My kid was attending one of the elementary schools when this went down.
This has less to do with kids expressing their religious beliefs than parents using their kids to evangelize through the school system.
Probably 90% of the kids in the school still believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. It’s absurd to permit parents to misuse/abuse their kids to proselytize on behalf of any religion in school to susceptible children without the knowledge or consent of the parents of the children receiving such “missionary” efforts.
And before the flaming begins, I feel that way about any parent trying to impress their religious views on other people’s kids without knowledge or consent.
That goes for Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc.
I’m not saying each religion is the moral equivalent of each other.
I am saying that it is b.s. that this has become a freedom of religion issue.
It has nothing to do with the free practice of religion or free speech and everything to do with sneaky tactics to convert children of different faiths without parental knowledge or consent.
Want to talk to my kid (now a teenager in high school) about religion in school? Fine. Old enough to make decisions on that front. In elementary school, the parents playing missionary by proxy crossed the line. If they had been honest, they would have approached the parents directly.
an entire class of kids who were forbidden from writing "Merry Christmas" on holiday cards to American troops serving overseas.
Yeah, .. you're probably right.
And what right does the public school system have to teach children that homosexuality is good and normal? But just make sure one of Johnny’s little classmates doesn’t invite him to Vacation Bible School!
Yeah. All those years the Jews were forced to put up with Santa Claus and Christmas carols in elementary schools turned them into stark raving mad Islamic suicide bombers.