, cowardly cretins. Our country is in very serious trouble.

[LiteKeeper]

Let the other students object. "Objection" is not included in the text of the First Amendment

[jude24]

if schools haven't been used as a tool of the Secular Humanist religion

Oh puhleeeeze....

For some people, if you don't teach your particular sect's teachings, it's "secular humanism."

There's a huge difference between teaching from a secular, non-sectarian viewpoint and teaching secular humanism. I was never taught in school that there is no God, that empiricism is the only valid epistemology, or that religion was the opiate of the masses. I was taught history, science, and literature. The chips fell where they may.

[Elsiejay]

You have named it precisely and correctly.
We note that the concerns of spineless liberal government school administrators for the tender sensibilities of certain easily offended people are very selectively exercised. For example, it is assumed that Christian students are as a rule not eligible credibly to claim being offended, nor are those opposed to abortion.

[Apple Pan Dowdy]

MSSC6644, I love what you said about teaching (see post #11). If there were more teachers in our schools like you we would not be in such trouble as a nation. We thatnk God for teachers like you!

[narses]

+

If you want on (or off) this Catholic and Pro-Life ping list, let me know!

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

"There's a huge difference between teaching from a secular, non-sectarian viewpoint and teaching secular humanism. I was never taught in school that there is no God, that empiricism is the only valid epistemology, or that religion was the opiate of the masses. I was taught history, science, and literature. The chips fell where they may."


You haven't been in many schools, especially public schools, lately, have you?

Your view of what constitutes "being taught" seems truncated, but even given that, your first point is off the mark. Public schools were designed from the ground up to dissuade students from their parents' religious tutelage, and inculcate them with the nationalist civil religion (in which all competing religions are "OK" so long as they submit ultimately to the authority of the state) as its Prussian architects made clear in their communications "within the guild", and to their American admirers who imported the Prussian state school model to the US. But even that was a fairly minor side-show. For the main course, see:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

Meanwhile, not only were public schools developed to function as temples of the civil religion, others, (including a significant overlap with the cast of characters who instigated the state schooling system) were busy gutting the content of the "competing" religions, e.g., as even H.L. Mencken, not noted for his piety, detected in his obituary of an adversary of this process:
http://www.freebooks.com/docs/html/gncf/appendix_a.htm

[bert]

.....RELIGIOUS?!.....

Had he omitted the phrase "you will not mock my god" he would have been ok because the message was not religious.

[MrLee]

My kids are offended by homosexual propaganda distributed in the schools, but nobody cares....

[motife]

schools are to learn math, composition, science, etc. not to spread political propoganda.

this stuff is garbage. would you like lefties coming in with their PETA, global warming, pro-choice, gay marriage propoganda on T-shirts and fliers? Sheesh.

Whoever's doing this are complete nut cases. Their disruption of the serious purpose of schools, that is educating students, is crazy and unacceptable.